A Clash with Democracy 89
themselves as members of its two main constituted bodies, the Council of Twenty-
five and the Council of Two Hundred. These were the people who went to Vol-
taire’s parties to see or act in his plays, such people as the Tronchins, one of whom
was Voltaire’s doctor, one his banker, and a third the procurator- general of the re-
public. People of wealth and leisure, drawing their income from land or old invest-
ments, they were generally pro- French in their politics, and willing to adopt the
French manners and diversions which were everywhere setting the style for an in-
ternational upper class. The bulk of the citizens and burghers never saw the inte-
rior of Les Delices or Ferney. They disapproved of spectacles to which they were
not invited; they were politically fearful of France; and they reflected a kind of
nativist reaction against the cosmopolitanism of their own aristocracy, a nativist
reaction which, at Geneva, meant a renewed consciousness of their own Puritan
heritage. Rousseau became their hero, as Voltaire was the favorite of the patri-
cians. In the one camp Rousseau was the friend of virtue and the common man; in
the other, a voluntary barbarian and surly enemy of the arts. That the theater was
in fact a class question was abundantly shown by subsequent events; one was built
at Geneva a few years later, burned down during the democratic turbulence of
1768, and rebuilt only after the aristocratic restoration of 1782, after all democratic
organs in the city had been destroyed, and the democratic leaders put to flight.
Meanwhile Rousseau was going further with his meditations. In 1762 he pub-
lished both Emile and the Social Contract. The Parlement of Paris condemned
Emile. The Republic of Geneva condemned them both. It was the only govern-
ment in Europe to condemn the Social Contract at the moment of publication.
Both books, branded as “temerarious, scandalous, impious, tending to destroy the
Christian religion and all governments,” were solemnly lacerated and burned be-
fore the Hotel de Ville at Geneva on June 19, 1762; and Rousseau was declared
liable to arrest upon entrance into the city.
It was rare at Geneva at this time to use such rigorous censorship. It is clear that
the Council condemned Rousseau’s two books without having carefully read them;
not enough time for study had intervened. It is probable that the Council wished
to please the French government by this action. It is certain that they were an-
noyed at Rousseau for his role in the theater question, in which he had been hailed
as a leader and spokesman by the discontented burghers of the city. It is probable,
in view of the d’Alembert affair, that they wished to assure the world that Geneva
had not fallen into unbelief. It is known that the Tronchin family spoke zealously
against Rousseau in the Council; but whether Voltaire used his influence against
him at this time is not clear.
At any rate the poor Jean- Jacques, who started for Switzerland after the con-
demnation of Emile in Paris, found the gates of his native city shut in his face,
more purposely and more formidably than in his youth.
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1762If one were to name the one book in which the revolutionary aspirations of the
period from 1760 to 1800 were most compactly embodied, it would be the Social