96 Chapter V
It held that law could draw its force and its legality only from the community it-
self; as the French were to say in 1789, the will of “no body, and no individual”
could be law. Not only monarchs, but also the constituted bodies of which I have
said so much in preceding chapters, would be justified in believing that the Social
Contract sapped their foundations.
THE GENEVESE REVOLUTION OF 1768The Geneva that anxiously watched Rousseau’s approach from Paris in June 1762
was by no means the ideal city of his imagination. The confrontation that fol-
lowed was to drive Rousseau to the verge of madness, and Geneva to the brink
of revolution.
The old and sporadic disputes within the city had induced the governing groups,
in the 1730’s, to appeal to outside powers for arbitration. These powers, the king-
dom of France and the cantons of Bern and Zurich, had produced the Act of
Mediation of 1738, which they enforced by armed intervention. They remained
the Guarantors of the Act, available for further appeal should it come into ques-
tion.^19 Geneva, that is to say, like other small or weak states at the time—Sweden
and Poland, or the Dutch and Venetian republics or the papal states, as will be
seen—was with difficulty preserving the independent management of its own
affairs.
The Act of 1738, clarifying certain older laws of the city, was in effect its consti-
tution. It enumerated five “orders” in the state: the four Syndics; the Small Coun-
cil, or Executive Council of Twenty- Five; the Council of Sixty (which was of no
importance); the Council of Two Hundred; and the General Council. The General
Council was a kind of town meeting. All citizens and burghers attended it. There
were about 1,500 citizens and burghers, not counting those habitually absent from
the city. With their families they represented about a quarter of the population.
The remaining three- quarters were either natifs, native born, often of several gen-
erations, but without political rights; or habitants, who in principle were new arriv-
als to whom the right of residence had been granted. Between the bulk of the citi-
zens and the burghers there was no real difference, and they may all be referred to
as Burghers. Nor was there any substantial difference between natifs and habitants,
who may all be called Natives.
By the Act of 1738 the General Council met once a year, and elected the four
Syndics from a list of candidates containing double the necessary number of
names, submitted to it by the Small Council. The Act of 1738 specified that all
candidates for the office of Syndic must be members of the Small Council, whose
members in turn had to belong to the Two Hundred. The Two Hundred, con-
versely, were named by the Small Council. In short, the Two Hundred (on which
far fewer than two hundred families sat) were the ruling aristocracy at Geneva. The
Small Council and the Syndics were their executive arm; the “people” had a choice
19 The Act was published as Règlement de l ’ lllustre Médiation pour la pacification des troubles de la
République de Geneve (Geneva, 1738).