A Clash with Democracy 99
aim of a political society, to conserve itself by conserving its constitution.”^21 He
suggested in passing, also, that if the Burghers harked back to too many sixteenth-
century precedents they might stir up the Natives. Since his more purely legal ar-
guments seemed also to be irrefutable, the Burgher Representants were pushed
into a corner; they knew of no way to answer Tronchin, nor could they see what
step they might next take. So de Luc, d’Ivernois, and other leaders went again to
consult Rousseau.
Rousseau held himself apart. He was being psychologically difficult. He de-
clared that he would never take back his citizenship even if it were offered. He was
glad that some of the Burghers wished to help him, but sorry that they had acted
so late. He advised them to drop the whole matter, said that he was not worthy,
insisted that he would have nothing to do with it, and that he was through with
Geneva. De Luc and d’Iver nois were distressed. Secretly, however, Rousseau pro-
ceeded to do the opposite. A year after the appearance of Tronchin’s Letters from
the Country, Rousseau surprised friends and enemies alike with another of his
great manifestoes, the Letters from the Mountain. It was a rejoinder to Tronchin and
the patricians. Where the Social Contract had been based on a reading of Hobbes
and Grotius and Pufendorf and on reflections on abstract justice, the Letters from
the Mountain were based on a close reading of the lawbooks and histories of Ge-
neva, which Rousseau now for the first time digested in his Neuchâtel retreat. The
new work included a more concrete presentation of democratic ideas than the So-
cial Contract. One writer, thinking of Pascal, calls it the Provinciales of the demo-
cratic movement.^22 Into that we cannot go; but on the specific question now raging
at Geneva Rousseau offered a clear answer. Admitting that the Small Council had
the legal right of veto if a proposal for new legislation were being made, he re-
torted that if the charge were violation of law (as in the representation of June
1763), then the Small Council accused of such violation, however clear its own
conscience, could not refuse to lay the matter before the General Council, the sov-
ereign assembly of citizens of the republic. The executive could not be a permanent
final judge of its own actions.
Unfortunately for Rousseau the controversy did not remain limited to this high
level. Suspecting Voltaire of having been instrumental in causing his difficulties at
Geneva, he took occasion in the Letters from the Mountain to attack Voltaire, and
announced to the world that Voltaire was the true author of one of the more ven-
omous antireligious tracts then in circulation, the Sermon des cinquante. Voltaire
had in fact written it, but did not wish to acknowledge it, especially because, at the
moment, he was trying to enlist the French government in his crusade for the re-
habilitation of Jean Calas. Voltaire was irritated into a counterattack on Rousseau.
He hurled another anonymous pamphlet, Le sentiment des citoyens, into the battle
of arguments at Geneva. Siding openly with the patrician Négatifs, he raked up
everything he could think of to destroy the character of Rousseau: “a man who
bears upon him the dreadful marks of his debaucheries, and who, disguised as a
21 Tronchin’s book is quoted at length by Vallette, J. J. Rousseau Genevois, 285–87. See also on
these matters John S. Spink, Jean- Jacques Rousseau et Genève (Paris, 1934).
22 Va l let te , op. cit., p. 295; “les Provinciales de la démocratie politique et du libéralisme
religieux.”