102 Chapter V
on foreigners. “Let us pull down this wall of separation” between government and
citizens; “this eternal rock on which our happiness has foundered!”^26
In reply the Small Council naturally insisted that the Burghers should accept
the decision of the Guarantors, and advanced further constitutional arguments
based on the Act of 1738. It blamed the impasse of government squarely on the
Représentants, observing that the Small Council was constitutionally obliged to
nominate its own members for Syndics, that it had conscientiously nominated
every eligible member in turn, and that the General Council, by refusing all, was
nullifying the constitution. If the General Council had the right of perpetual
refusal, the argument continued, then it had the power to destroy the Syndics as
an Order; but the Orders of the state were constitutionally bound not to infringe
upon each other. Election of Syndics had nothing to do with “sovereignty”; it
was a mere executive function which the constitution assigned to the General
Council.
The Small Council had the best of the constitutional argument, so that there
was no recourse for the Représentants but to assert a juridical revolution—to op-
pose Law and Constitution with Sovereignty of the People, from which a new
constitution might be derived. This was done notably in an obscurely signed pam-
phlet of December 1767 actually written by a young man, soon to be famous,
named Delolme.^27
“What, sir, is the Constitution? What is this unknown Being that assigns func-
tions to the General Council, to the Sovereign of the Re public? Is it the nymph
from whom Numa is said to have received his laws?...
“The Constitution is the totality of Laws, or Law in the collective sense. Law is
the will of the Sovereign. The Sovereign in Geneva is the General Council.” The
General Council, as sovereign, assigns functions to others; it receives none from
any higher source. It is not an Order, and cannot “infringe” on other Orders. It is
the supreme lawmaker; the executive is its agent. It elects or refuses to elect whom
it pleases. When it last refused election of syndics, it did so “not according to the
Act of 1738, or the Edict of 1707, or of 1568, or any other edict whatsoever; it did
so by the Will of the Sovereign, manifested on January 12, 1766, at four o’clock in
the afternoon.” Indeed, it is a more effective sovereign than any king, who is only a
single man. It is both the representative and the represented. It “combines all the
Orders; it contains all within itself; when it moves, all moves; all rights, powers and
attributes of office emanate from it, and have it only for their object; and it is in all
possible plenitude the Sovereign, the Nation, and the Law.”^28
This may be compared to Louis XV’s resounding declaration of sovereignty,
made only the year before to the Parlement of Paris. Or it may be compared to the
more similar doctrine of Rousseau and the Social Contract. It may also be com-
26 Ibid., 6.
27 Purification des trois points de droit souillés par un anonyme, ou Réponse à l ’examen des trois points de
droit traités dans les Mémoires des Représentants du 19 mai et 16 octobre, 1767. See also E. Ruff, Jean Louis
DeLolme und sein Werk über die Verfassung Englands (Berlin, 1934), 42–43. For Delolme’s later admira-
tion for the separation of powers in the British constitution, which was somewhat at variance with the
Rousseauist views of this pamphlet, see the following chapter.
28 Purification... , 40 – 49.