Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de SISMONDI (1773–1842). Autogr - Lot 142

Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de SISMONDI (1773–1842). Autograph letter, Chênes near Geneva, March 6, 1842; 4 pages in-4 plus one page in-12 pasted to the letter (slight tear at the fold). An important letter concerning the uprising of November 22, 1841, which shook Geneva, and its aftermath. [The riot of November 22, 1841, led by the Association of March 3, resulted in the formation of a constituent assembly with a Protestant majority and the creation of the City of Geneva as an independent municipality (constitution of June 7, 1842).] He thanks his correspondent for his “literary gossip” regarding his *History of the French* and provides him with information “on the shameful and criminal revolution we endured on November 22.” He sends him a short pamphlet he has written on the subject and advises him to visit the Librairie d’Ab. Cherbuliez, where he will find the newspapers published in Geneva at that time. “A purely Jacobin faction—very violent but small in number, which, through popular elections, could never attain either national representation or government—set itself a twofold goal through the insurrection of November 22, in which a daring minority took the majority by surprise and subjugated it, 1. to restrict the government to a very small number of hands […] 2. to triple or quadruple the emoluments of these positions, which were formerly very meager […] so that the surplus might satisfy the greed of these adventurers. The effect of this revolution—which they had not foreseen, though it was inevitable—was to shift influence from the city’s inhabitants to those in the countryside, who make up three-fifths of the population, and at the same time to grant prodigious influence to the Catholics, who make up only one-third of the population but who, through a seesaw dynamic between the radicals and the conservatives, keep both sides equally dependent on them. This unforeseen result has caused alarm in Protestant Geneva; it was seen there as a harbinger of the ruin of our Church.” He desires a liberal church, like that of America. “The ferment of ideas, the study of nature, and the study of antiquity have, with the advance of the Enlightenment, inevitably given rise to divergent opinions on religious matters; […] countless systems of belief have emerged, ranging from the most rigorous orthodoxy, or the strictest Calvinism, through Arianism, […] to the most independent rationalism. In the ancient spirit of Rome, all those who deviated from the Church were burned, which maintained unity quite effectively. In the Anglican Church, they are merely excluded through symbolic means, which preserves a dominant system alongside a multitude of independent sects. You have gone further; you have abolished the dominant Church, and all your sects are equally independent.” The Church of Geneva is quite different: “Public worship must equally bring together all those who feel in their hearts the need to worship God together, to draw near to all their brothers through charity, and to hear together a moral teaching that is the same for all. […] Any man—I do not even say any Christian—who wishes to join in the prayers of the Church of Geneva is a member of the Church of Geneva”… Etc.