William Emmanuel Rappard, Trois économistes genevois et leurs carrières parlementaires : Sismondi, Rossi, Cherbuliez (1940–1941)

Rappard’s article, published in three installments, reconstructs the parliamentary careers of three Genevan economists between 1814 and 1846. Its introduction establishes their shared constitutional setting and documentary sources; three complementary biographies then examine careers that overlapped without forming a sustained intellectual collaboration. The inquiry concerns less their legislative influence than what political conduct reveals about their thought. Its central finding challenges any straightforward identification of scholarly specialization with public action:

Ce fut donc en notables d'une petite république beaucoup plus qu'en techniciens de la vie économique qu'ils s'y engagèrent.

English translation: It was therefore much more as notables of a small republic than as specialists in economic life that they entered politics.

The institutional setting explains both their opportunities and their limitations. Geneva’s constitution of 1814 restricted suffrage, denied legislative initiative to the Representative Council, and subordinated it to an initially irremovable executive. Yet this reactionary framework produced an exceptionally distinguished legislature. Rappard attributes the paradox to an intellectual elite willing to serve despite its exclusion from government, and to Étienne Dumont’s parliamentary regulations. Preliminary discussion, committee scrutiny, and successive debates restored practical legislative authority that the constitutional text withheld. Political institutions emerge here as products of procedure, talent, and experience, not merely formal provisions. Rappard also distinguishes carefully between sparse early manuscript records and the fuller, publicly subsidized but unofficial Mémorial.

Sismondi’s career supplies the first study of liberalism becoming hostile to democracy. Rappard distinguishes militant opposition before approximately 1824, constructive collaboration through the aftermath of 1830, and increasingly conservative resistance until Sismondi’s death in 1842. His humanitarian commitments remained more stable than his institutional preferences. He defended poorer citizens’ customary rights, supported public improvements, and rejected explanations of poverty based exclusively on individual improvidence. Rappard recognizes his achievement in placing distribution and the social question before economists, while judging his theoretical explanations and remedies much less favorably.

The decisive tension appears in Sismondi’s 1831 discussion of suffrage:

Tous ont droit au bonheur, tous ont droit au perfectionnement.

English translation: Everyone has a right to happiness; everyone has a right to self-improvement.

Universal entitlement did not entail equal political authority. For Sismondi, a genuine national will required informed, independent judgment, not the numerical aggregation of votes. Participation educated citizens, but government also required competence: these purposes could pull in opposite directions. Property qualifications therefore appeared defensible as imperfect safeguards of intelligence and independence. After 1830, apprehension hardened into opposition to constituent assemblies, universal suffrage, and eventually institutions he had previously championed. Rappard presents his final defense of Geneva’s inherited nationality as moving but politically exhausted. He also qualifies Sismondi’s legislative stature: his interventions often expressed a cultivated observer’s sympathies rather than a responsible statesman’s prepared policy.

Rossi provides the contrasting example of effective political intelligence. An Italian Catholic refugee who rapidly won confidence in Protestant Geneva, he combined eloquence with sustained committee work, legal expertise, and close cooperation with Pierre-François Bellot. His parliamentary distinction exceeded the originality of his economics, which became a principal occupation only after his appointment in Paris. Rappard nevertheless rejects the claim that Rossi possessed no earlier economic knowledge.

Rossi’s liberalism operated through practical distinctions rather than rigid formulas. Under foreign pressure he defended temporary censorship; in other circumstances he upheld civil marriage, legislative publicity, and private rights. The construction and fortification debates show him defending administrative discretion where public safety required it, but judicial competence where acquired property rights were contested. His characteristic prudence was not simple immobility:

Mais d'être prudent à être timoré la distance est grande.

English translation: But there is a great distance between being prudent and being timid.

His support for revising the Federal Pact of 1815 similarly sought measured reform between revolutionary centralization and cantonal obstruction. Rappard concentrates on Rossi’s Genevan preparation and defense of that policy rather than repeating its better-known federal history. He also uses correspondence to explain Rossi’s departure for France: inadequate resources and family responsibilities mattered more than accusations of opportunism allowed. Geneva’s cultivated political society depended materially on private income.

Cherbuliez’s trajectory gives the inquiry its sharpest conclusion. Initially a utilitarian liberal, he supported wider suffrage, press freedom, the jury, and constitutional reform; his criticism of private property even attracted socialist interest. The revolution of 1841 transformed him into an uncompromising conservative. In the constituent assembly he sought electoral arrangements that would preserve educated urban influence and restrain democratic volatility. Subsequently, hostility to radicalism overwhelmed earlier commitments and made federal neutrality more attractive to him than cooperation with democratic opponents. A private remark exposes the reach of that aversion:

Tout ce qui se fait dans le canton de Vaud est empreint de démocratie et me répugne au plus haut degré.

English translation: Everything done in the canton of Vaud is imbued with democracy and repels me to the highest degree.

Rappard’s account is admiring of intellectual distinction but unsparing toward political blindness. Cherbuliez’s eventual rescue from exile and poverty by the radical-founded Federal Polytechnic supplies its culminating irony. The comparison ends with the incompatibility of impartial scholarship and partisan service: Sismondi largely subordinated politics to scholarship, Rossi scholarship to politics, while Cherbuliez suffered acutely from their conflict. Economics itself played surprisingly little direct legislative role. Nevertheless, these careers remain essential evidence for intellectual history, because scholarly thought cannot be fully understood apart from the activities, loyalties, and passions of its author.