The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes inevitably brought a fresh flood of immigrants--1,450 in a single week, 800 in a single day--but Geneva was by no means disposed to welcome them so hospitably as in the time of M. de Bèze. Seventy years of prosperity had sapped some of the primitive virtues of the people; they had conceived a dread of foreign competition, and of the pauper alien, even though the pauper alien was an exile for conscience’ sake. Their disposition was rather to seek excuses for passing the pauper aliens on, and make them chargeable upon the hospitality of their Swiss allies, or of the Germans or the Dutch. To some extent they succeeded; but a considerable number of the immigrants settled in the town in spite of the political disabilities imposed upon them, and soon became a source of trouble. All through the eighteenth century--or at all events from 1707 until 1794--there was intermittent political turmoil. A detailed account of the agitations and disturbances hardly falls within the scope of such a work as the present; but it may be as well to sum them up, and describe their general character. CHAPTER XIII REVOLUTIONS The Transvaal troubles which culminated in the South African War may furnish an analogy which will help to make the situation clear; the story being, in fact, a long story of acrimonious relations between Burghers and Uitlanders. The Burghers were, in the main, the descendants of the families already possessed of the rights of citizenship in the half-century following the Reformation; the Uitlanders were the descendants of immigrants who had settled in the city since that period. The Burghers enjoyed political rights, and the Uitlanders did not; the gulf between the two classes was only occasionally passed by an exceptional Uitlander whom the Burghers considered ‘fit.’ By degrees, however, the Uitlanders became more numerous than the Burghers, and a form of government which had been a democracy became an oligarchy, in which many of the most intelligent and reputable citizens had no voice.