At the beginning of 1535 the opposition to Reform was still vigorous in that city, whose inhabitants were discussing the important question whether liberty was a good or an evil? The partisans of the pope and Savoy tried to demonstrate to such of the citizens as were known to be in favor of civil liberty and religious reform, that their condition would go from bad to worse, if they did not accept the sovereignty of their bishop, the protectorate of a neighboring prince, and the supremacy of the pope—three masters for one. The fruits of that independence with which they were so captivated, would be (they said) agitation, disorder, violence, and misery. The feudal party was sincerely convinced that the path of liberty is rugged and dangerous; that he who follows it stumbles, falls, and is ruined; and that whether a nation be great or small, it needs an absolute and energetic power to keep it in order. They advised the Genevese to lay aside their fine theories, their old parchments, and their ancient franchises, and to take a master if they desired to see peace, wealth, pleasure, and prosperity abound within their walls. The citizens rejected this advice. They believed that as the liberties they possessed came from their fathers, they ought not to rob their children of them. They knew that independence had dangers, privations, and troubles to which they must submit. But life itself is not without them, and we should not think that a reason for making away with it. If God has enriched man with noble faculties, it is not that he may mutilate or stifle them, but develop, regulate, and increase them. No man worthy of the name voluntarily accepts laws in the making of which he has had no share. Cæsarism, violence, and secret societies cannot be substituted in a nation for independence, justice, and publicity. Despotism dwarfs a man, liberty strengthens him. To take it away in order to prevent abuses, is to change the work and plan of the Creator. And yet everything seemed to indicate that liberty and reform were about to be destroyed in Geneva. An assembly of the Swiss Cantons held, as we have seen, at Lucerne on the 1st of January, 1535, had been occupied about Geneva; and Berne, the only canton that wished well to the Genevese, had consented that the bishop and the duke should be reinstated in the rights which they pretended to possess, provided religion remained free; for, the Bernese had added, 'faith is the gift of God.' But the envoys of Savoy had demanded the complete and unconditional recognition of the absolute authority of the duke and the bishop, which alone (they affirmed) could put an end to all hatred and effusion of blood.[473] The diet had decided on this, so that the reformation and independence of Geneva were about to be annihilated by the Swiss themselves. [Sidenote: HUGUENOT MAGISTRATES ELECTED.]