for the allied Catholic Cantons to break up the Confederation, it was not in their power to guide it or to hold it together.[922] He, therefore, proposed both to Prince Metternich and M. Guizot, that they should endeavour to persuade the Catholic leaders to dissolve their alliance.[923] This solution of the difficulty, as may be supposed, was not adopted by either of the statesmen to whom it was made. On the contrary, Metternich at this time was arranging to furnish the _Sonderbund_ with arms, and was seriously considering whether he should place the services of an Austrian general at its disposal, while M. Guizot was giving secret instructions for the despatch of warlike stores to Lucerne from the arsenal at Besançon.[924] Lord Minto, in his conversations with M. Ochsenbein, the President of the Federal Diet, was charged to counsel forbearance and moderation. "Her Majesty's government," wrote Palmerston, "as the sincere and disinterested friend of Switzerland, could not but exhort all parties to abate pretensions, however just they may be thought, and to yield somewhat of rights, however valid they may be considered, rather than begin an appeal to arms, the consequences of which it would be easier to lament than to foresee." He was not prepared to deny that the _Federal Pact_ might stand in need of revision. It was alleged, however, that the Diet proposed "to sweep away the separate sovereignty of the several Cantons in order to blend the whole of Switzerland into one single Republic." He must, therefore, remind the Swiss government that "the fundamental principle upon which the arrangements of the Treaty of Vienna, in regard to Switzerland, repose, is the separate sovereignty of the several Cantons." Any attempt to alter the basis of the political organization of the Republic would inevitably entail civil war and foreign intervention.[925]