With great unanimity efforts were made in this quarter to depreciate the value and the historical importance of the principle of neutrality. All possible means were used with this object, to touch the tenderest fibres of the national feelings. It would be a disgrace to us, it was said, to employ any other than military power in asserting our primeval freedom. We should thereby break off from our glorious history, and draw a black line over its brilliant warlike reminiscences. There were certainly neutral countries to be found, but their neutrality was not the result of their own desire, but proceeded from the great powers themselves. Should we then, they say further, be the first people to take such a step? Would it not be equivalent to begging peace of our neighbour, and declaring ourselves incapable before the whole world? The sensible thing would be to further develop and strengthen our army. The resolution was called a political demonstration of indigence; a disgusting nihilist plot, and so on. One member of the Riksdag proposed that it should be consigned to a committee charged with arranging for sending beasts abroad. Scoffs came thick as hail; and when it became known that the mover in the _Second Chamber_ was its author, the really guilty one, he was branded as a universal traitor,--just as the year before, when he raised a peaceable question about extended liberty of conscience. In my defence of the resolution in the Riksdag, I sought to anticipate all objections to it which were worthy of notice.[20] Amongst these I give special attention to the following five:-- 1. "The powers will not enter into the neutralization of Sweden. 2. "But if, contrary to expectation, they did, the safety of the country would gain nothing by it. 3. "On the contrary, our independence would be diminished by a guaranteed neutrality. 4. "Without lessening our military burdens for defence. 5. "The proposition is untimely." With regard to the first objection, _viz._, that the powers would not enter upon Sweden's neutralization, it appears to me that circumstances of great weight imply the contrary. We may be quite sure that the powers will first and foremost consult their own interests. Scandinavia may be certainly regarded as specially valuable as a base of military operations to any of the great Baltic and Western States. But it would be quite a matter of consideration, whether these powers would not gain more by the reciprocal security of being all alike cut off from this base, than by the doubtful advantage of being possibly able to reckon upon Scandinavia as an ally.