Europe had followed with an attentive eye the events we have just related. Peoples were preoccupied with them, courts saw in them a source of serious anxiety. All, taking the Vienna congress as their point of view, desired a federative, neutral, and peaceable Switzerland. From this point of view the cause of the Sonderbund seemed to them to have justice on its side. But everywhere, owing to diversified interests, the language differed. “A fine country and a good people,” said King Louis Philippe, “but it is in a bad way. Let us keep from interfering. To hinder others so doing is to render them a great service.” Guizot nevertheless proposed to occupy himself in Swiss affairs in a conference to be held at Paris or in London, but he was unsuccessful. Once Austrian troops on the one hand, French on the other, drew near Switzerland, but they were speedily recalled to their cantonments. Metternich would willingly have taken the lead, had he not known that France could not leave Austria to interfere alone. Thenceforth, of the two powers, one contented itself with secretly aiding the Sonderbund by relays of arms and money, the other with lavishing encouragements on the seven cantons through its ambassador. Prussia hesitated, recommending Neuchâtel prudence. Czar Nicholas could not understand an intervention unless the powers had sixty thousand men behind them. Great Britain would not interfere at all. Under the ministry of Lord Palmerston, a young statesman named Peel, son of the illustrious minister of that name, joined the Bear Club at Bern where radicals met. At Rome, the French ambassador, Rossi, an ancient deputy of the Geneva diet, was charged to solicit Pius IX to recall the Jesuits from Lucerne. It was thought both in London and Paris that the best means of restoring peace to Switzerland was to take from the radicals their principal grievance and their flag. The holy father contented himself with letting the Swiss know that he would remain passive in the strife (_passive se habere decrevit_). Switzerland, under these circumstances, was persuaded that the moment had come frankly to declare to Europe her intention of being sole interpreter of her Pact of Alliance; to have done with the questions that agitated her; and to constitute herself on the basis of an enlarged and equitable democracy, which would soon see her the first on the road towards which all European peoples were proceeding. She knew the states which lavished advice on her to be torn by a revolutionary spirit and incapable of uniting against her in a common resolution. It was under the influence of this thought that Ochsenbein opened the confederation diet on the 5th of July, 1847.