ABSTRACT
With the promulgation of the Acts of Neutrality, Switzerland had laid down her programme of foreign policy. That the rulers of the Confederation had fully grasped the aims of Swiss foreign policy can be seen in the President’s speech at the opening of the Diet in 1816. Any possible protectorate on the part of the great Powers was then finally repudiated, a step which seemed the more necessary in that Switzerland had been confronted with the great question of whether she was going to join the great international security treaty of the Holy Alliance. It is highly characteristic that the objections to joining it were loudest in England and Switzerland. In both countries it ran counter to tradition to join a union embracing the whole of Europe, and hence to bind foreign policy for an indefinite period. Great Britain avoided such engagements because they seemed to encroach on its traditional policy of splendid isolation, Switzerland because she feared it would imply acceptance of far-reaching commitments and hence a limitation of her traditional neutrality. It was only when Switzerland had received the assurance that she could make a reservation in favour of her neutrality that, in 1817, she declared her readiness to join in extremely cautious and reserved terms. For the statesmen of Switzerland had no intention of yielding up, for a mess of pottage, the jewel of neutrality so lately won. They were not going to barter their absolute for a differential neutrality.
