ABSTRACT
While Switzerland was imagining that she could now devote her entire attention to urgent economic questions, her neutrality was suddenly and gravely threatened, for reasons of home and foreign policy, by Prussia, now one of the leading European Powers. The occasion arose from the very curious legal and political relation which had existed between the canton of Neuchatel and the Confederation since 1815. At that time the canton had been incorporated in the Confederation as an equal member, yet had remained bound to the Prussian monarchy. A hybrid relation of such a kind could remain harmless as long as conditions in Europe and the Confederation were undisturbed. The rise of the democratic movement, however, went hand in hand with the tendency to break away from Prussia. When the February revolution of 1848 broke out in France, the democrats of Neuchatel were the first to respond. They proclaimed a republic and were adopted as a full member of the new Confederation. Frederick William IV of Prussia, however, did not abandon his principality. His adherents rose in counter-revolution in September, 1856, but were arrested. The king of Prussia demanded their liberation, which the Federal Council only promised on condition that Frederick William first surrendered all claims to Neuchatel.
