[Pageheading: LETTER FROM THE KING OF PRUSSIA]
... I hear with delight and thankfulness that it has pleased your Majesty to agree to a Conference for regulating the dreadful Swiss quarrels.[24] I took the liberty to propose my beloved and truly amiable town of Neuchâtel as the place for the Conference, not only because its position in neutral territory and in Switzerland herself qualifies it above every other place for that purpose, but _particularly_ because this meeting of the representatives of the great Powers there would protect it and the courageous and faithful country of Neuchâtel from indignities, spoliation, and all the _horrors_ which oppress at this moment the unfortunate and far from courageous Fribourg. I am afraid that your Majesty has not a full appreciation of the people and the partisans who fill Switzerland with murders and the miseries of the most abominable Civil War. Your Majesty's happy realms have centuries ago passed through the "phase" of such horrors, and with you the state of parties has been (as one says here) grown in bottles,[25] under the glorious Constitution given by God and History, but _not_ "made"; but there, in Switzerland, a party is becoming victorious!!! which, notwithstanding the exercise of Christian charity, can only be called "_Gottlos und Rechtlos_" (without God and without right). For Germany, the saving of Switzerland from the hands of the Radicals is _simply_ a _vital question_. If they are victorious there, in Germany likewise torrents of blood will flow; I will answer for that. The murder of Kings, Priests, and Aristocrats is no empty sound with them, and Civil War in song, writing, word, and deed, is their watchword. "Toute charité bien entendue commence par soi-même." So they begin with their own country, true to this "Christian" (!) motto. If they are allowed to proceed, surely they _won't stop there_. Thousands of emigrated malefactors wait only for a sign (which their comrades and allies in Germany will not be backward in giving) to pour forth beyond the German frontier. In Germany the PEOPLE are just as little fond of them as they were in Switzerland, but the experience of Switzerland teaches us that that alone cannot stem their victorious march, if circumstances are favourable to them. The German people rely upon their Governments, and do nothing, but Governments are weakened by the modern Liberalism (the precursor of Radicalism, as the dying of chickens precedes the Cholera) and will have to take the consequences of their own negligence. Notwithstanding people and princes, that godless band will march through Germany, because, though small, it is strong through being united and determined. All this I have pondered in my head and heart (led, so to say, by the hand of History), and that has prompted me now to propose that the German Confederation (which _en parenthèse_ includes a population of more than forty millions) should appear as one of the great Powers of Europe at the settlement of the Swiss dispute, and should be admitted as such by the other great Powers. _Would your Majesty do justice, and give_ PROTECTION _to this idea_?...