December
49. The Closing of the German Frontier. - The Empire. - The Council of War
Berne, December 1. Thank God! At last it appears that the official news of the closing of the German frontier has reached the Federal Council and we shall now know what the position is. It was high time, considering how long their worships in the Central Authority have been taunting us Swiss and making fools of us. The Federal Council is said to have decided not to put even a single company of Swiss troops in the field against the mighty formation of 50,000 imperial troops. The imperial authorities can judge from this how much Switzerland fears their decisions, precautionary measures, threats and troop formations. Of course, the "Empire" does not have the same military system as Switzerland, which has no standing army at all but within a week can raise 150,000 trained and battle-ready troops — that is twice as many as the classical land of the military parade with its celebrated Scharnhorstian system of military organisation.
Even though the conflicting rumours about the closing of the frontier are threatening to dry up as a source of merriment for the Swiss, we can still rely on the "Empire" for something to laugh at. Yesterday the German and especially the Frankfurt imperial newspapers presented us in all seriousness with yet another fat canard: the recent invasion of Lörrach by refugees — or rather bandits — and the battle in which four real live Badenese dragoons succumbed! There is no need to tell you that the whole ridiculous story, which provoked the greatest hilarity here, is pure mystifica-tion. However, I can tell you that the Empire citizens' fear of the couple of volunteers who may still be prowling about on the border makes a hilarious impression on every Swiss. The newly coined phrase, "Scared as six Empire citizens by one volunteer", has permanently entered the language. The latest article in the Frankfurter Oberpostamts-Zeitung about the continuing subversive activities of the refugees along the frontier has greatly helped to keep up the laughter at the expense of the Empire.[3] What important revelations Herr Schmerling's spies have made! Metternichb is in Muttenz and has been seen in Birsfeld, where Neff too is residing and writing and receiving many letters. Siegel and Katzenmaier are staying in Emmishofen — and they say the Empire need not tremble! Even more terrifying, the Swiss Government tolerates the presence in Dornach, close to the German frontier, of—"a few canteen-keeper stragglers from Lörrach and the vicinity" !!! In addition to that, "it is generally believed" that fresh "predatory incursions" would have taken place if... etc., etc. And was there not sniping across the Rhine from Gross-Laufenburg? When, how and by whom the imperial newspaper has of course no idea. In short, if the Empire is in such a bad state that it shakes to its foundations just because Metternich is seen in Birsfeld and a few canteen-keeper stragglers are wasting away in Dornach, Switzerland will certainly have no part in propping up such a rotten building! What is more, these confused reports strung together by Empire mouchardsc contradict themselves in every line: for example, Metternich is said to be the only refugee in Muttenz, and yet three lines further on "there are reports from Muttenz that they (!!) are once more arming there"!! "They" — means Metternich, all on his own! And it is for this — for making them the laughing-stock of the whole world with such clumsy contradictions — that the imperial authorities pay their mouchards in Switzerland! Trema, Bisanzio,d Metternich has been seen in Birsfeld and "several canteen-keeper stragglers" in Dornach have sworn your destruction!
But let us leave the Empire aside. The Federal Council of War has been dissolved pro forma, but immediately reconstituted as a military commission, Herr Ochsenbein, as head of the Federal War Department, taking over as chairman. The Berner Zeitung sharply criticises this reconstitution or retention of the most cumbersome and costly item of the old Federal Government. In its opinion, the Military Council has never achieved anything but the appointment of a few aristocratic officers and the birth, after protracted labour pains, of federal drill regulations [Kamaschenreglement]. These regulations proved so expensive that for the same price the whole army might have been equipped with puttees [Kamaschen] and boots. For the rest, the Military Council restricted itself to drawing its daily allowance of sixteen francs per head and because of all the difficulties and hair-splitting has long since given up all hope of ever achieving anything.
Besides the duel between Luvini and Berg, there were prospects of a second one — between Pioda and Michel from Graubünden — as a result of the Tessin debate in the National Council. Colonel Michel had expressed himself in an unbecoming manner and ended up angrily declaring Pioda to be a downright liar. Pioda answered extremely calmly and properly, but afterwards called the old federal war-horse to account. Thereupon Michel made statements that gave complete satisfaction to Pioda and his friends and with that the affair was allowed to rest.
Written by Engels on December 1, 1848
50. The Federal Council and the Foreign Ambassadors. - The Federal Council in Tessin. - Centralisation of Posts. - German Army Commander's Apology
Berne, December 2. Since announcing the constitution of the new federal authorities and the simultaneous expiry of the 1815 treaty,[125] the Federal Council has already received the assurance from all the foreign ambassadors that they believed they could promise in advance their governments' recognition of the new authorities and the new Constitution. Only the British ambassador, Master[3] Peel, made no mention of recognition, and merely stated tersely that he had communicated the announcement to his Government. As Russia has no representative here, no statement has, of course, come from that power.
The Federal Council has appointed as its representatives in Tessin Colonel Stehlin from Basle and Colonel Briatte from Waadt, both of them members, and the latter President, of the Council of States. The radical Briatte will, it is hoped, act differently from Herr Escher and Herr Munzinger.[126] Incidentally, all Italian refugees of military age have been removed from Tessin into the interior of Switzerland.
Further, the Federal Council has started to apply the law on the centralisation of posts. Herr Laroche-Stehelin from Basle has been appointed acting Postmaster-General of Switzerland, and two commissions have been set up, the first to assess the materials to be taken over from the cantons and private individuals, the second to draft a law on the organisation of the Swiss posts.
The German army commander concerned has made the appropriate apology in a letter to the Federal Council(1); he declares himself ready to give the satisfaction required, and announces that those concerned have already been handed over for punishment.
Written by Engels on December 2, 1848
51. Swiss Evidence of the Austrian Army's Heroic Deeds in Vienna
Cologne, December 5. While the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung and other bought newspapers exalt a Windischgrätz and a Jellachich to heaven for restoring law and order, crown the valiant Austrian troops with laurels and never tire of recounting the horrors of the democratic reign of terror, a new source of information has suddenly appeared in the Swiss press to serve the chronicling of the latest Viennese events. This source consists of the Swiss citizens who with difficulty and in mortal danger, and after maltreatment, escaped from the myrmidons of "order", and having returned to their homeland, publish their experiences during the "days of terror" and the "war of order". And indeed not raging "proletarians", but big capitalists, people who owned enormous factories in Vienna, most trustworthy bourgeois of conservative convic-tions — and a Swiss conservative is well known to be the equivalent of a German "wailer" [127] raised to the second power — and their reports are not appearing in radical scandal sheets but in the most serious conservative newspapers. We have taken the following details from one such description in the Basler Intelligenzblatt:
xlerr Specker of St. Gallen was director of a big machine factory which stood quite isolated on the Tabor, the extreme customs boundary of Vienna. He, like his workers and foremen, all of them Swiss, had neither taken part in the fighting, nor had weapons in the house. Only 15 workers had remained on duty with the factory's fire-pump set up in the yard. At the approach of the military, General Wyss, patrician of Berne and chief of the Austrian General Staff, gave Herr Specker his word of honour that nothing would happen to his building if he had no weapons and if no shots were fired from the factory. The house was searched by the troops and nothing was found. In spite of this another detachment of riflemen asserted that shots had been fired from the house (very understand-ably, as they had permission to loot any house from which shots were fired). The "Swiss dogs", who had trusted the word of their compatriot General Wyss so implicitly that they had even left their wives and children in the factory, were most brutally mishandled by these soldiers, and only saved by the intervention of another officer. The latter took them to the guardroom. A neighbour pointed at one of the workers passing by and said: "He, too, was at the dismantling of the Tabor bridge." Immediately, without being allowed to say a word, the worker was put up against a wall and shot. In the guardroom guns were pointed at the "Swiss dogs" and only a loaded pistol brought out by the officer held the soldiers back. Director Specker was stood up against the wall, three soldiers set on him, one cocked his gun, put the barrel to Specker's mouth and fiddled about with the trigger. One of the officers took out his watch and said: "You have a quarter of an hour, Swiss dog, then you'll be shot, so say your prayers!" Before the time was up, the officer who had previously saved them returned, and took him to General Wyss, who reproached him for "breaking his word"! The general obstinately maintained that shots had been fired from the factory, although Herr Specker proved that this was physically impossible. At last he obtained a pass for himself and his people to Florisdorf. On returning to the factory they found everything in wrack and ruin and looted bare. Herr Specker's family had been chased around the house with rifle-shots; the book-keeper, a Swiss, riddled with bullets, rolled in his death throes in the garden and anyone who approached him was shot at, so that the unfortunate man was left till late at night to lie there and die. His name was Kunz. In the end the survivors succeeded in getting away safely to Florisdorf.
The machine manufacturer Bollinger, also a Swiss, who made himself famous by his work on the spire of St. Stephen's, succeeded with the help of fire-pumps in protecting his factory from being burned down. But here too the Austrians broke in under the false pretence that shots had been fired from the factory, and they plundered and demolished the whole building, set fire to it, and stabbed Bollinger's brother to death as he tried to escape from the flames. Another Swiss resident in Vienna, Madame Bodener, had her child shot in her arms by the Croats.
The report holds out prospects of still further information about the heroic deeds of the brave Austrian army as soon as other Swiss citizens return. At the same time, it depicts in most moving terms the assurance and calm of the armed proletarians, and the courteousness and decency with which the Swiss were treated during the so-called reign of terror of the Vienna proletariat and students.
We repeat: the originators of these reports are not radicals, not proletarians and malcontents, but big capitalists and true full-blooded Swiss aristocrats. Will the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung not let its various correspondents Zp , MW, t$, A > and others in Vienna collect information as to whether this is not word for word true? We have given names, locality, and all other details as exactly as the paper can wish. But it will of course be wary.
Written by Engels on December 5, 1848
52. The French Working Class and the Presidential Elections
Paris. Raspail or Ledru-Rollin? Socialist or Montagnard? That is the question which is now splitting the party of the red republic into two hostile camps.[129]
What is this dispute really all about? Ask the journals of the Montagnards, the Réforme, the Révolution, and they will tell you that they themselves cannot make it out; that the socialists have drawn up the same programme,[2] word for word, as the Mountain,(1) a programme of permanent revolution, of progressive taxes and death duties, and of organisation of labour; that there is no dispute on principles, and that the whole untimely scandal has been instigated by a few jealous and ambitious men who are deceiving the "religion and the good faith" of the people and out of egotism casting suspicion on the men of the people's party.
Ask the journal of the socialists, the Peuple, and you will be answered with bitter expletives about the ignorance and empty-headedness of the Montagnards, with endless legal, moral and economic treatises, and finally with the mysterious hint that at bottom it is all about Citizen Proudhon's new panacea, which they say is going to outdo the old socialist phrases of Louis Blanc's school.(2) Finally, ask the socialist workers, and they will answer you shortly: Ce sont des bourgeois, les montagnards.[3]
Once again, the only ones who hit the nail on the head are the workers. They will have nothing to do with the Mountain because the Mountain consists only of bourgeois.
The socialist-democratic party, even before February, consisted of two different factions; first, of the spokesmen, deputies, writers, lawyers etc., with their not inconsiderable train of petty bourgeois who formed the party of the Réforme proper; secondly, of the mass of Paris workers, who were not at all unconditional followers of the former, but, on the contrary, were very distrustful allies, and adhered more closely to them or moved farther away from them, according to whether the Réforme people acted with more resolution or with more vacillation. In the last months of the monarchy the Réforme acted with great resolution in consequence of its polemic with the National, and the relationship between it and the workers was very close.
The Réforme people therefore also entered the Provisional Government as representatives of the proletariat.
There is no need to go into details here about how they were in the minority in the Provisional Government and hence, incapable of asserting the workers' interests, only served the pure republicans[130] to put off the workers until the pure republicans had re-organised public power, which was now their power over against the workers; how Ledru-Rollin, the leader of the Réforme party, was persuaded by Lamartine's phrases of self-sacrifice and by the lure of power to enter the Executive Commission[131]; how he thereby split and weakened the revolutionary party, partially putting it at the disposal of the Government, and so caused the failure of the insurrections of May and June, nay, even fought against them himself. The facts are still too fresh in the memory.
Enough said; after the June insurrection, after the overthrow of the Executive Commission and the rise of the pure republicans to exclusive domination[132] in the person of Cavaignac, the party of the
Réforme, of the democratic-socialist petty bourgeoisie, lost all illusions about the development of the Republic. It was pushed into opposition, it was free again, acted again as opposition and resumed its old connections with the workers.
As long as no important questions were raised, as long as it was only a question of exposing the cowardly, treacherous and reactionary policy of Cavaignac, so long the workers could put up with being represented in the press by the Réforme and the Révolution démocratique et sociale. The Vraie République and the real working-class papers had anyway already been suppressed by the state of siege, by tendentious trials and surety payments. They could equally well put up with being represented in the National Assembly by the Mountain. Raspail, Barbes and Albert were under arrest, Louis Blanc and Caussidière had had to flee. The clubs were in part closed, in part under strict supervision, and the old laws against freedom of speech continued and still continue in operation. Enough examples of how these laws were used against the workers were given in the newspapers every day. The workers, faced with the impossibility of having their own representatives speak, had again to be content with those who had represented them before February, with the radical petty bourgeois and their spokesmen.
Now the question of the Presidency arises. There are three candidates: Cavaignac, Louis Napoleon and Ledru-Rollin. For the workers Cavaignac was out of the question. The man who shot them down in June with grape-shot and incendiary rockets could only count on their hatred. Louis Bonaparte? They could only vote for him out of irony, to raise him by the ballot today and overthrow him again by force of arms tomorrow, and with him the honourable, "pure" bourgeois republic. And finally, Ledru-Rollin, who recom-mended himself to the workers as the only red, socialist-democratic candidate.
Really, after the experiences of the Provisional Government, of May 15 and June 24, could the workers be expected once again to give a vote of confidence to the radical petty bourgeoisie and Ledru-Rollin? To the same people who on February 25, when the armed proletariat ruled Paris, when they could have obtained everything, had only lofty, reassuring phrasés instead of revolutionary action, only promises and vain hopes instead of quick and decisive measures, only the flag, the fine phrases and the styles of 1793, instead of the energy of 1793? To the same people who shouted with Lamartine and Marrast: First and foremost the bourgeois must be reassured, and who in doing so forgot to carry on the revolution? To the same people who on May 15 were undecided and on June 23 had artillery fetched from Vincennes and battalions from Orléans and Bourges?
And yet, the people might have voted for Ledru-Rollin so as not to split the votes. But then came his speech of November 25 against Cavaignac in which he once again took the side of the victors, reproached Cavaignac for not having acted with sufficient energy against the revolution, for not having had more battalions in readiness against the workers.
This speech deprived Ledru-Rollin completely of all credit with the workers. Even now, after five months, after having had to suffer all the consequences of the June battle so to speak on his own body, even now he still sides with the victors against the vanquished, he is proud of having demanded more battalions against the insurgents than Cavaignac could supply!
And the man who considers the June fighters were not vanquished quickly enough wants to be the head of the party which has entered upon the heritage of the June martyrs?
After that speech the candidature of Ledru-Rollin was lost for the Paris workers. The opposing candidature of Raspail, already put forward earlier and already having earlier enjoyed the sympathy of the workers, was victorious in Paris. If the ballot papers of Paris had decided, Raspail would now be President of the Republic.
The workers know very well that Ledru-Rollin is not yet played out, that he still can and will render great service to the radical party. But he has forfeited the confidence of the workers. For his weakness, his petty vanity, his dependence on high-sounding phrases, through which even Lamartine mastered him, they, the workers, have had to suffer. No service he can render will make them forget that. The workers will always know that when Ledru-Rollin becomes energetic again, his energy will only be that of the armed workers standing behind him and driving him on.
By giving Ledru-Rollin a no-confidence vote, the workers also gave a no-confidence vote to the whole of the radical petty bourgeoisie. The indecision, the dependence on the traditional phrases of devourment* etc., the forgetting of revolutionary action over revolutionary reminiscences, are all qualities which Ledru-Rollin shares with the class he represents.
The radical petty bourgeois are only socialistic because they clearly see before their eyes their ruin, their transition into the proletariat. They are enthusiastic for the organisation of labour and revolution in the relationship between capital and labour not as petty bourgeois, as possessors of a little capital, but as future proletarians. Give them political domination, and they will soon forget the organisation of labour. Political domination gives them, of course, at least in the intoxication of the first moment, the prospect of the acquisition of capital, of salvation from threatening ruin. Only when the armed proletarians stand behind them with bayonets at the ready, only then
Devotedness.—Ed.
will they remember their allies of yesterday. That is how they acted in February and March, and Ledru-Rollin, as their leader, was the first to act like that. If they are now disappointed, does that alter the workers' attitude to them? If they come back in sackcloth and ashes, does that entitle them to demand that the workers now, under quite different circumstances, shall fall into the trap again?
By voting not for Ledru-Rollin but for Raspail, the workers give them to understand that they will not do so, that they know how they stand in relation to the radical petty bourgeoisie.
But Raspail — what services has Raspail rendered the workers? How can he be placed in opposition to Ledru-Rollin as a socialist par excellence?
The people know full well that Raspail is no official socialist, no system-maker by profession. The people want none of the official socialists and system-makers, they are fed up with them. Otherwise, Citizen Proudhon would be their candidate, and not the hot-blooded Raspail.
But the people have a good memory and are not nearly so ungrateful as it pleases certain unappreciated reactionary celebrities, in their modesty, to maintain. The people still remember very well that Raspail was the first to reproach the Provisional Government for its inactivity, for its preoccupation with mere republican stuff and nonsense. The people have not yet forgotten the Ami du Peuple, par le citoyen* Raspail, and since Raspail was the first to have the courage — and it did require courage — to speak out in revolutionary fashion against the Provisional Government, and since Raspail represents not any particular socialist couleur, but only the social revolution, the people of Paris vote for Raspail.
It is not at all a question of a few petty measures solemnly proclaimed in the manifesto of the Mountain as the salvation of the world. It is a question of the social revolution which will give the French people something very different from these in-coherent, already stale phrases. It is a question of the energy to carry through this revolution. It is a question whether the petty bourgeoisie will have this energy, after it already once proved powerless. And the proletariat of Paris, by voting for Raspail, replies "Nor Hence the amazement of the Réforme and the Révolution that one can accept their phrases and yet not vote for Ledru-Rollin, although he proclaims these phrases. These worthy papers, which think of themselves as working-class papers and yet are now more than ever before papers of the petty bourgeoisie, cannot, of course, realise that the same demand which on the lips of the workers is revolutionary, is on their lips a mere phrase. Otherwise they would not have their own illusions.
And Citizen Proudhon and his Peuple? More of them tomorrow.
Written by Engels at the beginning of December 1848
53. Proudhon
Paris. Yesterday we spoke of the Montagnards and the socialists, of the candidatures of Ledru-Rollin and of Raspail, of the Réforme and the Peuple of Citizen Proudhon. We promised to return to Proudhon.
Who is Citizen Proudhon? Citizen Proudhon is a peasant from the Franche-Comté who has done a variety of jobs and engaged in a variety of studies. He first drew public attention to himself by a pamphlet published in 1842: What Is Property?[3] The reply was: "Property is theft."
The surprising repartee startled the French. The Government of Louis Philippe, the austere Guizot, who has no sense of humour, was narrow-minded enough to take Proudhon to court. But in vain. In the case of such a piquant paradox any French jury can be relied on for acquittal. And so it came to pass. The Government disgraced itself and Proudhon became a famous man.
As to the book itself, it corresponded throughout to the above résumé. Every chapter was summed up in a curious paradox in a manner which is new to the French.
For the rest, it contained partly legal and moral, partly economic and moral treatises, each of which sought to prove that property amounts to a contradiction. As to the legal points, these can be admitted, inasmuch as nothing is easier than to prove that the whole of jurisprudence amounts to nothing but contradictions. As to the economic treatises, they contain little that is new, and what is new in them is based on wrong calculations. The rule of three is everywhere most disgracefully mishandled.
P.-J. Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la propriété? — Ed.
The French, however, were unable to cope with the book. For the jurists it was too economistic, for the economists too legalistic and for both too moralistic. Après tout, c'est un ouvrage remarquable,(1) they said finally.
But Proudhon was hankering after greater triumphs. After various long-forgotten minor writings, there appeared at last in 1846 his Philosophie de la misère, in two enormous tomes. In this work, which was to establish his fame for ever, Proudhon applied a badly mishandled Hegelian philosophical method to a curiously misunder-stood political economy and sought by all kinds of transcendental leaps to found a new socialist system of a free association of workers. This system was so new that in England, under the name of Equitable Labour Exchange Bazaars or Offices,[133] it had already gone bankrupt ten times ten years earlier in ten different towns.
This ponderous, pseudo-learned, bulky work, in which eventually not only all previous economists but all previous socialists too were told the rudest things, made absolutely no impression on the easy-going French. This way of speaking and reasoning was new to them and much less to their taste than the curious paradoxes of Proudhon's earlier work. Similar paradoxes were not lacking here either, it is true (as when Proudhon declared himself quite seriously a "personal enemy of Jehovah"*[5]), but they were, so to speak, buried under the allegedly dialectical lumber. The French again said: C'est un ouvrage remarquable, and put it aside. In Germany, the work was of course received with great reverence.
Marx at the time issued a pamphlet in reply, which was as witty as it was thorough (Misère de la philosophie. Réponse à la Philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon. Par Karl Marx, Bruxelles et Paris, 1847), and which in thought and language is a thousand times more French than Proudhon's pretentious monstrosity.
As to the real content of Proudhon's two works in criticism of the existing social relationships, one can, after reading them both, say with a clear conscience that it amounts to zero.
As to his proposals for social reforms, they have, as already mentioned, the advantage of having been brilliantly proved in England a long time ago by multiple bankruptcy.
That was Proudhon before the revolution. While he was still engaged in efforts to bring out a daily newspaper, Le Représentant du Peuple, without capital but by means of a calculation unequalled in its contempt for the rule of three, the Paris workers be-stirred themselves, chased out Louis Philippe and founded the Republic.
Proudhon first became a "citizen" by virtue of the Republic; afterwards by virtue of the Paris workers' vote, given on the strength of his honest socialist name, he became a representative of the people.
So the revolution flung Citizen Proudhon out of theory into practice, out of his sulking corner into the forum. How did this obstinate, high-handed, self-taught man, who treats all previous authorities — jurists, scholars, economists and socialists — with equal contempt, who declares all previous history to be drivel and introduced himself, so to speak, as the new Messiah; how did he behave now that he himself was to help make history?
We must say to his credit that he began by taking his seat on the extreme Left, among the same socialists, and voting with the same socialists whom he so deeply despised and had so vehemently attacked as ignorant, arrogant dolts.
It is put about, of course, that in the party meetings of the Mountain he renewed his old violent attacks on his former opponents with fresh vehemence, that he declared them one and all to be ignoramuses and phrase-mongers who did not understand the ABC of what they were talking about.
We readily believe it. We even readily believe that the economic paradoxes which Proudhon uttered with all the dry passion and confidence of a doctrinaire caused no small embarrassment to Messieurs les Montagnards. Very few among them are theoreticians of economics and they rely more or less on little Louis Blanc; and little Louis Blanc, though a much more significant brain than the infallible Proudhon, is all the same too intuitive a nature to be able to cope with his learned economic pretensions, odd transcendence and seemingly mathematical logic. Moreover, Louis Blanc soon had to flee, and his flock, helpless in the field of economics, remained unprotected, exposed to the merciless claws of the wolf Proudhon.
We need hardly repeat that in spite of all these triumphs Proudhon is still an extremely weak economist. Only his weakness does not happen to lie within the grasp of the mass of French socialists.
Proudhon won the greatest triumph of his life on the rostrum of the National Assembly. On one occasion, I do not remember which, he took the floor and angered the bourgeois of the Assembly for an hour and a half with an endless string of truly Proudhonist paradoxes, each crazier than the other, but all calculated to shock the listeners most rudely in their dearest and most sacred feelings. And all this was delivered with his dry academic indifference, in a toneless, academic Franche-Comté dialect, in the driest, most imperturbable style in the world — the effect, the St. Vitus's dance of the enraged bourgeois, was not at all bad.[134]
But this was the highlight of Proudhon's public activity. In the meantime he continued to belabour the workers, both through the Représentant du Peuple—which, after bitter experiences with the rule of three, had gradually materialised and soon was transformed into the Peuple pure and simple — as well as in the clubs, in favour of his theory of happiness for all. He was not without success. On ne le comprend pas, the workers said, mais c'est un homme remarquable.[3]
Written by Engels at the beginning of December 1848
54. Herr Raumer Is Still Alive
Cologne, December 6. Recently we mentioned the addresses of loyalty sent by the Halle and Berlin professors to the King.3 Today we have to announce that Herr von Raumer, imperial envoy in partibus,h who at the present time is to be found in the antechambers of Bastide and Cavaignac, has fully joined in the professors' ignominy by stating his agreement with those addresses. As a matter of fact, nothing else was to be expected of an imperial envoy like Herr Raumer. But there seems to be yet another reason for his statement. For months past Herr Raumer has been entirely forgotten in Germany. In his longing to be rescued somehow from that oblivion, he eagerly seized the opportunity offered him by his fellow bonzes in Berlin and promptly published the above-mentioned statement. This production of Raumer's is to be found in the latest issue of the Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger."
Written by Marx on December 6, 1848
55. Second Stage of the Counter-Revolution
Cologne, December 6. The counter-revolution has reached its second stage. The National Assembly has been dissolved. An imposed Constitution has been proclaimed by the "grace of the All-Highest" without more ado.[135]
All the hypocrisy over the "agreement"[136] which has been going on since May has been stripped of its last mask.
The March revolution is declared null and void and royal power "by the grace of God" celebrates its triumph.
The camarilla, the junkers, the bureaucracy, and the entire reaction, with and without uniform, are jubilant because the stupid people is at last to be driven back into the stall of the "Christian-Germanic" state.
Written by Marx on December 6, 1848
56. The Coup d’État of the Counter-Revolution
Cologne, December 7. The National Assembly has been dissolved. The representatives of the people have been dispersed "by the grace of God".
The reason given by the Government for this act of violence adds bitter contempt to the coup d'état carried through 'with such insolence.[138]
The National Assembly now reaps the fruits of its chronic weakness and cowardice. For months it allowed the conspiracy against the people to carry on its work unmolested, to grow strong and powerful, and hence has now become its first victim.
The people, too, is now suffering for its sins, committed out of magnanimity, or rather stupidity, in March and again in April and May, and finally through so-called passive resistance. It has now been taught a lesson which it will probably put to profit. Its next victory will put an end to "agreement" and to all other phrases and hypocrisies.
Written by Marx on December 7, 1848
57. Measures Concerning the German Refugees
Berne, December 5. The Federal Council has now taken measures to deal with the German refugees, partly in order to deprive the imperial authority of the pretext for hostile measures, partly to show its impartiality towards Tessin and to carry through in practice also in the northern cantons the triumph of the policy of strict neutrality which 'was won in the Tessin debate.[3] The policy of Furrer-Munzinger-Ochsenbein is being pursued everywhere. A circular of the Federal Council addressed to the border cantons concerned repeats the basic principles expressed by the Vorort, and again insists on the internment of all refugees who took part in the Struve campaign[139]; and in order to give weight to this demand the President of the Federal Assembly, Dr. Steiger, already left yesterday as representative of the Confederation to visit the northern cantons.
There can be no objection to the measure in itself. Nobody will blame Switzerland for not wanting to get involved in unpleasantness because of a few volunteer insurgents who are thirsting for adventure and heartily bored in their exile. But why then the previous bold talk against Germany, the positive assurance that the Swiss had done their duty, when it is now indirectly admitted that they did not do it, when they are only now seeking to satisfy themselves how far the cantons have obeyed the orders of the
Vorort?—It is not to be denied that this decision of the Federal Council, an act of justice towards Tessin, is a complete démenti of the last official act of the Vorort, and though the Note(1) received unanimous applause, this beginning of disavowal in the Note will cause little joy.
Nothing has been heard about the closing of the German frontier, except that the whole of Swabia is protesting against it. Whether it will take place or not is again left to God to decide. In any case, the Federal Council has decided for the present not to range any troops opposite the imperial division.
The Federal Military Council has now concluded its current business and has been definitely disbanded. In its place there will be a War Office which Ochsenbein, as head of the Military Department, will organise and direct.
The new Spanish ambassador, Herr Zayas, who arrived here a few days ago with credentials for the Vorort, has now presented these to the Vice-President of the Federal Council, Herr Druey, and thereby made immediate contact with the new authorities.
The press is much incensed over the treatment of the Swiss in Vienna, of which I recently gave you some examples.(2) It insists on the Federal Council demanding satisfaction and compensation from Austria. In particular the behaviour of the Bernese General Wyss arouses general indignation here. This general's brother is a master builder here in Berne.
Written by Engels on December 5, 1848
58. The National Council
[Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 165, December 10, 1848]
, Berne, December 6. Who in this period of European storms is concerned about Switzerland? Certainly almost no one apart from the imperial authority, which suspects there is a volunteer insurgent lying in ambush behind every bush on the left bank of the Rhine from Constance to Basle. And yet Switzerland is an important neighbour for us. Today constitutional Belgium is the official model state,(1) but who in these stormy days will guarantee us that tomorrow a republican Switzerland will not be an official model state? Already I know more than one farouche(2) republican who wishes nothing more than to transfer the Swiss political system with its large and small councils — federal, national, council of states, and other councils— across the Rhine, i. e. to transform Germany into a large-scale Switzerland, and then lead a calm and peaceful life in all godliness and honour as a member of the Great Council or a Landammanrf of the Baden, Hesse or Nassau canton.
At any rate, therefore, we Germans should be concerned about Switzerland, and what the Swiss think, say and do may very soon be held up to us as a model. Hence it can do no harm if in advance we acquaint ourselves to some extent with the kind of customs and people the twenty-two cantons of the "Confederation" have produced in their Federative Republic.
It is reasonable for us first of all to consider the cream of Swiss society, the men whom the Swiss people themselves have appointed as their representatives; I am referring to the National Council which meets in the Town Hall in Berne.
Anyone who comes to the public gallery of the National Council is bound to be surprised at the variety of figures the Swiss people has sent to Berne to deliberate on matters common to the whole nation. One who has not already seen a good deal of Switzerland will hardly understand how a small country of a few hundred square miles and of less than two and a half million inhabitants can produce such a colourful assembly. But it is not at all surprising. Switzerland is a country in which four different languages are spoken — German, French, Italian (or rather Lombardian) and Romansh — and which combines all stages of culture, from the most advanced machine industry down to the most unadulterated pastoral life. The Swiss National Council combines the cream of all these nationalities and stages of culture and therefore looks anything but national.
There cannot be any question of definite seats, of separate parties in this semi-patriarchal assembly. The radicals have made a feeble attempt to seat themselves on the extreme left, but they do not seem to have been successful. Each member sits where he likes and often changes his place three or four times during one sitting. But most members have certain favourite seats which finally they always occupy, so that after all the assembly is divided into two rather sharply separated parts. On the three front semicircular benches one sees men with sharply defined features, many with beards, with well-kept hair and modern clothes of Parisian cut. Seated here are the representatives of French and Italian Switzerland, or the "Welch" members as they are called here; on these benches it is rare for anything but French to be spoken. But behind the Welch members sits a curiously motley society. True, no peasants in Swiss national costumes are to be seen; on the contrary, these are all people whose clothing bears the stamp of a certain degree of civilisation; here and there one even sees a more or less modern frock-coat, the owner usually possessing decorous features; then half a dozen Swiss officer types in civilian dress, looking very much alike, more solemn than military, their faces and clothing somewhat old-fashioned and to some extent reminiscent of Ajax in Troilus and Cressida(3); lastly the bulk of the assembly, consisting of more or less elderly, old-fashioned gentlemen with features and costumes that defy description, each one different, each one a distinct type and in the main also a type for caricature. All varieties of the petty bourgeois, the campagnard endimanché* and the oligarchy of the cantons are here represented, but all equally respectable, all terribly serious, all wearing equally heavy silver-rimmed spectacles. These are the representatives of German Switzerland, and this bulk of the assembly is sent by the smaller cantons and outlying areas of the larger ones.
The presidential chair facing this assembly is occupied by the famous Dr. Robert Steiger from Lucerne, who a few years ago was sentenced to death under the Siegwart-Müller administration, and is now the President of the Swiss Federal Assembly. Steiger is a small thickset man with clear-cut features, to which his grey hair, brown moustache, and even the inevitable silver-rimmed spectacles, provide a not unpleasant background. He carries out his duties with great calm and perhaps somewhat excessive restraint.
The discussion corresponds to the physiognomy. Only the Welch members, and not even all of them, speak a fully civilised, rhetorical form of language. The Bernese, who among the German Swiss have most of all adopted Romance customs, most closely resemble them. Some temperamental fire, at least, is still to be found among them. The Zürichers, these sons of the Swiss Athens, speak with the gravity and precision appropriate to someone halfway between a professor and a factory foreman, but always "educatedly". The officers speak with solemn slowness, without much skill or content, but always decisively as though their battalion stood behind them ready for action. Finally, the main body of the assembly provides orators who are more or less well-meaning, cautious and conscientious, and who weigh up the arguments on one side and the other but nevertheless in the end always come down on the side of their cantonal interests; almost all of them speak very clumsily and in some places according to their own rules of grammar. When the discussion turns on a question of cost, it always starts from them, particularly from the representatives of the l/r-cantons. In this respect the Uri canton has already a well-deserved reputation in both Councils.
Consequently, on the whole the discussion is dull, calm, mediocre. The National Council has very few talented orators who would be successful also in larger assemblies; so far I know only of two, Luvini and Dufour, and perhaps Eytel. True, I have not yet heard several of the more influential members; but neither their successes in the assembly nor the newspaper reports of their speeches are such as to justify great expectations. Only Neuhaus is said to be a brilliant orator. How indeed could oratorical ability develop in assemblies which represent at most a few hundred thousand people and have to concern themselves with the most petty local interests? At any rate, the defunct Diet[140] was a diplomatic rather than a legislative assembly; in it one could learn how to distort instructions and find a plausible way out of a situation, but not how to rouse an assembly and dominate it. Hence the speeches of the National Council members are mostly limited to motives for voting, with every speaker setting out the facts which induce him to vote in this way or that, and so without the slightest embarrassment he calmly repeats again what has already been repeated ad nauseam by previous speakers. Especially the speeches of the bulk of the representatives display this patriarchal sincerity. And once one of these gentlemen has the floor, as a matter of course he uses the opportunity also to voice his opinion at length on all the incidental points raised in the discussion, although they may have been disposed of long ago. Amidst this friendly chatter of the decent old fellows, a few main speeches laboriously keep the threads of the discussion together, and when the sitting ends one confesses to have seldom heard anything more boring. Philistinism, which lends a certain originality to the physique* of the assembly because it is rarely seen in this classical form, here too remains au moralb flat and tedious. There is little passion and no question at all of wit. Luvini is the only one who speaks with rousing, forceful passion, Dufour the only one who impresses by genuinely French clarity and precision. Frey from the Basle canton represents humour, which at times Colonel Bernold also attempts with some success. The French Swiss totally lack French wit. Throughout the existence of the Alps and the Jura not a single tolerable pun has been produced on their slopes, nor any quick, trenchant repartee heard there. The inhabitant of French Switzerland is not merely sérieux, he is grave.
The discussion which I will describe in some detail here concerns the Tessin affair and the Italian refugees in Tessin.c The circumstances are well known: the so-called intrigues of the Italian refugees in Tessin gave Radetzky the pretext for taking unpleasant measures; the Vorort Berne sent to Tessin federal representatives with extended powersd and also a brigade of troops; the uprising in Veltlin and in Valle Intelvi prompted a number of refugees to return to Lombardy, which they succeeded in doing in spite of the vigilance of the Swiss frontier posts; they crossed the frontier, without arms however, took part in the uprising and after the defeat of the insurgents, again unarmed, returned from Valle Intelvi to the Tessin area, and from there they were deported by the Tessin Government. Meanwhile Radetzky intensified his reprisals in the frontier area and redoubled his protests to the federal representatives.
Outward appearance.—Ed.
The latter demanded the deportation of all refugees without distinction; the Tessin Government refused; the Vorort confirmed the measure of the representatives; the Tessin Government appealed to the Federal Assembly, which in the meantime had begun its session. The National Council had to decide on this appeal and on the factual assertions put forward by both sides, concerning especially the behaviour of the Tessiners towards the representatives and the Swiss troops.
The majority of the commission appointed on this matter proposed the deportation of all the Italian refugees from Tessin, their internment in the interior of Switzerland, a ban on the entry of new refugees into Tessin, and in general that the measures taken by the Vorort should be confirmed and adhered to. The report of the commission was given by Herr Kasimir Pfyffer from Lucerne. But long before I had made my way to the public gallery through the crowded audience, Herr Pfyffer ended his rather dry report, and
Herr Pioda was given the floor.[3]
[Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 165, December 10, 1848, second edition]
Herr Pioda, Secretary of State in Tessin, who was the sole representative of the minority in the commission, proposed the deportation of only those refugees who had taken part in the last uprising and against whom, therefore, there were positive grounds for action to be taken. Herr Pioda, a major and battalion commander during the war against the Sonderbund,[141] despite his mild, blonde appearance, displayed great courage at the time at Airolo, and held his ground for a week against more numerous, better-trained and better-armed enemy troops which, in addition, had occupied a more advantageous position. Pioda's speech is as mild and full of feeling as his outward appearance. Since he speaks French perfectly, both as regards accent and fluency, I would at first have taken him for a French Swiss and was astonished to learn that he was an Italian. However, when he came to speak of the reproaches levelled against the Tessiners, when in contrast to these reproaches he described the actions of the Swiss troops, who behaved almost as if they were in enemy country, when he began to get heated, he revealed if not passion, at any rate that lively, thoroughly Italian eloquence which resorts at times to antiquated forms and at others to a certain modern, sometimes exaggerated, magniloquence. To his credit I must say that in this last respect he knew how to keep within bounds, and these passages in his speech had a very good effect. On the whole, however, his speech was too long and too emotional. The German Swiss possess Horace's aes triplex* and all the fine phrases, all the noble sentiments of the good Pioda made no impression on their breasts, which are as hard as they are broad.
The next to speak was Herr Doctor Alfred Escher from Zurich. A la bonne heureb—he is a man comme il en faut pour la Suisse.c Herr Doctor Escher, federal representative in Tessin, Vice-President of the National Council, the son — if I am not mistaken — of the well-known machine-builder and engineer Escher who canalised the Linth and founded a huge engineering works near Zurich. Herr Doctor Escher is not so much a Züricher as a "Swiss Athenian". His frock-coat and waistcoat have been made by the best marchand tailleurd in Zurich; one sees the praiseworthy and partly successful effort to meet the demands of the Paris fashion magazine; but one sees also the influence of the town's original sin, which compelled the cutter to go back to the age-old, customary, petty-bourgeois lines. Like the frock-coat, so the man. The fair hair is very carefully cut, but in a horribly bourgeois manner, as also the beard — for our Swiss Alcibiades wears a beard, of course, a caprice of the Züricher from a "good family" that strongly reminds one of the first Alcibiades. When Herr Doctor Escher takes the presidential chair to replace Steiger for a short time, he carries out this manoeuvre with a mixture of dignity and elegant nonchalance of which M. Marrast could be envious. One sees clearly that he is taking advantage of those few moments in the soft upholstery of the arm-chair to rest his back, weary from sitting on a hard bench. In a word, Herr Escher is as elegant as it is only possible to be in the Swiss Athens; moreover, he is wealthy, handsome, strongly built, and not more than 33 years old. The ladies of Berne need to beware of this dangerous Alcibiades of Zurich.
Herr Escher, in addition, speaks very fluently and in such good German as is only possible for a Swiss Athenian: an Attic idiom with a Doric accent, but without grammatical mistakes, and not every member of the National Council from German Switzerland is capable of that; like all the Swiss he speaks with the most terrifying solemnity. If Herr Escher were 70 years of age he could not have adopted a more solemn tone than he did the day before yesterday — yet he is one of the youngest members of the assembly. Moreover, he has another quality not typical of the Swiss. The point is that every German Swiss has only a single gesture for all his speeches, in all circumstances and throughout his life. Herr Doctor Kern, for instance, stretches out his right arm to the side at right angles with his body; the various officers have exactly the same gesture, the only difference being that they hold the arm straight out in front of them instead of to the side; Herr Tanner from Aarau makes a bow after every third word; Herr Furrer bows first to the front, then in a half-turn to the right and then to the left; in short, if all the German-speaking members of the National Council were assembled, a fairly complete signalling code would result. Herr Escher's gesture consists in stretching out his arm in front of him and making a movement with it exactly like that of a pump-handle.
As for the content of Herr Doctor Escher's speech, there is no need for me to repeat his list of the complaints of the federal representatives, since almost all these complaints have reached most of the German newspapers through the Neue Zürcher-Zeitung. There was absolutely nothing new in the speech.
Zurich solemnity was succeeded by Italian passion: after Herr Dr. Escher came Colonel Luvini. Luvini is an excellent soldier, to whom the Tessin canton owes its whole military organisation; as the military leader he led the 1840 revolution. In August 1841, when the overthrown oligarchs and priests launched an attack from Piedmont and tried to make a counter-revolution, Luvini by his swift and energetic action suppressed the attempt in a single day. During the war against the Sonderbund he was the only one to be taken prisoner solely because the Bündeners left him in the lurch.
Luvini very quickly leapt from his seat to defend his fellow countrymen against Escher. The fact that Herr Escher's reproaches were couched in the stilted but outwardly calm language of a schoolteacher did not make them any the less bitter; on the contrary, everyone knows that doctrinaire wisdom is in itself sufficiently intolerable and wounding.
Luvini replied with all the passion of an old soldier and Tessiner, who is Swiss by accident but Italian by nature.
of a man whose name I can never pronounce without a bitterness that comes from the depths of my soul, with Radetzky's hirelings — how can they fail to be embittered, they before whose very eyes, as it were, the Croats commit the most shocking atrocities? Yes, the Tessiners are a calm and peaceful people, but when they are sent Swiss soldiers who take sides with the Austrians, and in some places behave like the Croats, then, of course, they cannot be calm and peaceful!" (There follows an enumeration of facts about the behaviour of the Swiss troops in Tessin.) "It is already hard and sad enough to be oppressed and enslaved by foreigners, yet this is tolerated in the hope that the day will come when the foreigners will be driven out; but when my own brothers and members of the Confederation enslave me, when they, as it were, put a rope round my neck, then truly...."
The President's bell interrupted the speaker. Luvini was called to order. He said a few more words and ended his speech rather abruptly and irritably.
The fiery Luvini was followed by Colonel Michel from Graubünden. The Bündeners, with the exception of the Italian-speaking inhabitants of Misox, have always been bad neighbours to the Tessiners, and Herr Michel remained true to the traditions of his homeland. Speaking in the highly solemn tone of a man of worth, he tried to cast suspicion on the statements of the Tessiners, launched into a series of uncalled-for denunciations and slanders against the Tessin people, and was even tactless and ignoble enough to reproach the Tessiners because they (rightly) laid the blame for their defeat at Airolo on Michel's fellow countrymen, on the Bündeners. He concluded his speech by kindly proposing that part of the frontier occupation costs should be imposed on the Tessin Government.
On a motion by Steiger, the debate was then adjourned. The following morning the first to speak was Herr Colonel Berg from Zurich. I shall not describe his appearance for, as I have pointed out, the German-Swiss officers all look alike. Herr Berg is the commander of the Zurich battalion stationed in Tessin, the insolent behaviour of which was described by Luvini with numerous examples. Herr Berg, of course, had to defend his battalion, but as he soon came to the end of the factual assertions put forward for this purpose, he launched into a series of the most unrestrained personal attacks on Luvini.
All these and numerous other provocative statements and insults were uttered by Herr Berg in a tone that was in part dignified, in part blustering. He obviously wanted to imitate Luvini's fougueuse* rhetoric, but his effort was a complete fiasco.
As the story of Airolo has already cropped u p twice in my report and has now come u p again, I shall briefly recall the main circumstances. Dufour's plan in the war against the Sonderbund was as follows: while the main army attacked Freiburg and Lucerne, the Tessiners were to advance over the St. Gotthard, and the Bündeners over the Oberalp into the Urserental, liberate and arm the liberal-minded population there, and by this diversion cut off Wallis from the t/r-cantons[142] and compel the main Lucerne army of the Sonderbund to divide into two. The plan failed, firstly because the men of Uri and Wallis had already occupied the St. Gotthard before hostilities began and secondly because of the half-heartedness of the Bündeners. The latter totally failed to mobilise the Catholic militia, and even the troops that were mobilised let themselves be dissuaded from further advance by the Catholic population at a meeting in the Disentis High Court. Hence Tessin was quite alone, and bearing in mind that the military organisation of this canton was still very immature and that the entire Tessin army numbered only about 3,000, the weakness of Tessin compared with the Sonderbund is easily grasped. Meanwhile the men of Uri, Wallis and Unterwaiden had been reinforced by more than 2,000 men with artillery and on November 17, 1847, they descended the St. Gotthard with their entire force and broke into Tessin. The Tessin troops were deployed in echelons u p the Leventinatal from Bellinzona to Airolo; their reserves were in Lugano. The Sonderbund troops, concealed by a dense mist, occupied all the heights around Airolo, and when the mist dispersed Luvini saw that his position was lost before a shot had been fired. Nevertheless he assumed the defensive and after a battle lasting many hours, in which the Tessiners fought with the greatest courage, his troops were thrown back by the numerically stronger enemy. At first the retreat was covered by some army units, but the Tessin recruits, attacked on the flanks from the heights and fired on by artillery, were soon in total disorder and could only be brought to a halt at eight hours' distance from Airolo, behind the Moesa. Anyone who knows the St. Gotthard road will understand the huge advantages of an army coming down from above, especially if it has artillery, and the impossibility for an army retreating down the mountain to make a stand anywhere and deploy its forces in the
Fiery.—Ed.
narrow valley. Moreover the Tessiners who were actually involved in the battle by no means outnumbered the Sonderbund troops, on the contrary. For this defeat, therefore, which incidentally had no further consequences, it was not Luvini who was to blame but, firstly, his numerically weak and untrained troops, secondly, the unfavourable terrain, thirdly and mainly, the absence of the Bündeners, who allowed themselves to quaff Veltlin wine in Disentis instead of being on the Oberalp, and who at last came to the help of the Tessiners over the St. Bernard, post festum, with two battalions. And this victory of the Sonderbund, at the only place where it was superior in numbers, is used to reproach the Tessiners by those who shamefully left them in the lurch or who won cheap laurels at Freiburg and Lucerne, fighting three against one!
As you know, these attacks by Berg against Luvini resulted in a duel in which the Welch man severely disabled the Züricher.[3]
But let us return to the debate. Herr Dr. Kern from Thurgau rose to support the proposals of the majority. Herr Kern is a typical Swiss, tall, broad-shouldered, with not unpleasant clear-cut features and somewhat theatrical hair, such as perhaps an honest Swiss would imagine Olympian Jupiter; he is dressed somewhat like a man of learning, his look, tone of voice and bearing indicate unshakeable determination. Herr Kern is considered one of the most accomplished and shrewdest lawyers in Switzerland. "With his characteristic logic" and highly declamatory manner of speaking, the President of the Federal Court began to expound on the Tessin question, but soon I was so bored that I preferred to go to the Café italien and drink a glass of Wallis wine.
When I returned, Kern had already been followed by Aimeras from Geneva, Hornberger, Blanchenay from Waadt and Castoldi from Geneva — more or less important local figures whose fame in the Confederation is only just beginning. Eytel from Waadt was speaking.
In Switzerland, where people are proportionately as large as ordinary cattle, Herr Eytel may be considered delicately built, although in France he would pass for a jeune homme fort robuste.b He has a handsome, delicate face, fair moustache and fair curly hair, and like the Waadt people in general he reminds one of a Frenchman more than do the other inhabitants of Welch Switzerland. It goes without saying that he is one of the main supporters of the ultra-radical, red-republican trend among the Waadt people.
[3] See this volume, pp. 114, 115.— Ed. Quite robust young man.— Ed.
Moreover, he is still young and certainly not older than Escher. Herr Eytel spoke with great vehemence against the federal representatives.
"They behaved in Tessin as though Tessin were not a sovereign state, but a province which they had to administer as pro-Consuls; truly, if these gentlemen had acted in that way in a French canton, they would not have been allowed to remain there long! Yet these gentlemen, instead of thanking God that the Tessiners put up so calmly with their lust for domination and their fantastic ideas, even complain of being badly received!"
Herr Eytel speaks very well but is somewhat too long-winded. Like all the French Swiss, he fails to come to the point.
Old Steiger also said a few words from his presidential chair in favour of the majority proposals and then our Alcibiades Escher took the floor for the second time in order to repeat once more the account he had already given. But this time he attempted a rhetorical conclusion in which his schoolboy's exercise was evident three miles away.
"Either we are neutral or we are not neutral, but whatever we are, that we must wholly be, and old Swiss loyalty demands that we should keep our word, even if given to a despot."
From this new and striking idea, Herr Escher's tireless arm pumped out the broad stream of a solemn peroration, and when he had completed it Alcibiades, obviously pleased with himself, sat down again.
Herr Tanner from Aarau, President of the Supreme Court, was the next speaker. He is a lean, puny man of medium height who speaks very loudly about very uninteresting matters. Basically his speech was nothing but the hundredfold repetition of one and the same grammatical mistake.
He was followed by Herr Maurice Barman from French Wallis. To look at him no one would believe that he fought so bravely at Pont de Trient in 1844, when the men of Upper Wallis led by the Kalbermattens, Riedmattens and other Mattens(4) attempted a counter-revolution in the canton.[143] Herr Barman's outward appearance is that of a tranquil bourgeois but is by no means unpleasant; he speaks thoughtfully and rather disjointedly. He repulsed Berg's personal attacks on Luvini and supported Pioda.
Herr Battaglini from Tessin, who looks rather bourgeois and could remind a malicious observer of Dr. Bartholo in Figaro, read out a rather long discourse in French about neutrality in favour of his canton, a statement which contained perfectly correct principles but was listened to with only very superficial attention.
Suddenly the conversations and moving about in the assembly ceased. There was complete silence and all eyes turned to a beardless, bald old man with a big aquiline nose, who began to speak in French. This little old man, who in his simple black suit and with his completely civilian appearance was more like a professor than anything else, and who struck one only by his expressive face and lively, penetrating glance, was General Dufour, that same Dufour whose far-sighted strategy crushed the Sonderbund almost without bloodshed. What a distance separated him from the German-Swiss officers of that assembly! Those Michels, Zieglers, Bergs etc., those narrow-minded fire-eaters, those pedantic martinets, cut a very characteristic figure in comparison with the small unpretentious Dufour. One could see at a glance that it was Dufour who was the brain behind the whole war against the Sonderbund, whereas these
Ajaxes full of a sense of their own worth were only the fists he needed for carrying out his decisions. The Diet had truly chosen correctly and found the necessary man.
But when one hears Dufour speak one becomes really astounded. This old officer in the Engineers, who has spent his whole life only organising artillery schools, drawing up regulations and inspecting batteries, who has never taken part in parliamentary proceedings, never spoken in public, spoke with an assurance and with a fluency, elegance, precision and clarity that is admirable and unique in the Swiss National Council. This maiden speech[3] of Dufour's on the Tessin question, as far as its form and content are concerned, would have created the greatest sensation in the French Chamber; in every respect it far surpasses Cavaignac's (5) three-hour speech which made him the leading lawyer in Paris — if one can judge from the text published in the Moniteur. As for beauty of language, it is doubly deserving of recognition in someone from Geneva. The national language of Geneva is a Calvinistically reformed French, broad, flat, poor, monotonous and colourless. Dufour, however, did not speak in the language of Geneva, but in real, genuine French. Moreover, the sentiments which he expressed were so noble, so soldierly in the good sense of the word, that they made the petty professional jealousies and petty cantonal narrowness of the German-Swiss officers stand out in glaring contrast.
"I am glad that everyone is talking about neutrality," said Dufour. "But what is neutrality? It consists in our not undertaking or allowing to be undertaken anything by which the state of peace between Switzerland and neighbouring states would be endangered. Nothing less, but also nothing more. We have the right, therefore, to grant asylum to refugees from abroad, it is a right of which we are proud. We regard it as a duty which we owe to misfortune. But on one condition: that the refugee submits to our laws, that he does not undertake anything that could endanger our security at home or abroad. That a patriot driven from his country by tyranny endeavours, from our territory also, to win back the freedom of his homeland, I can understand. I do not reproach him in any way on that account, but then we also have to see what we must do. If, therefore, a refugee takes up his pen or his musket to oppose the neighbouring Government — all right, we shall not deport him for it, that would be unjust, but we shall remove him from the frontier, intern him. That is demanded by our own security and by our regard for neighbouring states; nothing less but also nothing -more. If, on the other hand, we take steps not only against the insurgent volunteer who has penetrated into foreign territory, but also against the brother or the father of that volunteer, against one who has remained in peace, then we are doing more than we are obliged to do, then we are no longer neutral, we take the side of a foreign government, the side of despotism against its victims." (General applause.) "And precisely now when Radetzky, a man for whom certainly no one in this assembly has any sympathy, is already demanding from us this unjust removal of all refugees from the frontier zone, when he is backing up his demand by threats, indeed, by hostile measures, precisely now it is least of all fitting for us to accede to the unjust demand of a more powerful opponent, because it would look as if we were bowing to superior force, as if we had taken this decision because a stronger opponent demanded it." (Bravo!)
I regret that I cannot give more of this speech and more word-for-word extracts from it. But there are no stenographers here, and I have to write from memory. Suffice it to say that Dufour astonished the entire assembly both by his oratorical skill and by the unpretentiousness of his speech as well as by the weighty arguments he put forward, and that after declaring he would vote for Pioda's proposal, he returned to his seat amid general applause. I have never on any other occasion heard applause during debates in the National Council. Dufour's speech decided the matter; after it there was nothing more to be said, and Pioda's proposal was carried.
However, this did not suit the knights of the small cantons whose consciences had been shaken, and to the call for an end to the debate they replied by casting 48 votes for its continuance. Only 42 voted for ending the debate, which therefore continued-. Herr Veillon from Waadt proposed that the whole matter be referred to the Federal Council. Herr Pittet from Waadt, a handsome man with French features, spoke in favour of Pioda, fluently but verbosely and in a doctrinaire tone, and it seemed that the discussion was petering out when, finally, Herr Furrer, President of the Confederation, rose to speak.
Herr Furrer is a man in the prime of life, a counterpart of Alcibiades Escher. If the latter represents the Swiss Athens, Herr
Furrer represents Zurich. If Escher tends to look like a professor, Furrer tends to look like a factory foreman. Together they are a complete representation of Zurich.
Herr Furrer, of course, is a man who favours the most absolute neutrality and since he saw his system seriously threatened as a result of Dufour's speech, he had to employ the most extreme measures to ensure himself a majority. It is true that Herr Furrer has only been Federal President for three days, but in spite of that he proved that he understands the politics of no-confidence questions despite Duchâtel and Hansemann. H e declared that the Federal Council was extremely eager for the decision of the National Council, because this decision would be a decisive turning-point in the entire policy of Switzerland etc. After a little embellishment of this captatio benevolentiae,[3] he gradually proceeded to expound his own opinion and that of the majority of the Federal Council, namely, that the policy of neutrality must remain and that the view of the majority of the commission was also the view of the majority of the Federal Council. He said all this with such solemn dignity and in such an insistent tone that there was a hint of the no-confidence question in every word of his speech. One must bear in mind that in Switzerland the executive power is not an independent power alongside the legislative, as in a constitutional monarchy or in the new French Constitution, but only the derivative and instrument of the legislative power. One must bear in mind that it is not at all the custom for the executive power to resign if its wishes are disregarded by a decision of the legislative assembly; on the contrary, it is accustomed to carry out this decision most obediently and wait for better times. And since the executive power likewise consists of an elected council in which there are also various shades of opinion, it is of no great importance if the minority in the executive council has a majority on some questions in the legislative council. And here at least two members of the Federal Council, Druey and Franscini, were for Pioda and against Furrer. Consequently, from the point of view of Swiss customs and views, Furrer's appeal to the assembly was quite unparliamentary. But what does that matter? The weighty voice of the Federal President gave new courage to the knights of the small cantons, and when he returned to his seat, they even attempted a "bravo" which faded away without any response, and demanded an end to the debate.
Attempt to win goodwill.—Ed.
But old Steiger was fair enough to give the floor first to Herr Pioda — as the reporter for the minority. Pioda spoke with the same calm and decorum as before. He again refuted all the accusations while briefly summing up the debate. He warmly defended his friend Luvini, whose fougueuse eloquence had perhaps somewhat carried him away but who, and this should never be forgotten, on a previous occasion had saved his canton for Switzerland. Finally, he touched upon Airolo and expressed his regret that this word had been mentioned here and, moreover, mentioned by the side from which he least of all expected it.
"It is true that we suffered a defeat at Airolo," he said. "But how did it come about? We stood there alone, our little, sparsely populated canton against the whole weight of the t/r-cantons and Wallis, which hurled themselves upon us and crushed us, although we defended ourselves bravely. It is true, we were defeated. But is it seemly for you" (turning to Michel) "to reproach us for it? You, gentlemen, you are to blame for the fact that we were defeated; you should have been on the Oberalp and have struck the Sonderbund forces in the flank, and it was you who were not there and who left us in the lurch, and that was why we were defeated. Yes, you did arrive, gentlemen, but when it was too late, when it was all over — then at last you arrived!"
Colonel Michel leapt up in a fury and with a face red as a lobster and declared that it was a lie and a slander. Called to order by loud murmurs and the President's bell, he continued somewhat more calmly. He said he knew nothing about having been supposed to be on the Oberalp. All he knew was that after getting the order he came to the aid of the Tessiners and in fact was the first to arrive.
Pioda replied as calmly as before: it had not entered his mind to attack Herr Michel personally, he had merely spoken of the Graubündeners in general, and it was a fact at any rate that they should have supported the Tessiners by descending from the Oberalp. If Herr Michel did not know that, it was easily explained by the fact that at the time he commanded only a battalion, and therefore the general plans of the campaign could very well have remained unknown to him.
With this intermezzo, which further led to private discussions of various kinds between these gentlemen outside the assembly hall and was finally settled by mutually satisfactory statements, the debate came to an end. The voting was by roll-call. The Frenchmen and four or five Germans voted with the Tessiners, the mass of the German Swiss voted against them. Tessin was deprived of the right to afford asylum, Radetzky's demands[144] were agreed to, neutrality at any price was proclaimed, and Herr Furrer could feel satisfied with himself and the National Council.
Such is the Swiss National Council, where the flower of the statesmen of Switzerland meet. I find that they are distinguished from other legislators by only one virtue, greater patience.
Written by Engels on December 6, 1848
59. The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution[1]
[Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 165, December 10, 1848]
Cologne, December 9. We have never concealed the fact that ours is not a legal basis, but a revolutionary basis. Now the Government for its part has abandoned the false pretence of a legal basis. It has taken its stand on a revolutionary basis, for the counter-revolutionary basis, too, is revolutionary.[146]
§ 6 of the law of April 6, 1848, lays down:
"The right to approve all laws as well as to determine the national budget and the right to grant taxes must in any case belong to the future representatives of the people."
§ 13 of the law of April 8, 1848, reads:
"The Assembly convened on the basis of this law is called upon to establish the future Constitution by agreement with the Crown and during the period of its existence to exercise the prerogatives of the former imperial estates, in particular regarding the granting of taxes."
The Government sends this Agreement Assembly to the devil, most autocratically imposes a soi-disant(1) Constitution[147] upon the country and grants itself the taxes which the representatives of the people had refused it.
The Camphausen epic, a sort of pompous legal Jobsiade,[148] has been brought to an abrupt end by the Prussian Government. In retaliation the great Camphausen, the author of this epic, continues coolly to deliberate in Frankfurt as envoy of this same Prussian Government, and goes on scheming with the Bassermanns in the interests of this same Prussian Government. This Camphausen, who invented the theory of agreement in order to preserve the legal basis, that is in order first of all to cheat the revolution of the respect that is
60. A New Ally of the Counter-Revolution
rancour of an old one. A stratum of the old state that had failed to break through and was thrown up on the surface of the new state by the force of an earthquake; without faith in itself, without faith in the people, grumbling at those above, trembling before those below, egoistic towards both sides and aware of its egoism; revolutionary in relation to the conservatives and conservative in relation to the revolutionaries. It did not trust its own slogans, used phrases instead of ideas, it was intimidated by the world storm and exploited it for its own ends; it displayed no energy in any respect, but resorted to plagiarism in every respect, it was vulgar because unoriginal, and original in its vulgarity; haggling over its own desires, without initiative, without faith in itself, without faith in the people, without a world-historic mission, an abominable dotard finding himself condemned to lead and to mislead the first youthful impulses of a virile people so as to make them serve his own senile interests — sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans everything[3]—such was the Prussian bourgeoisie which found itself at the helm of the Prussian state after the March revolution.
[Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 170, December 16, 1848]
Cologne, December 15. The theory of agreement, which the bourgeoisie, on attaining governmental power in the shape of the
Camphausen Ministry, immediately declared the "broadest" basis of the Prussian contrat social, was by no means an empty theory; on the contrary, it grew on the tree of "golden" life.
The sovereign by the grace of God was by no means subjected to the sovereignty of the people as a result of the March revolution. The Crown, the absolutist state, was merely compelled to come to an understanding with the bourgeoisie, to come to an agreement with its old rival.
The Crown is ready to sacrifice the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie is ready to sacrifice the people to the Crown. Under these circumstances the monarchy becomes bourgeois and the bourgeoisie monarchical. / Only these two powers still exist since the March revolution. They use each other as a sort of lightning-conductor against the revolution. Always, of course, on the "broadest democratic basis".
Therein lay the secret of the theory of agreement. The oil and wool merchants[155] who formed the first Ministry after the March revolution took pleasure in their role of protecting the exposed Crown with their plebeian wings. They were highly delighted at having gained access to the Court and reluctantly driven by pure magnanimity to abandon their austere Roman pose, i.e. the Roman pose of the United Diet, to use the corpse of their former popularity to fill the chasm that threatened to engulf the throne. Minister Camphausen plumed himself on being the midwife of the constitutional throne. The worthy man was evidently deeply moved by himself, his own magnanimity. The Crown and its hangers-on reluctantly suffered this humiliating protection and made bonne mine
à mauvais jeu,[3] hoping for better days to come.
The bourgeois gentilhomme*[1] was easily taken in by a few honeyed words and curtsies from the partly disintegrated army, the bureaucracy that trembled for its positions and salaries, and the humiliated feudals, whose leader(1) was engaged in a constitutional educational journey.
The Prussian bourgeoisie was nominally the ruler and did not for a moment doubt that the powers of the old state had placed themselves unreservedly at its disposal and had become devoted adjuncts of its own omnipotence.
Not only in the Ministry but throughout the monarchy the bourgeoisie was intoxicated with this delusion.
Did not the army, the bureaucracy and even the feudal lords act as willing and obedient accomplices in the only heroic deeds the Prussian bourgeoisie performed after the March revolution, namely, the often sanguinary machinations of the civic militia against the unarmed proletariat? Did not the subdued Regierungspräsidenten and penitent divisional generals listen with admiration to the stern patriarchal admonitions which the local councillors addressed to the people — the only efforts, the only heroic deeds of which these local councillors, the local representatives of the bourgeoisie (whose obtrusive servile vulgarity the Windischgrätzes, Jellachiches and Weldens afterwards repaid with kicks), were capable after the March revolution? Could the Prussian bourgeoisie have doubted after this that the former ill will of the army, bureaucracy and feudal aristocracy had been transformed into respectful loyalty to the bourgeoisie, the magnanimous victor who had put a curb both upon itself and upon anarchy?
A good face on a bad garïie.—Ed. An ironical allusion to the German liberal leaders whom Marx compares with Jourdain, hero of Molière's comedy Le bourgeois gentilhomme.—Ed.
Clearly the Prussian bourgeoisie now had only one task — to settle itself comfortably in the saddle, get rid of the troublesome anarchists, restore "law and order" and retrieve the profit lost during the March storm. It was now merely a question of reducing to a minimum the costs of its rule and of the March revolution which had brought it about. The weapons which, in its struggle against the feudal society and the Crown, the Prussian bourgeoisie had been compelled to demand in the name of the people, such as the right of association and freedom of the press, were they not bound to be broken in the hands of a deluded people who no longer needed to use them to fight for the bourgeoisie and who revealed an alarming inclination to use them against the bourgeoisie?
The bourgeoisie was convinced that evidently only one obstacle stood in the way of its agreement with the Crown, in the way of a deal with the old state, which was resigned to its fate, and that obstacle was the people — puer robustus sed malitiosus,(2) as Hobbes says. The people and the revolution]
The revolution was the legal title of the people; the vehement claims of the people were based on the revolution. The revolution was the bill of exchange drawn by the people on the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie came to power through the revolution. The day it came to power was also the day this bill became due. The bourgeoisie had to protest the bill.
Revolution on the lips of the people meant: you, the bourgeois, are the Comité du salut public, the Committee of Public Safety, to whom we have entrusted the government not in order that you should come to an agreement with the Crown regarding your own interests but in order that you should implement our interests, the interests of the people, in face of the Crown.
Revolution was the people's protest against the agreement between the bourgeoisie and the Crown. The bourgeoisie that was making an agreement with the Crown had therefore to protest against the revolution.
And that was done under the great Camphausen. The March revolution was not recognised. The representative National Assembly at Berlin set itself up as the representative of the Prussian bourgeoisie, as the Agreement Assembly, by rejecting the motion recognising the March revolution.[156]
The Assembly sought to undo what had been done. It vociferously declared to the Prussian people that the people did not come to an agreement with the bourgeoisie in order to make a revolution against
61. The Calumnies of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
The legal basis! Brüggemann, and through him the Kölnische Zeitung, have prated, fabled and moaned so much about the "legal basis", have so often lost and recovered, punctured and mended that "legal basis", tossed it from Berlin to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Berlin, narrowed and widened it, turned the simple basis into an inlaid floor and the inlaid floor into a false bottom (which, as we know, is a principal device of performing conjurors), and the false bottom into a bottomless trapdoor, so that in the end the legal basis has rightly turned for our readers into the basis of the Kölnische Zeitung; thus, they could confuse the shibboleth of the Prussian bourgeoisie with the private shibboleth of Herr Joseph Dumont, a necessary invention of Prussian world history with the arbitrary hobby-horse of the Kölnische Zeitung, and regard the legal basis simply as the basis on which the Kölnische Zeitung thrives.
The legal basis, namely, the Prussian legal basisl
The legal basis on which Camphausen, the knight of the great debate, the resurrected phantom of the United Diet and the Agreement Assembly, acted after the March revolution — is it the constitutional law of 1815 or the law of 1820 regarding the Provincial Diet, or the edict of 1847, or the electoral and agreement law of April 8, 1848 [157]?
It is none of these. "Legal basis" simply meant that the revolution had gained no ground and the old society had not lost its ground; that the March revolution was only an "occurrence" that gave the "impulse" for an "agreement" between the throne and the bourgeoisie, preparations for which had long been made within the old Prussian state, and the need for which the Crown itself had already announced in earlier royal decrees, but had not, prior to March, considered as "urgent". In short, the " legal basis" meant that after the March revolution the bourgeoisie wanted to negotiate with the Crown on the same footing as before the March events, as though no revolution had taken place and the United Diet had achieved its goal without a revolution. The "legal basis" meant that the legal title of the people, revolution, did not exist in the contrat social between the Government and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie deduced its claims from the old Prussian legislation, in order that the people should not deduce any claims from the new Prussian revolution.
62. Ursuline Convent.— Recruiting for the Grape-Shot King.— The "Burghers’ Commune".— Commission on a General Customs Tariff
Naturally, the ideological cretins of the bourgeoisie, its journalists, and suchlike, had to pass off this embellishment of the bourgeois interests as the real interests of the bourgeoisie, and persuade themselves and others to believe this. The phrase about the legal basis acquired real substance in the mind of a Brüggemann.
The Camphausen Government fulfilled its task, the task of being an intermediate link and a transitional stage. It was the intermediate link between the bourgeoisie which had risen on the shoulders of the people and the bourgeoisie which no longer required the shoulders of the people; between the bourgeoisie which apparently represented the people in face of the Crown and the bourgeoisie which really represented the Crown in face of the people; between the bourgeoisie coming away from the revolution and the bourgeoisie which had come out as the core of the revolution.(1)
In keeping with its role, the Camphausen Government coyly and bashfully confined itself to passive resistance against the revolution.
Although it rejected the revolution in theory, in practice it resisted only its claims and tolerated only the re-establishment of the old political authorities.
The bourgeoisie in the meantime believed that it had reached the point where passive resistance had to turn into active offensive. The Camphausen Ministry resigned not because it had committed some blunder or other, but simply because it was the first Ministry following the March revolution, because it was the Ministry of the March revolution and by virtue of its origin it had to conceal that it represented the bourgeoisie under the guise of a dictatorship of the people. Its dubious origin and its ambiguous character still imposed on it certain conventions, restraints and considerations with regard to the sovereign people which were irksome to the bourgeoisie, and which a second Ministry originating directly from the Agreement Assembly would no longer have to reckon with.
Its resignation therefore puzzled the saloon-bar politicians. It was followed by the Hansemann Government, the Government of Action, as the bourgeoisie intended to proceed from the period when it passively betrayed the people to the Crown to the period of active subjugation of the people to its own rule exercised in agreement with the Crown. The Government of Action was the second Government after the March revolution; that was its whole secret.
[Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 183, December 31, 1848]
Cologne, December 29.
"Gentlemen, business is business!"[3]
In these few words Hansemann epitomised the whole liberalism of the United Diet. This man was the required head of a government based on the Agreement Assembly, a government which was to turn passive resistance to the people into an active offensive on the people, the Government of Action.
No Prussian Government contained so many bourgeois names! Hansemann, Milde, Märker, Kühlwetter, Gierke! Even von Auerswald, the sort of label acceptable at Court, belonged to the liberal aristocracy of the Königsberg opposition which paid homage to the bourgeoisie. Roth von Schreckenstein alone represented the old bureaucratic Prussian feudal nobility among this rabble. Roth von
Schreckenstein! The surviving title of a vanished novel about robbers and knights by the late Hildebrandt.h But Roth von Schreckenstein was merely the feudal setting for the bourgeois jewel. Roth von
Schreckenstein in a bourgeois government meant this, spelled out in capital letters: the Prussian feudalists, the army and bureaucracy are guided by the newly arisen star, the Prussian bourgeoisie. These powerful figures have placed themselves at its disposal, and the bourgeoisie has set them up in front of its throne, just as bears were placed in front of the rulers of the people on old heraldic emblems. Roth von Schreckenstein is merely intended to be the bear of the bourgeois Government.
On June 26 the Hansemann Government presented itself to the National Assembly. Its effective existence began only in July. The June revolution was the background of the Government of Action, just as the February revolution formed the background of the Government of Mediation.
The bloody victory of the Paris bourgeoisie over the proletarians of Paris was exploited against the people by the Prussian bourgeoisie, just as the bloody victory of the Croats at Vienna was exploited against the bourgeoisie by the Prussian Crown. The suffering of the Prussian bourgeoisie after the Austrian November was retribution for the suffering of the Prussian people after the French June. In their short-sighted narrow-mindedness the German philistines mistook
63. Address of the Central Commission of the Workers'Associations of Switzerland to the Executive of the March Association in Frankfurt am Main
themselves for the French bourgeoisie. They had overturned no throne, they had not abolished feudal society, still less its last vestiges, they did not have to uphold a society they themselves had created. After June, as after February, they believed, as they had since the beginning of the sixteenth century and during the eighteenth century, that they would be able in their traditional crafty money-making manner to pocket three-quarters of the profit produced by someone else's labour. They had no inkling that behind the French June lurked the Austrian November and behind the Austrian November, the Prussian December. They did not suspect that whereas in France the throne-shattering bourgeoisie was confronted by only one enemy, the proletariat, the Prussian bourgeoisie, grappling with the Crown, possessed only one ally — the people. Not as if these two groups had no hostile and contradictory interests, but because they were still welded together by the same interests in face of a third power which oppressed them both equally.
The Hansemann Government regarded itself as a government of the June revolution. In contrast to the "red robbers", the philistines in every Prussian town turned into "respectable republicans", without ceasing to be worthy royalists, and occasionally overlooking the fact that their "reds" wore white-and-black(1) cockades.
In his speech from the throne on June 26, Hansemann gave short shrift to Camphausen's mysteriously nebulous "monarchy on the broadest democratic basis".
"Constitutional monarchy based on the two-chamber system and the joint exercise of legislative power by the two Chambers and the Crown"—that was the dry formula to which he reduced the portentous motto of his enthusiastic predecessor.
"Modification of the most essential relationships that are incompatible with the new constitution, liberation of property from the fetters that hamper its most advantageous utilisation in a large part of the monarchy, reorganisation of the administration of justice, reform of fiscal legislation and particularly annulment of tax exemptions etc." and above all "strengthening of the power of the state which is necessary for safeguarding the freedom which has been won" (by the citizens) "against reaction" (i.e. using the freedom in the interests of the feudal aristocracy) "and anarchy" (i.e. using the freedom in the interests of the people) "and for restoring the shaken trust"
— such was the Government's programme, the programme of the Prussian bourgeoisie in office, whose classical representative is Hansemann.
In the United Diet Hansemann was the most bitter and the most cynical adversary of trust, for—"Gentlemen, business is business!"
Hansemann in office proclaimed the "restoration of the shaken trust" a foremost necessity, for — this time he addressed the people as previously he had addressed the throne—for
"Gentlemen, business is business!"
Previously it was a question of the trust that gives money, this time of the trust that makes money; then it was a matter of feudal trust, the sincere trust in God, King and Fatherland, now it was bourgeois trust, trust in trade and commerce, in interest-bearing capital, in the solvency of one's commercial friends, that is, commercial trust; it is not a matter of faith, charity or hope, but of credit.
Hansemann's words, "restoration of the shaken trust", expressed the fixed idea of the Prussian bourgeoisie.
Credit depends on the confidence that the exploitation of wage labour by capital, of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of the petty bourgeois by the big bourgeois, will continue in the traditional manner. Hence any political stirring in the proletariat, whatever its nature, even if it takes place under the direct command of the bourgeoisie, shakes this trust, impairs credit. "Restoration of the shaken trust" when uttered by Hansemann signifies:
Suppression of every political stirring in the proletariat and in all social strata whose interests do not completely coincide with the interests of the class which believes itself to be standing at the helm of state.
Hansemann accordingly placed the "strengthening of the power of the state" side by side with the "restoration of the shaken trust". But he was mistaken as to the character of this "power of the state". He sought to strengthen the state power which served credit and bourgeois trust, but he strengthened the state power which demands trust and if necessary extorts this trust with the help of grape-shot, because it has no credit. He wanted to economise on the costs of bourgeois rule but instead burdened the bourgeoisie with the exorbitant millions which the restoration of Prussian feudal rule cost.
He told the workers very curtly that he had an excellent remedy for them. But before he could produce it the "shaken trust" must first of all be restored. To restore this trust the working class had to give up all political activity and interference in matters of state and revert to its former habits. If it followed his advice and trust were restored, this mysterious potent remedy would prove effective, if only because it would no longer be required or applicable, since in this case the malady itself — the subversion of the bourgeois law and order — would have been eliminated. And what need is there of medicine when there is no malady? But if the people obstinately stuck to their purpose, very well, then he would "strengthen the power of the state", the police, the army, the courts, the bureaucracy, and
64. Dismissal of Drigalski
would set his bears on them, for "trust" had become a "money matter", and:
"Gentlemen, business is business!"
Hansemann's programme, even though he may smile at this, was an honest programme, a well-intentioned programme.
He wanted to strengthen the power of the state not only against anarchy, that is against the people, he wanted to strengthen it also against reaction, that is against the Crown and feudal interests insofar as they attempted to assert themselves against the purse and the "most essential", that is the most modest, political claims of the bourgeoisie.
The very composition of the Government of Action was a protest against this "reaction".
It differed from all previous Prussian Ministries in that its real Prime Minister was the Minister of Finance. For centuries the Prussian state had carefully concealed the fact that the departments of war, internal and foreign affairs, church and school matters and even the royal household as well as faith, charity and hope depended on profane financial matters. The Government of Action placed this tiresome bourgeois truth uppermost by placing Herr Hansemann at its head, a man whose ministerial programme like his opposition programme was summarised in the words:
"Gentlemen, business is business!"
The monarchy in Prussia became a "money matter". Now let us pass from the programme of the Government of Action to its actions.
It really carried out its threat of "strengthening the power of the state" against "anarchy", that is against the working class and all sections of the middle class who did not stick to the programme of Herr Hansemann. It can even be said that, apart from increasing the tax on beet-sugar and spirits, this reaction against so-called anarchy, i.e. against the revolutionary movement, was the only serious action of this Government of Action.
Numerous lawsuits against the press based on Prussian Law or, where it did not exist, on the Code pénal, numerous arrests on the same "sufficient grounds" (Auerswald's formula), introduction of a system of constables in Berlin [158] at the rate of one constable per every two houses, police interference with the freedom of association, the use of soldiers against unruly citizens and of the civic militia against unruly proletarians, and the introduction, by way of deterrent, of a state of siege — all these events of Hansemann's
65. The Trial of Gottschalk and His Comrades
Olympiad are still vividly remembered. There is no need to give details.
This aspect of the efforts of the Government of Action was summarised by Kühlwetter in the following words:
"A state that wants to be really free must have a really large police force as its executive arm",
to which Hansemann himself muttered one of his usual remarks:
"This will also greatly help to restore trust and revive the rather slack commercial activity." a
The Government of Action accordingly "strengthened" the old Prussian police force, the judiciary, the bureaucracy and the army, who, since they receive their pay from the bourgeoisie, also serve the bourgeoisie, as Hansemann thought. At any rate, they were "strengthened".
On the other hand, the mood of the proletariat and bourgeois democrats was expressed by one event. Because a few reactionaries maltreated some democrats in Charlottenburg, the people stormed the residence of the Prime Minister in Berlin.[159] This shows how popular the Government of Action had become. The next day Hansemann tabled a law against riotous gatherings and public meetings. This shows how cunningly he intrigued against reaction.
Thus the actual, tangible, popular activity of the Government of Action was of a purely police character. In the eyes of the proletariat and the urban democrats this Ministry and the Agreement Assembly, whose majority was represented in the Ministry, and the Prussian bourgeoisie, the majority of whom constituted the majority in the Agreement Assembly, represented the old, refurbished police and bureaucratic state. To this was added resentment against the bourgeoisie, because it governed and in the civic militia had become an integral part of the police.
The "achievement of the March events", as the people saw it, was that the liberal gentlemen of the bourgeoisie, too, took police duties upon themselves. There was thus a double police force.
Not the actions of the Government of Action, but the drafts of its organic laws show clearly that it "strengthened' the "police"—the ultimate expression of the old state — and spurred it into action only in the interest of the bourgeoisie.
In the Bills relating to local government, juries, and the civic militia, introduced by the Hansemann Ministry, property in one form or
Quotations from the speeches made by Kühlwetter and Hansemann in the Prussian National Assembly on August 9, 1848.—Ed.
another always forms the demarcation line between the lawful and the unlawful. All these Bills contain the most servile concessions to royal power, for the bourgeois Ministry believed that royalty had become harmless to it and was its ally; but to compensate for that the ascendancy of capital over labour is all the more ruthlessly emphasised.
The civic militia law approved by the Agreement Assembly was directed against the bourgeoisie itself and had to provide a legal pretext for disarming it. According to the fancy of the bourgeoisie, however, it was to become valid only after the enactment of the local government regulation and the promulgation of the Constitution, that is after the consolidation of the rule of the bourgeoisie. The experience which the Prussian bourgeoisie has gained in connection with the civic militia law may contribute to its enlightenment and show it that for the time being all its actions that are meant to be directed against the people are only directed against itself.
As far as the people are concerned, the Hansemann Ministry is in practice epitomised by the old-Prussian police and in theory by the offensive Belgian differentiation between bourgeois and non-bourgeois.[160]
Now let us pass on to another section of the ministerial programme, to anarchy against reaction.
In this respect the Ministry has more pious wishes to show than real deeds.
Among the pious bourgeois wishes are the partition and sale of domains to private owners, the abandonment of banking to free competition, the conversion of the Seehandlung[161] into a private institution etc.
It was unfortunate for the Government of Action that all its economic attacks against the feudal party took place under the aegis of a compulsory loan, and that in general its attempts at reformation were seen by the people merely as financial expedients devised to replenish the treasury of the strengthened "power of the state". Hansemann thus won the hatred of one party without winning the approval of the other. And it has to be admitted that he only ventured to attack feudal privileges in earnest when "money matters" closest to the Minister of Finance, when money matters as understood by the Ministry of Finance, became pressing. In this narrow sense he told the feudal lords:
"Gentlemen, business is business!"
Thus even his positively bourgeois efforts directed against the feudalists reveal the same police taint as his negative measures designed to "revive commercial activity". For in the language of political economy the police is called exchequer. The increase in the beet-sugar and liquor duties which Hansemann passed through the National Assembly roused the indignation of the money-bags, standing with God for King and Fatherland, in Silesia, the Marches, Saxony, East and West Prussia etc. But while this measure angered the industrial landowners in the old Prussian provinces, it caused no less displeasure among the bourgeois distillers in the Rhine Province, who perceived that their conditions of competition compared with those of the old Prussian provinces had been made even more unfavourable. And to crown all, it angered the working class in the old provinces, for whom it only meant, and could only mean, a rise in the price of a prime necessity. This measure therefore merely amounted to replenishing the treasury of the "strengthened power of the state". This example suffices, since it is the only action against the feudalists actually taken by the Government of Action, the only Bill of this nature which really became law.
Hansemann's "Bills" abrogating all exemptions from graduated and land taxes,[162] and his projected income tax caused the landowning votaries of "God, King and Fatherland" to respond as if bitten by a tarantula. They denounced him as a communist and even today the Prussian Dame of the Cross[3] crosses herself three times at the mention of Hansemann's name. That name sounds to it like Fra Diavolo.b The repeal of all exemptions from the land tax, the only important measure to be introduced by a Prussian Minister during the glorious reign of the Agreement Assembly, failed because of the narrow-mindedness of the Left concerning principles. 'Hansemann himself had justified this narrow-mindedness. Was the Left to provide new financial resources for the Ministry of the " strengthened power of the state" before the Constitution had been completed and sworn to?
The bourgeois Ministry par excellence was so unlucky that its most radical measure had to be frustrated by the radical members of the Agreement Assembly. It was so barren that its whole crusade against feudalism merely resulted in a tax increase, which was equally odious to all classes, and the abortive outcome of its entire financial acumen was a compulsory loan: two measures, which ultimately only provided subsidies for the campaign of the counter-revolution against the bourgeoisie. But the feudal lords were convinced of the "nefarious" intentions of
An allusion to the Neue Preussische Zeitung also known as the Kreuz-Zeitung.—Ed. Fra Diavolo—a sobriquet of Michèle Pezza, an Italian bandit; the title character of an opera by Auber.—Ed.
the bourgeois Ministry. Thus even the financial struggle of the Prussian bourgeoisie against feudalism merely proved that owing to its unpopularity and impotence it was only able to collect money against itself and—Gentlemen, business is business!
Just as the bourgeois Ministry succeeded in equally offending the urban proletariat, the bourgeois democrats and the feudal lords, so did it manage to alienate and antagonise even the peasantry oppressed by feudalism, and in this it was eagerly supported by the Agreement Assembly. It should not be forgotten that during half of its existence this Assembly was appropriately represented by the Hansemann Ministry and that the bourgeois martyrs of today were yesterday the train-bearers of Hansemann.
During Hansemann's rule Patow introduced a Bill abolishing feudal obligations (see the criticism of it we published earlier[3]). It was a most wretched botchwork, the product of the helpless bourgeois desire to abolish feudal privileges, those "conditions that are incompatible with the new constitution", and of bourgeois fear of revolutionarily attacking any kind of property whatever. Wretched, timid and narrow-minded egoism blinded the Prussian bourgeoisie to such an extent that it repulsed the peasantry, its essential ally.
On June 3 deputy Hanow moved
"that all pending proceedings which concern the settlement of landowner-peasant relations and the commutation of services be immediately discontinued at the request of one of the sides until the promulgation of a new law based on just principles".
Not until the end of September, that is four months later, under the Pfuel Government, did the Agreement Assembly pass a Bill designed to discontinue pending proceedings between landowners and peasants, after rejecting all liberal amendments and retaining the "reservation about the provisional establishment of current obligations" and the "collection of disputed dues and arrears".[163]
In August, if we are not mistaken, the Agreement Assembly declared that Nenstiels motion that "labour services be abolished immediately" was not urgent.[164] Could the peasants be expected to consider it an urgent matter for them 'to take up the cudgels for this Agreement Assembly which had thrown them back into conditions inferior to those they had actually won after the March events?
The French bourgeoisie began by emancipating the peasants. Together with the peasants it conquered Europe. The Prussian bourgeoisie was so preoccupied with its most narrow, immediate interests that it foolishly threw away even this ally and turned it into a tool of the feudal counter-revolutionaries.
The official history of the dissolution of the bourgeois Ministry is well known.
Under its aegis, the "power of the state" was "strengthened" to such an extent and the popular energy so weakened that already on July 15 the Dioscuri Kühlwetter and Hansemann were obliged to issue a warning against reactionary machinations of civil servants, and especially Landräte, to all Regierungspräsidenten in the monarchy; that later an "assembly of the nobility and big landowners for the protection" of their privileges[165] met in Berlin alongside the Agreement Assembly; and that finally, in opposition to the so-called Berlin National Assembly, a "diet of local communities for the protection of the threatened property rights of landowners", a body originating in the Middle Ages, was convoked in Upper Lusatia on September 4.
The energy expended by the Government and the so-called National Assembly against these increasingly menacing counter-revolutionary symptoms found adequate expression in paper admonitions. The bourgeois Ministry reserved bayonets, bullets, prisons and constables exclusively for the people "so as to restore the shaken trust and revive commercial activity".
The incidents at Schweidnitz, where the soldiery in fact murdered the bourgeoisie in the person of the civic militia, finally roused the National Assembly from its apathy. On August 9 it braced itself for a heroic deed, that of the Stein-Schultze army order, whose most drastic measure of coercion was an appeal to the tact of the Prussian officers.[166] A measure of coercion indeed! Did not royalist honour forbid the officers to follow the dictates of bourgeois honour?
On September 7, a month after the Agreement Assembly had passed the Stein-Schultze army order, it once more decided that its decision was a real decision and should be carried out by the Ministers. Hansemann refused to do this and resigned on September 11, after appointing himself a bank director at a yearly salary of 6,000 talers, for—Gentlemen, business is business!
Finally, on September 25, the Agreement Assembly gratefully agreed to Pfuel's thoroughly watered-down formula of acceptance of the Stein-Schultze army order, which by that time Wrangel's parallel army order and the large number of troops concentrated around Berlin had turned into a bad joke.
A mere glance at these dates and the history of the Stein-Schultze army order suffices to show that the army order was not the real reason for Hansemann's resignation. Is it likely that Hansemann, who did not shy at recognising the revolution, should have shied at this paper proclamation? Are we to believe that Hansemann, who, whenever the portfolio slipped from his fingers, always picked it up again, has this time, in a fit of virtuous exasperation, left it on the ministerial benches to be hawked about? No, our Hansemann is no fanatic. Hansemann was simply duped, just as in general he was the representative of the duped bourgeoisie. He was allowed to believe that on no account would he be dropped by the Crown. He was made to lose his last semblance of popularity in order that the Crown should at last be able to sacrifice him to the rancour of the country junkers and get rid of this bourgeois tutelage. Moreover, the plan of campaign agreed upon with Russia and Austria required that the Ministry should be headed by a general appointed by the camarilla from outside the Agreement Assembly. The old "power of the state" had been sufficiently "strengthened" under the bourgeois Ministry to venture on this coup.
Pfuel was a disappointment. The victory of the Croats at Vienna made even a Brandenburg a useful tool.
Under the Brandenburg Ministry the Agreement Assembly was ignominiously dispersed, fooled, derided, humiliated and persecuted, and the people, at the decisive moment, remained indifferent. The defeat of the Assembly was the defeat of the Prussian bourgeoisie, of the constitutionalists, hence a victory for the democratic party, however dear it had to pay for that victory.
And the imposed Constitution? It had once been said that never would a "scrap of paper" be allowed to come between the King and his people.[1] Now it is said: there shall be only a scrap of paper between the King and his people. The real Constitution of Prussia is the state of siege. The imposed French Constitution had only one article — the 14th, which invali-dated it.[168] Every article of the imposed Prussian Constitution is an Article 14.
By means of this Constitution the Crown grants new privileges — that is upon itself.
It permits itself to dissolve the Chambers indefinitely. It permits Ministers in the interim to issue any desired law (even those affecting property and so forth). It permits deputies to impeach Ministers for such actions, but at the risk, under the state of siege, of being classed as "internal enemies". Finally, it permits itself, should the stock of the counter-revolution go up in the spring, to replace this nebulous "scrap of paper" by a Christian-Germanic Magna Charta[169] organi-cally growing out of the distinctions of the medieval social estates, or to drop the constitutional game altogether. Even in the latter case the conservative bourgeois would fold their hands and pray:
" The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lordr*
The history of the Prussian bourgeois class, like that of the German bourgeois class in general between March and December, shows that a purely bourgeois revolution and the establishment of bourgeois rule in the form of a constitutional monarchy is impossible in Germany, and that only a feudal absolutist counter-revolution or a social republican revolution is possible.
But that the viable section of the bourgeoisie is bound to awake again from its apathy is guaranteed above all by the staggering bill which the counter-revolution will present it with in the spring and, as our Hansemann so sensibly says:
"Gentlemen, business is business!"
Written by Marx on December 9, 11, 15 and 29, 1848
A NEW ALLY OF THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION
Cologne, December 11. The counter-revolution has acquired a new ally: the Swiss Federal Government.
Already five days ago we learned from a thoroughly trustworthy source that the recent rumours of an intended incursion of the German refugees into Baden, of arming at the frontier, and of a mythical battle near Lörrach between volunteer insurgents and imperial troops — that all these peculiar rumours were "agreed upon" between the ruling party of Furrer-Ochsenbein-Munzinger in the Swiss Federal Council and the German imperial authority in order to give the said party an excuse for taking measures against the refugees and thereby helping to establish a good agreement with the imperial power.(1)
We did not immediately communicate this news to our readers, because we could not unreservedly believe in such an intrigue. We waited for confirmation, and confirmation was not long in coming.
It was already noticeable that these rumours were not published by Baden newspapers which, being on the spot, should be the best and earliest informed, but by Frankfurt newspapers.
It was furthermore noticeable that the Frankfurter Journal was already informed from Berne on December 1 that the Federal Council had issued a circular on the question of the refugees and sent a commissioner, whereas the Berne newspapers, several of which (Verfassungs-Freund and Suisse) are in direct contact with members of the Federal Council, did not publish the news until December 3.
Now at last we have the circular to the cantonal authorities before us in the Suisse(2) and if previously we could still doubt the adhesion of Switzerland to the new Holy Alliance,[170] now all doubts have been removed.
The circular begins with rumours of new armings of the political refugees and of an intended new incursion into the Baden area. These rumours, which all Switzerland and all Baden know to be false, serve as the grounds for the new extraordinary measures against the refugees. The decisions of the Federal Assembly about Tessin are mentioned only to justify the competence of the Federal Council to adopt these measures but not its obligation to do so; on the contrary the essential difference between the situation in Tessin and in the northern cantons is expressly recognised.
Then come the following instructions:
1) All refugees who took part in Struve's expedition,[171] or who otherwise offer no personal guarantees of tranquil behaviour, are to be removed from the frontier cantons;
2) all refugees without distinction are to be kept under close supervision;
3) a list of all refugees coming under 1) is to be sent to the Federal Council and to all frontier cantons, and
4) possible exceptions to internment are to be left to the decision of the representative of the Confederation, Dr. Steiger, whose instructions in general are to be followed.
Then follows the demand for the "strict" fulfilment of these instructions, since otherwise, if it becomes necessary to call out troops, the costs will have to be borne by the frontier canton concerned.
The whole circular is drafted in harsh language, highly insulting to the refugees, and concludes with the words:
"Switzerland must not become an assembly area for foreign parties which so greatly misconceive their situation on neutral soil and so often trample under foot the interests of the country that hospitably receives them."
Now compare this bitter language with that of the Note of November 4b; bear in mind that the rumours on which the circular is based are notoriously false; that, as we have been informed from the frontier today, the representative of the Confederation, Dr. Steiger, has already completed his inspection in the Aargau canton, against which the imperial authority put forward most complaints, and has
66. The Prussian Counter-Revolution and the Prussian Judiciary ....
found that the refugees concerned were interned long ago and that he has no more to do there (he is already in Liestal); that the Note of November 4 already asserts and the Swiss press (e.g. Schweizer Bote, Basellandschaftliches Volksblatt, National-Zeitung etc.) long ago proved that all the frontier cantons fulfilled their duties long ago; bear in mind, finally, that after long uncertainty, after the most contradictory reports about the closing of the frontier, now for the last two or three days all our Swiss newspapers and letters have been unanimous in saying that absolutely no measures of coercion are being applied against Switzerland, and indeed that the order given to certain frontier posts for stricter supervision of the movement of people was revoked already 24 hours later; bear all this in mind and say whether the circumstances do not confirm in the minutest detail the report given by us above.
At any rate, it is well known that Herren Furrer, Ochsenbein, Munzinger etc. have long cherished a burning desire to put an end once for all to the "excesses of the refugees".
We congratulate Herr Schmerling on his new friends. We only wish that, if he too were to enter Switzerland as a refugee — which could very well happen before the three years' official duration of the present Federal Council expires — these friends of his will not consider him as one of those refugees who "offer no personal guarantees".
THE CALUMNIES OF THE NEUE RHEINISCHE ZEITUNG
Cologne, December 13. The article of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of July 4,(1) on account of which the responsible publisher, Korff, the editor-in-chief, Marx, and the editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Engels, are to appear before the assizes on the 20th inst., concludes with the following words:
"Those are the actions of the Government of Action, the Government of the Left Centre, the Government of transition to an old aristocratic, old bureaucratic and old Prussian Government. As soon as Herr Hansemann has fulfilled his transitory function, he will be dismissed.
"The Berlin Left, however, must realise that the old regime is willing to let it keep its small parliamentary victories and large constitutional designs as long as the old regime in the meantime is able to seize all the really important positions. It can confidently recognise the revolution of March 19 inside the Chamber provided the revolution can be disarmed outside of it.
" Some fine day the Left may find that its parliamentary victory coincides with its real defeat. Perhaps German development needs such contrasts. The Government of Action recognises the revolution in principle in order to carry out the counter-revolution in practice."
Facts have proved to what extent the Neue Rheinische Zeitung has calumniated the Prussian Government and its henchmen.
Written by Marx on December 13, 1848
URSULINE CONVENT.— RECRUITING FOR THE GRAPE-SHOT KING.—
THE "BURGHERS' COMMUNE".— COMMISSION ON A GENERAL CUSTOMS TARIFF
Berne, December 9. The last convent in the Berne canton, that of the Ursulines in Pruntrut in the Jura, is approaching its end. The Government Council [Regierungsrat](2) has decided to propose to the Great Council the dissolution of this convent in fulfilment of the Diet's decision banning from Switzerland all orders affiliated to the Jesuits (to which the Ursulines belong).
After Radetzky had again allowed the Neapolitan-Swiss recruits through Lombardy, King Ferdinand likewise immediately suggested that recruiting should again be allowed in Switzerland. Lucerne and the Ur-cantons naturally hastened to permit recruitment; the Berne Government, for whom the enlistment agreements[172] are anyway a thorn in the flesh, luckily found an excuse to continue prohibiting recruitment for the present. It states in particular that according to the enlistment agreement (which is a relic inherited from the revered regime of Herr Neuhaus), the recruits would be obliged to go via Genoa, a route which is still barred to them; and further, the Neapolitan Government would first have to indemnify the Swiss in Naples for the damage by looting etc., done on May 15.[173] The god-fearing Beobachtet is of course fearfully shocked by this violation of inviolable Swiss loyalty, which moreover prevents a great number of fine young canton citizens from making a glorious career (!), jeopardises the future of the Berne soldiers in Naples, causes recruiting sergeants present in Berne to starve, and reduces the income of the publicans on whose premises the military bounty would be drunk away. These are the kind of arguments with which the reactionary Swiss press wages its war.
The local conservative patricians have suffered a hard blow. For there is a so-called burghers' commune within the commune itself. This commune, the core of which is the patriciate, made sure, in spite of all the revolutions, that the former monastery estates and other state and town domains to which it is entitled as the former holder of sovereignty, should not be transferred with sovereignty to the state or the town respectively, but be kept by it in collective ownership. Only a small part of these highly valuable estates, on which the patricians still wax fat today, is to go to the town, but the "burghers" always refused to give it up. Now at last, through the choice of Berne as the federal capital and the consequent heavy city expenses, the burghers' commune has been forced to surrender its share to the town commune, the so-called residents' commune,[174]
and moreover to pledge a "substantial" contribution to the costs of the federal capital. The patricians declare Zion to be in danger, and they have good reason, for the federal capital threatens their purses very seriously.
The Federal Council has formed under the presidency of the head of the Trade and Customs Department, Herr Näff, a commission which is to prepare the abolition of canton duty and the creation of a Swiss customs tariff, and propose the necessary measures. Switzerland will also get protective tariffs now, which will not, it is true, be high but will completely achieve their purpose owing to the advanced development of most branches of Swiss industry and to the low wages. England, Paris, Mühlhausen and Lyons will suffer most from these measures.
Written by Engels on December 9, 1848
ADDRESS OF THE CENTRAL COMMISSION OF THE WORKERS' ASSOCIATIONS OF SWITZERLAND
TO THE EXECUTIVE OF THE MARCH ASSOCIATION
IN FRANKFURT AM MAIN[175]
To the Executive of the March Association in Frankfurt am Main
Citizens,
The German associations of Switzerland held a Congress here in Berne on the 9th, 10th and 11th of this month; they have joined together in a permanent union and appointed the Berne Association as the District Union.[176]
The undersigned Central Commission herewith informs you of the founding of the Union.
It also informs you that the Congress has decided to enter into correspondence with the March Association. A closer union with the latter is excluded by Article 1 of our common Rules, in which the Swiss associations explicitly declare themselves for a democratic social republic.[177]
The Congress has also instructed us to make known to you its decided disapproval of the measures taken by the German imperial authority against Switzerland. These measures, as unjust as they are ridiculous, not only serve to compromise Germany in the eyes of all Europe; for us German workers in Switzerland they have the particular disadvantage that they jeopardise our position materially and put us German democrats in a false position in relation to our friends, the democrats of Switzerland.
We hope that one of the delegates of the March Association will take the earliest opportunity to inform the so-called National Assembly(3) of this official expression of opinion of the German workers in Switzerland.
In the meantime we look forward to your communications and letters.
Greetings and fraternal good wishes.
The Central Commission of the German Workers' Associations of Switzerland Berne, December 1848a
Written by Engels in mid-December 1848
[DISMISSAL OF DRIGALSKI]
Cologne, December 17. The "citizen and communist" Drigalski,[3]
who introduced the censorship, abolished it again, and then threatened to suspend the local newspaper,[6] has, we have just heard, been suspended himself. A pity, a great pity!
Postscript. Misfortune travels fast! Herr Spiegel, Regierungspräsident, also bids us farewell. According to reports current all over the town, he has been dismissed.
Written by Marx on December 17, 1848
67. Measures against German Refugees.— Return of Troops from Tessin.— The Patricians’ Commune
THE TRIAL OF GOTTSCHALK AND HIS COMRADES
[Neue Rheinische ZeitungNo. 175, December 22, 1848]
Cologne, December 21. This morning the trial of Gottschalk, Anneke and Esser began at the extraordinary assizes here.
The accused were escorted like the lowest criminals in fetters from the new remand prison to the court building, where a not inconsiderable armed force was present.
Our readers are aware that we regard the jury system as at present organised as anything but a guarantee. The register qualification gives a definite class the privilege of choosing the jury from its midst. The method of compiling the lists of jury members gives the Government the monopoly of selecting from the privileged class those individuals who suit it. For the Herr Regierungspräsident draws up a list of a certain number of individuals which he selects from the lists of jury members of the entire administrative area; the judicial representatives of the Government prune this list down to 36, if our memory does not deceive us. Finally, at the time of the actual formation of the jury, the Public Prosecutor's office has the right to prune for a third time the last list, the outcome of class privilege and a double governmental distillation, and to reduce it to the final requisite dozen.
It would be a real miracle if such a constitution of the jury did not place accused persons who have openly opposed the privileged class and the existing state authority directly in the absolute power of their most ruthless enemies.
But the conscience of the jurymen, we shall be told in reply, their conscience; could one demand a greater guarantee than that? But, mon Dieu, a man's conscience depends on his knowledge(1) and his way of life.
The conscience of a republican is different from that of a royalist, that of a property owner is different from that of one who owns no property, that of a thinking person is different from that of one incapable of thought. One who has no vocation for being a juryman other than that of the register qualification has the conscience of the register qualification.
The "conscience" of the privileged is precisely a privileged conscience.
Although, therefore, the jury as at present constituted appears to us to be an institution for asserting the privileges of a few and by no means an institution for safeguarding the rights of all; although, in the present case especially, the Public Prosecutor's office has made the most extensive use of its powers in order to eradicate from the last list the last dozen names displeasing to it — nevertheless we have not a moment's doubt of the acquittal of the accused. Our guarantee is the bill of indictment. Reading it, one could believe it an ironically phrased defence document of Gottschalk and his comrades.
Let us summarise this indictment, the only analogy to which is the indictment against Mellinet and Co. (the Risquons-Tout trial in Antwerp[178]).
In Cologne there is a Workers' Association.[179] Gottschalk was president of it, and Anneke and Esser members of its Executive Committee. The Workers' Association, the indictment informs us,
"had a special organ, the Arbeiter-Zeitung, edited by Gottschalk, and anyone who did not have the opportunity of attending in person the meetings of the Association could learn from this newspaper the dangerous tendencies of the Association to flatter the proletariat and work for communism and the overthrow of the existing order".
Therefore, one could acquaint oneself with tendencies but not with illegal acts. The proof is: Until the arrest of Gottschalk and the others, the prosecuting magistrates did not bring forward any charge against the Arbeiter-Zeitung, and after Gottschalk's arrest it was only once condemned — in the monster trial instituted by the prosecuting magistrates here, on the charge of insulting these magistrates.[180]
"But the Arbeiter-Zeitung itself," the indictment admits, "does not seem to have taken the trouble to conceal anything in its reports on the subject" (the proceedings of
In the original there is a pun on the words Gewissen (conscience) and Wissen (knowledge).—Ed.
the Workers' Association, of the meetings of its Executive Committee and of its branches).
If, therefore, the Arbeiter-Zeitung could not be prosecuted on account of its "reports" of the proceedings of the Workers' Association, then this Association itself could not be prosecuted on account of its proceedings.
The only accusation levelled against the Workers' Association is the same as that against the Arbeiter-Zeitung, viz the objectionable tendency of this Association. Do the March achievements include also trials based on tendency, trials against tendencies that have remained mere tendencies? Up to now our September Laws[18]* have not yet been promulgated. Gottschalk and his comrades were by no means arrested and accused because of illegal reports of the Arbeiter-Zeitung or illegal proceedings of the Workers' Association. The indictment makes no secret of this. It was not the previous activity of the Workers' Association that set the wheels of justice in motion, but — listen to this:
"From June 14 to 17 of this year a Congress was held in Frankfurt of delegates from a multitude of democratic associations that have arisen in Germany. Gottschalk and Anneke were delegates representing the Cologne Workers' Association. As is known, this Congress expressed itself openly in favour of a democratic republic, and the authorities here expected a repercussion of the movement there, when on Sunday, June 25, once more a general meeting of the Workers' Association was announced to be held in the Gürzenich Hall."
The authorities here expected a repercussion of the Frankfurt movement. But what movement had taken place in Frankfurt? The Democratic Congress had expressed itself openly in favour of the objectionable tendency of a democratic republic. A "repercussion", therefore, of this "tendency" was expected and it was intended to engage in a struggle against this echo.
As is known, the Democratic Congress in Frankfurt and the Central Committee in Berlin, appointed to carry out its decisions, held their sessions without any opposition from the authorities.[182]
The German governments therefore, in spite of the objectionable tendency, had to recognise the lawfulness of the Frankfurt Congress and of the organisation of the democratic party decided upon by the Congress.
But the Cologne authorities "expected nevertheless" a repercussion of the Frankfurt movement. They expected to have an opportunity of catching Gottschalk and his comrades on illegal ground. In order to create this opportunity, on June 25 the police authorities sent "police inspectors Lutter and Hiinnemann" to attend the general
68. Letter of the Central Commission of the Workers’ Associations in Switzerland to the Association in Vivis
meeting of the Workers' Association in the Gürzenich Hall and "specially instructed them to observe what took place there". At the same general meeting there happened to be present "the book-binder Johann Maltheser", who, as the indictment states regretfully, " would be a chief witness, if he were not in the pay of the police authorities", that is to say, in other words, if he were not a paid police spy. Finally, there was present there, probably out of pure patriotic fanaticism, the 'candidate assessor von Groote", who gives Anneke's speech at the general meeting "in more detail than anyone else, since he wrote it down during the sitting itself.
It is clear that the Cologne authorities were expecting a crime to be committed on June 25 by Gottschalk and his comrades. All arrangements were made by the police to confirm the occurrence of this possible crime. And once the authorities "expect", they do not want to expect in vain.
"The reports" of the police inspectors and other minor assistants officially sent to confirm an expected crime
"gave occasion for the state authorities on July 2 to demand a judicial investigation against Gottschalk and Anneke on account of their inflammatory speeches delivered" (it should say expected) "at that public meeting. Their arrest and the seizure of their papers took place on July 3.
"On July 5, after a number of witnesses had been heard and more detailed information had become available, the investigation was extended to the whole previous activity of the leaders of the Workers' Association and thereby to several members of the latter, especially to the cooper Esser etc. The results of the investigation of the accused relate in part to their speeches in the Workers' Association, in part to their papers and the printed material spread by them".
The real result of the investigation—we shall prove it tomorrow from the text of the indictment itself—is that the movement expected on June 25 was confined to a movement of the authorities — this echo of the Frankfurt movement; that Gottschalk and his comrades have had to atone for the deceived expectation of the authorities on June 25 by undergoing six months' close confinement during examination. Nothing is more dangerous than to deceive the state authority's expectations of earning a medal for saving the fatherland. No one likes to be disappointed in his expectations, least of all the state authority.
If the whole way in which the crime of June 25 was staged shows us the state authority as the sole creator of this crime drama, the text of the indictment enables us to admire the astute versatility by which it spun out the prologue over six months.
We quote word for word from Der Politische Tendenzprozess gegen Gottschalk und Konsorten, published by M. F. Anneke, Publishing House of the Neue Kölnische Zeitung.
"After the investigation had gone on for about five to six weeks, it was declared closed by the Examining Magistrate Leuthaus, who had replaced Herr Geiger, the latter having been promoted to the post of Police Superintendent. Public Prosecutor Hecker, however, after looking through the dossiers, put forward new demands to which the examining magistrate agreed. After about 14 days, the preliminary investigation was closed for the second time. After Herr Hecker had made a fresh study of the dossiers at his leisure, he once more put forward a number of new demands. The examining magistrate did not want to accept them, nor did the Council Chamber. Herr Hecker appealed to the board of prosecuting magistrates and this instance laid down that some of the demands should be allowed, but others rejected. Among the latter, for example, was the demand that on the basis merely of a list of names of persons from all parts of Germany which was found in Anneke's portfolio, all these persons, some 30 or 40 in number, should be subjected to judicial investigation.
"After the investigation had been successfully spun out so far, and could not reasonably be still further extended, the Council Chamber on September 28 ordered the dossiers to be handed over to the board of prosecuting magistrates. The latter confirmed the indictment on October 10, and on October 28 the Prosecutor-General signed the bill of indictment.
"It was therefore luckily too late for this trial to come before the regular quarterly assizes, which had begun on October 9.
"After November 27 an extraordinary session of the assizes was fixed. It was intended that if possible this session also should be missed. The dossiers of the preliminary examination were sent to the Ministry of Justice with the request that the trial should be referred to another court of assizes. However, the Ministry of Justice found no sufficient grounds for this and towards the end of November the accused Gottschalk, Anneke and Esser were finally referred to the extraordinary assiz'es here on December 21."
During this long prologue, the first examining magistrate, Geiger, was promoted to acting Police Superintendent, and Public Prosecutor Hecker to Chief Public Prosecutor. Since Herr Hecker in this last capacity was moved from Cologne to Elberfeld shortly before the beginning of the extraordinary assizes, he will not appear before the jury at the same time as the accused.
[Neue Rheinische Zeitung Ko. 176, December 23, 1848] Cologne, December 22. On what day did the Gürzenich general meeting, which was convened to confirm an "expected" crime, take place? It was on June 25. This was the day of the definitive defeat of the June insurgents in Paris. On what day did the state authorities begin proceedings against Gottschalk and his comrades? It was on July 2, i.e. at the moment when the Prussian bourgeoisie and the Government allied with it at that time, carried away by their thirst for revenge, believed that the time had come to finish off their political opponents. On July 3, Gottschalk and his associates were arrested. On July 4, the present counter-revolutionary Ministry in the person of Ladenberg joined the Hansemann Ministry. On the same day, the Right wing in the Berlin Agreement Assembly ventured on a coup d'état by unceremoniously rejecting in the same sitting, after part of the Left wing had dispersed,[183] a decision regarding Poland which had been adopted by a majority.
These facts are eloquent. We could prove by the testimony of witnesses that on July 3 a "certain" person declared: "The arrest of Gottschalk and his associates has made a favourable impression on the public." It suffices, however, to point to the issues of the Kölnische, the Deutsche, and the Karlsruher Zeitung of the dates mentioned to convince oneself that during those days it was not the "echo" of the imaginary "Frankfurt movement"', but rather the "echo" of "Cavaignac's movement" which resounded a thousandfold in Germany and, among other places, also in Cologne.
Our readers will recall: On June 25 the Cologne authorities "expected" a repercussion of the "Frankfurt movement" on the occasion of the general meeting of the Workers' Association in the Gürzenich Hall. They will recall further that the starting point for the judicial investigation against Gottschalk and his comrades was not any actual crime committed by Gottschalk etc. prior to June 25, but solely the expectation of the authorities that on June 25 at last some palpable crime would be committed.
The expectation in regard to June 25 was disappointed and suddenly June 25, 1848, is transformed into the year 1848. The accused are made responsible for the movement of the year 1848. Gottschalk, Anneke and Esser are charged with
"having in the course of the year 1848" (note the elasticity of this expression) "made a conspiracy in Cologne with the aim of changing and overthrowing the Government concerned and of fomenting a civil war by misleading the citizens into taking up arms against one another, or at any rate" (take note!), "or at any rate by speeches at public meetings, by printed material and posters, having incited to attempts at assassination and suchlike aims".
That is to say, therefore, they are charged with having made a conspiracy, "or at any rate" with not having "made" any conspiracy. But then at any rate "to attempts at assassination and suchlike aims". That is to say, to attempts at assassination or something of the sort! How magnificent the juridical style is!
So it is stated in the board of prosecuting magistrates' decision for committal to trial.
In the conclusion of the indictment itself, mention of conspiracy is dropped and "in accordance with it" Gottschalk, Anneke and Esser are charged with
"having in the course of the year 1848, by speeches at public meetings as well as by printed material, directly incited their fellow citizens to alteration of the Constitution by force, to armed rebellion against the royal power and to the arming of one part of the
69. Refutation
citizens against another, without, however, these incitements having been successful — a crime envisaged in Article 102, in combination with Articles 87 and 91 of the Penal Code".
And why did the authorities in the course of the year 1848 not intervene before July 2?
Incidentally, for the gentlemen to be able to speak of an "alteration of the Constitution by force", they would in the first place have had to furnish proof that a Constitution existed. The Crown has proved the contrary by sending to the devil the Agreement Assembly. If the agreers had been more powerful than the Crown, they would perhaps have conducted the proof in the reverse direction.
As regards the incitement "to armed rebellion against the royal power and to the arming of one part of the citizens against another", the indictment tries to prove it:
1. by speeches of the accused in the course of the year 1848; 2. by unprinted; 3. by printed documents. Ad. 1. The speeches provide the indictment with the following corpus delicti*:
At the sitting of May 29, Esser finds that a "republic" is the "remedy for the suffering of the workers". An incitement to armed rebellion against the royal power! Gottschalk declares that "the reactionaries will bring about the republic". Some workers complain that they do not have enough "to keep body and soul together". Gottschalk replies to them: "You should learn to unite, to distinguish your friends from your disguised enemies, to make yourselves capable of looking after your own affairs."
An obvious incitement to armed rebellion against the royal power and to the arming of one part of the citizens against anotherl
The indictment sums up its proofs in the following words:
"The witnesses who have been examined concerning these earlier meetings, both members and non-members, on the whole speak only in praise of Gottschalk and Anneke, especially the former. He is said to have always warned against excesses, and to have tried to calm rather than incite the masses. In doing so he indeed indicated the republic as the final goal of his efforts, which, however, was to be achieved not by a street riot but only by the majority of the people being won over to the view that there was no salvation except in a republic. As is clearly seen, by thus setting out to undermine gradually the foundations of the existing order, he was understandably often hard put to it to restrain the impatience of the vulgar crowd."
It is precisely because the accused calmed the masses instead of inciting them that they showed clearly their nefarious tendency
Body of the crime.—Ed.
70. The New " Holy Alliance"
gradually to undermine the foundations of the existing order, that is, in a legal way to make a use, objectionable to the authorities, of freedom of the press and the right of association. And that is what the indictment calls: "Incitement to armed rebellion against the royal power and to the arming of one part of the citizens against another" !!!
Finally comes the general meeting of June 25, which was "expected" by the authorities. In regard to it, the indictment says: "detailed testimonies are available". And what results from these detailed testimonies?—That Gottschalk made a report on the Frankfurt events; that the union of the three democratic associations in Cologne was discussed,[184] and that Gottschalk delivered a "concluding speech", which especially attracted the attention of Maltheser and the candidate assessor von Groote, and ended with the "point": "To go on waiting requires more courage than to strike at random. One must wait until the reaction takes a step which results in pressure for the proclamation of a republic." Obvious incitement to armed rebellion against the royal power and to the arming of one part of the citizens against another!!!
As far as Anneke is concerned, according to the indictment
" there is nothing more against him than that, in the debate on the union of the three associations" (the three democratic associations of Cologne), "he spoke very vigorously for this union, addressing the meeting also as republican citizens".
A speech in favour of the "union" of the three democratic associations of Cologne is obviously "incitement to the arming of one part of the citizens against another"!
And the mode of address as "republican citizens"! Herren Maltheser and von Groote might have felt themselves insulted by this mode of address. But does not General von Drigalski address himself and the citizens of Düsseldorf as "communist citizens"?
Looking at this net product of the "expected" general meeting of June 25, one can understand that the state authority had to take refuge in the course of the year 1848, and that is what it did by acquiring information about the movement in this year through the seizure of letters and printed documents; for example, it confiscated three issues of the Arbeiter-Zeitung which could be bought for four pfennigs a copy in any street.
From the letters, however, it became convinced of the "political fanaticism" prevailing in Germany in the year 1848. A letter of Professor Karl Henkel from Marburg to Gottschalk seemed to it particularly "fanatical". To punish him it denounced this letter to the Hesse Government and had the satisfaction that a judicial investigation would be instituted against him.
8-3780 But the final result derived from the letters and printed documents is that in 1848 fanaticism of all kinds was at work in people's minds and on paper, and in general events took place which resembled as closely as one egg does another "armed rebellion against the royal power and the arming of one part of the citizens against another".
Gottschalk and his comrades, however, were busily occupied with all this, whereas the state authority only became aware -of the "repercussion" of this astonishing movement through confiscating the printed documents and letters of the accused![185]
Written by Marx on December 21 and 22, 1848
THE PRUSSIAN COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND THE PRUSSIAN JUDICIARY[186]
71. The Revolutionary Movement
June, November and December of 1848 are gigantic milestones on the path to the disenchantment and disintoxication of the minds of the European peoples.
High in the list of the last illusions which keep the German people in chains is its superstitious faith in the judiciary.
The prosaic north wind of the Prussian counter-revolution has blighted also this flower of the people's imagination, whose true Motherland is Italy — eternal Rome.
The actions and statements of the Rhenish Court of Appeal, of the Supreme Court of Berlin, and of the Courts of Appeal of Munster, Bromberg and Ratibor, against Esser, Waldeck, Temme, Kirchmann and Gierke prove once again that the French Convention is and remains the beacon for all revolutionary epochs. It inaugurated the revolution by means of a decree dismissing all officials. Judges, too, are nothing but officials, as the above-mentioned courts have testified before the whole of Europe. Turkish kadis and Chinese collegiums of mandarins can countersign without qualms the most recent decrees of those "high" courts against their colleagues.
Our readers already know the decrees of the Berlin Supreme Court and of the Ratibor Court of Appeal. Today we are concerned with the Münster Court of Appeal.[187]
8* First of all, however, a few words more about the Rhenish Court of Appeal, the summus pontifex[3] of Rhenish jurisprudence, which has its seat in Berlin.
As is well known, the Rhenish jurists (with a few honourable exceptions) found nothing more urgent to do in the Prussian Agreement Assembly than to cure the Prussian Government of its old prejudice and old resentment. They proved to that Government in fact that their previous opposition merely signified as much as the opposition of the French parliament before 1789[188]—the obstinate and would-be liberal assertion of guild interests. Like the liberal members of the French National Assembly of 1789, so the liberal Rhenish jurists in the Prussian National Assembly of 1848 were the worthiest of the worthy in the army of servility. The Rhenish-Prussian prosecuting magistrates outdid the old-Prussian inquisitorial judges in "political fanaticism". The Rhenish jurists had, of course, to maintain their reputation also after the dissolution of the Agreement Assembly. Thought of the laurels of the old-Prussian Supreme Court prevented the Rhenish-Prussian Court of Appeal from sleeping. Its chief presiding judge Sethe sent to judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal Esser (not to be confused with the "well-meaning" Cologne "Essers"b) a letter similar to that of the presiding judge of the Supreme Court Mühler to judge of the Secret Supreme Court Waldeck[189] But the Rhenish-Prussian court was able to go one better than the old-Prussian court. The presiding judge of the Rhenish Court of Appeal0 played a trump card against his competitors by committing the treacherous rudeness of informing the Berlin public of the letter to Herr Esser in the Deutsche Reform,0
before he had communicated it to Herr Esser himself. We are convinced that the entire Rhine Province will reply to Herr Sethe's letter by a monster address to our worthy veteran countryman, Herr Esser.
Not something is rotten in the "state of Denmark",[6] but everything. Now for Münsterl Our readers have already heard of the protest of the Court of Appeal in Münster against the reappointment of its director Temme.
The matter can be summarised as follows: The Ministry of the counter-revolution had, directly or indirectly, insinuated to the Secret Supreme Court, the Rhenish Court of Appeal, and the Courts of Appeal in Bromberg, Ratibor and Münster, that the King* would view with extreme disfavour the return of
Waldeck, Esser, Gierke, Kirchmann and Temme to their high judicial posts, because they had continued to attend the Assembly in Berlin and had participated in the decision to refuse to pay taxes. So would those courts protest against it.
All the high courts (at the outset the Rhenish Court of Appeal vacillated; great artists achieve their successes not by being the first but by being the last to perform) accepted this suggestion and sent protests from and to Berlin. The Münster Court of Appeal was stupid enough to address directly to the King (the so-called constitutional King) a protest against Temme, which states word for word
"that by participation in the illegal sittings of a faction of the adjourned National Assembly he had put himself in open rebellion against His Majesty's Government and by taking part in voting in favour of the motion on refusing to pay taxes he had taken the path of revolution and tried to hurl the fire-brand of anarchy into the fatherland",
and which then continues:
"It is contrary to our sense of justice, to the demands of the public for integrity on the part of the director of a provincial collegium of magistrates, and to the responsibilities of the latter concerning the training of young law officers and his position in relation to the junior officials of courts, that after such events the aforesaid Temme should retain his official position in the collegium here. Therefore, Your Majesty, we feel compelled by our consciences most humbly to express the urgent desire to see ourselves freed from official relation to director Temme."
The address is signed by the whole collegium except for one member, a brother-in-law of Minister of Justice Rintelen.
On December 18, this Minister of Justice sent Herr Temme in Münster a copy of this address "for his decision", after Temme had already resumed his post here without opposition from the cowards.
During the morning of December 19, as the Düsseldorfer Zeitung reports, Temme appeared for the first time in a plenary sitting of the provincial Court of Appeal and took his seat as director beside deputy chief presiding judge von Olfers. As soon as the sitting began, he asked to speak and in brief said approximately the following:
"He had received a rescript from the Minister of Justice with a copied enclosure. This enclosure contained a petition of the 'high collegium', to which he now had the honour to belong, protesting against his reinstatement in his post. The Minister of Justice had sent him this petition for his information and 'for him to take a
72. Swiss-Italian Affairs
decision accordingly'. The protest of the 'high collegium' was obviously based on his political activity; but of this as in general of his political views, he did not intend to speak here, for he did not have to defend them before the 'high collegium'. Further, as far as his 'decision' was concerned, he had already given effect to it by taking his seat here as director, and he could assure the 'high collegium' that he would not vacate it until judgment and law compelled him to do so. Moreover, he was not of the opinion that the collégial relationship should be upset by the diversity of political views; for his part at least that would be avoided as far as possible."[3]
The worthiest of the worthy were thunderstruck. They sat there dumb, motionless, like stone figures, as if a Medusa's head had been hurled into the collegium of mandarins.
The worthy Court of Appeal in Münster! In its professional zeal it has caused numerous people to be questioned and arrested because they wanted the decision of the National Assembly on the refusal to pay taxes to be carried out. By its statement about Herr Temme, which had even been addressed directly to the throne, the worthy provincial Court of Appeal has formed itself into — a party and pronounced a prejudiced opinion, and therefore it is impossible for it any longer to play the role of judge in relation to another party.
It will be recalled that the alleged coercion of the Prussian National Assembly by the Berlin mob was used as the pretext for the first coup d'état of the Brandenburg Ministry.[190] In order not to exercise any coercion against the deputies, the Ministry continued the "wild chase"[191] begun against them in Berlin, even after the deputies had returned to their homes!
Minister of Justice Rintelen states in his decree, which we reprint further below:
"The illusion deliberately fostered by many persons, that the hitherto existing criminal laws, particularly those concerned with crimes against the state, are no longer valid since March of this year, has greatly contributed to increase anarchy and has perhaps also had a dangerous influence on individual courts."
Most of the actions of Herr Rintelen and of the courts under his jurisdiction provide further proof that since the forcible dissolution of the National Assembly only one law continues to be valid in Prussia, the arbitrary will of the Berlin camarilla.
On March 29, 1844, the Prussian Government promulgated the notorious disciplinary law against the judges,(1) by which, through a mere decision of the Ministry, they could be deprived of their posts, moved or pensioned off. The last United Diet[19] abolished this law and restored the validity of the fundamental principle that judges could be dismissed, moved or pensioned off only by a lawfully delivered judgment.[3] The imposed Constitution confirms this principle. Are not these laws being trampled under foot by the courts which, in accordance with the prescription of the Minister of Justice, Rintelen, want by moral compulsion to drive their politically compro-mised colleagues into giving up their posts? Are not these courts turning themselves into an officer corps which casts out any member whose political views do not suit its royal Prussian "honour"'}
And is there not also a law on the non-liability and inviolability of the people's representatives}
Hot air and empty sound! If the Prussian Constitution had not annulled itself already by its own articles and the manner of its origin, it would be annulled owing to the simple fact that its ultimate guarantor is the Supreme Court of Berlin. The Constitution is guaranteed by the responsibility of the Ministers, and the non-liability of the Ministers is guaranteed by the court that has been granted to them, which is no other than the Supreme Court in Berlin, the classical representative of which is Herr Mühler.
The most recent rescripts of the Supreme Court, therefore, are neither more nor less than the obvious cassation of the imposed Constitution.
In Austria, owing to the Government's direct threats to plunder the bank,[193] which the Viennese people left untouched at the time of its greatest and most justified resentment against financial feudalism, the bourgeoisie realises that its betrayal of the proletariat surrendered precisely what this betrayal was intended to safeguard—bourgeois property. In Prussia, the bourgeoisie sees that, owing to its cowardly trust in the Government and its treacherous distrust of the people, the indispensable guarantee of bourgeois property—bourgeois administration of justice—is threatened.
With the dependent state of the judiciary, the bourgeois administration of justice itself becomes dependent on the Government; that is to say, bourgeois law itself is replaced by the arbitrary action of officials. La bourgeoisie sera punie, par où elle a péché—the bourgeoisie will be punished by that in which it has sinned — by the Government. That the servile statements of the highest Prussian courts are only the first symptoms of the approaching absolutist
Endnotes
[125] The reference is to the treaty (drawn up by the Swiss Diet in 1814 and approved by the Vienna Congress in 1815) which acknowledged Switzerland's permanent neutrality. Under this treaty the Swiss Confederation was defined as a federation of 22 cantons. When a Constitution was introduced in 1848, this treaty became invalid.
[126] Concerning the position of Escher and Munzinger as the representatives of the Berne canton in Tessin during the so-called Tessin conflict, see Note 36.
[127] In 1848-49 moderate bourgeois constitutionalists in Germany called the republican democrats ''agitators" ( Wühler) and these in turn called their opponents "waiters" (Heuler).
[129] however, preferred their own candidate, Raspail, a well-known scientist and revolutionary with communist views. Proudhon's followers, grouped round his newspaper Le Peuple, also supported Raspail. The differences between the supporters of these two candidates revealed the internal contradictions among the revolutionary democrats. To characterise these differences Engels made use of the material published in the French democratic and socialist periodicals, in particular, the article "Encore et toujours la présidence" in La Réforme, November 14, 1848, and the leading article in La Révolution démocratique et sociale No. 10, November 10, 1848.
[2] By the " theory of agreement' { Vereinbarungstheorie) the Prussian liberal bourgeoisie sought to justify its policy of compromise in the revolution. The "agreement theory" meant that the Prussian National Assembly convened in May 1848 was to draft a Constitution and introduce a constitutional system, not on the basis of its sovereign and constitutive rights, but "by agreement with the Crown". By accepting this formula, which was advanced by the Camphausen-Hansemann Government, the Assembly's liberal majority in fact abandoned the principle of popular sovereignty and gave freedom of action to the counter-revolutionaries who wanted to restore the absolute power of the King. Beginning with the early issues of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Marx and Engels sharply criticised the "theory of agreement" calling its supporters "agreers" and the Berlin Assembly — the "Agreement Assembly". They warned that this theory would only serve the King as a screen for preparing a counter-revolutionary coup d'état and the forcible dissolution of the Assembly.
[130] By the "pure" (or tricolour) republicans are meant members of the National party (see Note 101).
[131] See Note 104.
[5] An allusion to General Pfuel's participation in the suppression of the national liberation uprising in Posen, a duchy under Prussia's rule, which took place in the spring of 1848. On his orders the insurgents who had been taken prisoner had their heads shaved and their hands and ears branded with lunar caustic (in German Höllenstein, i.e. stone of hell); hence his nickname "von Höllenstein".
[135] For the revolutionary events in Paris on May 15, 1848, see Note 117. The June insurrection—the proletarian uprising in Paris on June 23-26, 1848 (see present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 124-28 and 130-64). Equitable Labour Exchange Bazaars or Offices (the name is given in English in the German original) were founded by the workers' co-operative societies in various towns of England in 1832. This movement was headed by Robert Owen, who founded such a bazaar in London. The products of labour at these bazaars were exchanged for a kind of paper "money" issued as labour "tickets", a working hour being the unit. These bazaars were an attempt by the Utopians to organise exchange without money in the conditions of capitalist commodity production and soon proved to be a failure. Concerning this speech of Proudhon's in the French National (Constituent) Assembly on July 31, 1848, see the article "Proudhon's Speech against Thiers" published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 321-24). The royal order dissolving the Prussian National Assembly was issued on December 5, 1848. In the Ministry's explanation accompanying the order the Assembly was accused of having disregarded the royal decree of November 8 ordering it to move from Berlin to Brandenburg, a measure allegedly designed "to protect the deputies' freedom of deliberation from the anarchistic movements in the capital and their terroristic influences". The imposed Constitution came into force on December 5, 1848, simultaneously with the dissolution of the Assembly. This Constitution provided for a two-Chamber parliament. By means of age and property qualifications the First Chamber was made a privileged "Chamber of the Gentry", while under the electoral law of December 6, 1848, a considerable part of the working people was excluded from the two-stage election to the Second Chamber. According to this Constitution, in case of war or "disorders" "guarantees" of personal freedom, inviolability of the home, freedom of the press, assembly and association etc. were suspended. Wide powers were assumed by the King: he had the right to convene or dissolve the Chambers, to appoint Ministers, to declare war or conclude peace; he had the executive power entirely in his hands, while sharing the legislative power with the Chambers. All this, together with the direct proviso that the King could review the Constitution on his own initiative, played into the hands of the counter-revolutionaries.
[136] See Note 2.
[138] See Note 135.
[139] The Vorort — see Note 36. Concerning the Struve campaign see Note 84.
[140] See Note 9.
[141] See Note 10.
[142] See Note 10.
[143] The reference is to the anti-constitutional coup d'état in the Wallis (Valais) canton in May 1844, when the Upper Wallis opponents of bourgeois reforms, instigated by the Jesuits and the clergy, overthrew the liberal Government and annulled the cantonal Constitution of 1840. In a battle at Pont-de-Trient on May 21, 1,500 men of Lower Wallis headed by Maurice Barman were defeated by the 8,000-strong army of General Kalbermatten. With the change of government the Wallis canton joined the Sonderbund (see Note 10) in June 1844.
[144] In October 1848 there was an uprising in North Lombardy (Veltlin and other places) against the Austrian occupation troops of Radetzky. Giuseppe Mazzini, who had emigrated to Switzerland after Milan was occupied by the Austrians in September 1848, issued an appeal to the insurgents and tried to help them by organising an expedition of Italian refugees who had settled in the Swiss frontier canton of Tessin. Crossing the frontier at Valle Intelvi the members of the expedition joined the insurgents, but the uprising was soon crushed and the surviving refugees returned to Switzerland. This provided Radetzky with a pretext for demanding from the Swiss Government the deportation of all Italian refugees, but the Tessin authorities refused to satisfy this demand. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung published a number of reports on the course of the uprising in Lombardy (in the section "Italy").
[146] 4 Below Marx quotes "Decision on Some Principles of the Future Prussian Constitution" ("Verordnung über einige Grundlagen der künftigen Preussischen Verfassung") and the electoral law for the convocation of the National Assembly adopted by the Second United Diet (see Note 89) on April 6 and 8, 1848. Both documents were published in the book Verhandlungen des zum 2. April 1848 zusammenberufenen Vereinigten Landtages, zusammengestellt von E. Bleich, Berlin, 1848.
[147] This refers to the Constitution imposed by the Prussian King on December 5, 1848, simultaneously with the publication of the order dissolving the Prussian National Assembly (see Note 135).
[148] See Note 2.
[155] An allusion to Camphausen, who was formerly an oil and corn dealer, and to Hansemann, who started as a wool merchant.
[156] Early in June 1848, the Prussian National Assembly, under pressure from the Government and the moderate constitutionalists, rejected a resolution giving due credit to the participants in the revolution of March 18-19, 1848, in Prussia. After long debates (described by Engels in his article "The Berlin Debate on the Revolution", present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 73-86), the Assembly decided by a majority vote to proceed to the next items on the agenda. The Assembly's renunciation of the March revolution aroused the indignation of the Berlin workers and artisans who, on June 14, took the arsenal by storm to arm themselves and defend their revolutionary gains. The uprising was put down by the army and the bourgeois civic militia.
[157] Marx refers here to the numerous promises of the kings of Prussia to introduce a Constitution and representative bodies in the country. On May 22, 1815, a decree was issued by the King in which he promised the setting up of provincial diets of estates, the convocation of an all-Prussia representative body, and a Constitution. Under the National Debt Law of January 17, 1820, state loans could only be issued with the consent of the provincial diets. But these promises made under pressure from the bourgeois opposition movement remained a dead letter. All that happened was that a law of June 5, 1823, established provincial diets with restricted advisory functions. Financial difficulties compelled Frederick William IV on February 3, 1847, to issue an edict convening the United Diet ( Vereinigte Landtag), a body consisting of representatives of all the provincial diets of Prussia. The United Diet refused to grant a loan to the Government and was soon dissolved. The electoral law of April 8, 1848 (Marx quotes it above, on p. 154 of this volume), promulgated as a result of the March revolution, provided for the convocation of an Assembly to draft a Constitution by "agreement with the Crown". The two-stage system of voting established by this law secured the majority for the representatives of the bourgeoisie and the Prussian officials.
[158] By Prussian Law is meant the Allgemeines Landrecht für die Preussischen Staaten approved and published in 1794. It included the criminal, constitutional, civil, administrative and ecclesiastical law and was strongly influenced by feudal ideas in the sphere of jurisdiction. Code pénal—see Note 88. Constables—see Note 45.
[159] On August 21, 1848, Berlin was the scene of mass meetings and demonstrations in protest against attacks on members of the Democratic Club by reactionaries in Charlottenburg, a Berlin suburb. The demonstrators, who demanded the resignation of the Auerswald-Hansemann Ministry, threw stones at the building where Auerswald and other Ministers were staying. The Government replied to the August events with fresh repressive measures.
[160] The Belgian Constitution of 1831 adopted after the victory of the bourgeois revolution of 1830 established a high property qualification, thus depriving a considerable part of the population of the suffrage.
[161] The reference is to the Preussische Seehandlungsgesellschaft (the Prussian Maritime Trading Company)—a trade and credit society, founded in 1772 and enjoying a number of important state privileges. It granted large credits to the Government and actually played the part of its banker and broker. In 1904 it was made the official Prussian state bank.
[162] A Bill abrogating exemption from graduated tax payments for the nobility, officers, teachers and the clergy was submitted by Hansemann to the Prussian National Assembly on July 12, 1848. A Bill abrogating exemption from the land tax was tabled on July 21, 1848.
[163] At the sitting of the Prussian National Assembly on July 21, 1848, the Bill introduced on the basis of Deputy Hanow's motion of June 3, 1848, was voted down and considered for the second time on September 30. Accepted this time, the Bill was approved by the King on October 9.
[164] Nenstiel's motion was introduced as early as June 2, 1848, and the decision mentioned by Marx, which in effect postponed indefinitely the abolition of peasant labour services, was adopted on September 1, 1848.
[165] The reference is to the Congress of big landowners which met in Berlin on August 18, 1848. It was convoked by the leaders of the Association for the Protection of Property and the Advancement of the Weil-Being of All Classes of the Prussian People. The Congress changed the name of the Association to: Association for the Protection of the Interests of Landowners; the Congress became known as the "Landowners' Parliament".
[166] On July 31, 1848, the garrison of the Silesian fortress of Schweidnitz fired at a demonstration of the civic militia and local population protesting against the provocative actions of the military; 14 people were killed and 32 seriously wounded. The Schweidnitz events served as a pretext for a discussion of the situation in the army by the Prussian National Assembly. On August 9, 1848, the Assembly adopted the proposal of Deputy Stein, with amendments by Deputy Schultze, requesting the Minister of War to issue an army order to the effect that officers opposed to the constitutional system were bound in honour to resign from the army. Despite the Assembly's decision Schreckenstein, the Minister of War, did not issue any such order. Stein therefore tabled his motion for the second time at the sitting of the National Assembly on September 7, 1848. As a result of the voting, the Auerswald-Hansemann Ministry had to resign. Under the Pfuel Ministry which followed, the order, though in a milder form, was at last issued on September 26, but this also remained a dead letter. Earlier, on September 17, General Wrangel issued an army order which made it clear that the military intended to launch an open offensive against the revolution. It urged the maintenance of "public order", threatened those "who were trying to entice the people to commit unlawful acts", and called upon the soldiers to rally round their officers and the King.
[168] Article 14 of the Constitutional Charter Louis XVIII granted in 1814 read: "The King is the head of the state."
[169] Magna Charta Libertatum—the charter which the insurgent barons forced King John of England to sign in 1215. It limited the powers of the King in the interests of the feudal lords, and also contained some concessions to the knights and burghers.
[170] An allusion to the attempts made by the European counter-revolutionary forces in 1848-49 to restore the Holy Alliance, a league of European monarchs set up in 1815 on the initiative of Austrian Chancellor Metternich and Russian Tsar Alexander I to put down the revolutionary movement.
[171] See Note 84.
[172] The reference is to the agreements concluded from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century between Swiss cantons and European states for the supply of Swiss mercenaries. In many West-European countries the mercenaries were used by the counter-revolutionary monarchist forces.
[173] The King's guard consisting of Swiss mercenaries and lazzaroni (see Note 25) took an active part in suppressing the popular uprising in Naples on May 15, 1848 (see Note 118). Lazzaroni and soldiers broke into the houses of the people of Naples, including foreigners, looted them and committed violence.
[174] Burghers' communes (Bürgergemeinden) came into being at the end of the Middle Ages. They granted their members certain economic and political privileges including exemption from a number of duties and tax payments, the right to use the commune's property and advantages in filling lucrative government offices. One became a member of the commune either by birth or by living in a given place for a definite period of time and possessing immovable property, or by paying an admission fee. In the course of time it became more and more difficult to enter a commune, which led to the division of the Swiss population into citizens (Bürger) and residents (Einwohner), the latter being deprived of the above-named privileges. Within the burghers' commune there appeared a still closer corporation of representatives of the old patrician families who in fact established a monopoly of practically all the major government posts. Abolition of the privileges of the burghers' commune began during the Helvetian Republic in 1798-99, when all the Swiss were made equal in rights and political power was transferred to the residents' commune (Einwohnergemeinde), which was declared to be the holder of sovereignty in the name of the entire nation. The Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 enlarged still more the rights of the residents' commune while the burghers' commune only retained philanthropic functions and power over its own property. This address was written by Engels, as a member of the Central Commission, on the instructions of the First Congress of the German Workers' Associations in Switzerland which took place in Berne between December 9 and 11, 1848. The Congress was attended by representatives from democratic and workers' associations in a number of Swiss towns. It adopted the rules of the Union of German Associations of Switzerland. In accordance with these rules, a Central
[175] Association (the Berne Workers' Association was elected as such) was to be at the head of the Union, and current leadership was to be exercised by a Central Commission consisting of five members. Engels was a member of the Commission elected on December 14. Differences arose at the sitting on December 10 when the Congress discussed the question of the attitude towards the March Association. A delegate of the Berne Association spoke against establishing contacts with this non-republican organisation. Nevertheless, the majority of delegates were in favour of an address proposing to the March Association to keep up correspondence. The text of the address was approved by the Congress on December 11. When Engels compiled it he had to take into account the Congress decision. However, in the text of the address written in the name of the Central Commission he managed to reflect the views of the proletarian revolutionaries who regarded this Association only as a fellow traveller in the German revolution and thought that co-operation with it was possible only within strict limits. The March Association, which had branches in various towns of Germany, was founded in Frankfurt am Main at the end of November 1848 by the Left-wing deputies of the Frankfurt National Assembly. Fröbel, Simon, Rüge, Vogt and other petty-bourgeois democratic leaders of the March associations, thus named after the March 1848 revolution in Germany, confined themselves to revolutionary phrase-mongering and showed indecision and inconsistency in the struggle against the counter-revolutionaries, for which Marx and Engels sharply criticised them.
[176] By 1848, the Berne Association became one of the biggest and most influential German workers' associations in Switzerland. Its members held democratic republican views and were considerably influenced by Weiding and Stephan Born. It disintegrated in the spring of 1849.
[177] According to Article 1 of the Rules of the Union of German Associations in Switzerland adopted at the Berne Congress, the aim of the new organisation was "to educate members of the Union in the socio-democratic and republican spirit and use all legal means at its disposal so that socio-democratic and republican principles and institutions would be acknowledged by the Germans and put into practice".
[179] The so-called Risquons-Tout trial, held in Antwerp from August 9 to 30, 1848, was a fabrication of the Government of Leopold, King of the Belgians, against the democrats. The pretext was a clash which took place on March 29, 1848, between the Belgian republican legion bound for home from France and a detachment of soldiers near the village of Risquons-Tout not far from the French border. The bill of indictment was published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 45, July 15, 1848, No. 47, July 17, 1848, No. 49 and in the supplement to this issue, July 19, 1848. Mellinet, Ballin, Tedesco and other main accused were sentenced to death, but this was commuted to 30 years imprisonment; later they were pardoned. See Engels' article "The Antwerp Death Sentences" in Vol. 7 of the present edition, pp. 404-06. The Cologne Workers' Association (Kölner Arbeiterverein)—a workers' organisation founded by Andreas Gottschalk on April 13, 1848. The initial membership of 300 had increased to 5,000 by early May, the majority being workers and artisans. The Association was headed by a President and a committee consisting of représenta-tives of various trades. The Zeitung des Arbeiter-Vereines zu Köln was the Association's newspaper, but on October 26 it was replaced by the Freiheit, Brüderlichkeit, Arbeit. There were a number of branches. After Gottschalk's arrest Moll was elected President on July 6 and he held this post till the state of siege was proclaimed in Cologne in September 1848, when he had to emigrate under threat of arrest. On October 16, Marx agreed to assume temporary presidency at the request of the Association members. In November Röser began to fulfil the duties of President, and on February 28, 1849, Schapper was elected to the post and remained in it until the end of May 1849. The majority of the leading members (Gottschalk, Anneke, Schapper, Moll, Lessner, Jansen, Röser, Nothjung, Bedorf) were members of the Communist League. During the initial period of its existence, the Workers' Association was influenced by Gottschalk, who shared many of the views of the "true socialists", ignored the historical tasks of the proletariat in the democratic revolution, pursued sectarian tactics of boycotting indirect elections to the German and Prussian National Assemblies and came out against support of democratic candidates in elections. He combined ultra-Left phrases with very moderate methods of struggle (workers' petitions to the Government and the City Council etc.), and supported the demands of the workers affected by artisan prejudices etc. From the very beginning, Gottschalk's sectarian tactics were resisted by the supporters of Marx and Engels. At the end of June under their influence a change took place in the activities of the Workers' Association, which became a centre of revolutionary agitation among the workers, and from the autumn of 1848, also among the peasants. Members of the Association organised democratic and workers' associations in the vicinity of Cologne and disseminated revolutionary publications, including the "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany". They carried on among themselves education in scientific communism through the study of Marx's writings. The Association maintained close contact with other workers' and democratic organisations. With a view to strengthening the Association Marx, Schapper and other leaders reorganised it in January and February 1849. On February 25, new Rules were adopted according to which the main task of the Association was to raise the workers' class and political consciousness. When in the spring of 1849 Marx and Engels took steps to organise the advanced workers on a national scale and actually started preparing for the creation of a proletarian party, they relied to a considerable extent on the Cologne Workers' Association. The mounting counter-revolution and intensified police reprisals prevented further activities of the Cologne Workers' Association to unite and organise the working masses. After the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ceased publication and Marx, Schapper and other leaders of the Association left Cologne, it gradually turned into an ordinary workers' educational society.
[180] The reference is to the trial of A. Brocker-Evererts, owner of the printshop which printed the Zeitung des Arbeiter-Vereines zu Köln (published from April to October 1848 and edited first by Andreas Gottschalk and from July to September by Joseph Moll). The trial took place on October 24, 1848. Brocker-Evererts was accused of printing in issues 12 and 13 of the newspaper (July 6 and 9, 1848) the articles "Arrest of Dr. Gottschalk and Anneke" and "Arrests in Cologne" insulting Chief Public Prosecutor Zweiffel and the police. The jury sentenced him to a month's imprisonment and laid down that if the newspaper resumed 183 184 185 187 188 publication he would have to pay a big fine. Beginning from October 26 the Cologne Workers' Association published the newspaper Freiheit, Brüderlichkeit, Arbeit
[18] 1 The Emperor Charles V is said to have ordered his own funeral to be performed and to have taken part in the burial service shordy before his death.
[182] The First Democratic Congress was held in Frankfurt am Main from June 14 to 17, 1848. It was attended by delegates of 89 democratic and workers' associations from different towns in Germany. The Congress decided to unite all democratic associations and to set up district committees headed by a Central Committee of German Democrats with its headquarters in Berlin. Fröbel, Rau and Kriege were elected to the Central Committee and Bairhoffer, Schütte and Anneke their deputies. However, due to the weakness and vacillations of the petty-bourgeois leaders, even after the Congress the democratic movement in Germany still lacked unity and organisation.
[183] At the close of its sitting on July 4, 1848, the Prussian National Assembly decided to grant unlimited powers to the committee investigating the Posen events (see Note 151). In violation of parliamentary rules, the Right attempted to have a motion voted to limit the committee's powers. The Left walked out of the Assembly in protest and the Right took advantage of this and carried a motion prohibiting the committee from travelling to Posen and interrogating witnesses and experts on the spot, thereby unlawfully annulling the Assembly's original decision. This incident is described in Engels' article "The Agreement Session of July 4" (present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 200-07).
[184] Concerning the union of the three democratic associations in Cologne — the Democratic Society, the Workers' Association and the Association for Workers and Employers — see Note 40.
[185] After keeping Gottschalk and Anneke in prison for almost six months, the authorities were compelled to release them when the assizes acquitted them on December 23, 1848.
[186] An excerpt from this article was first published in English under the title "The Prussian Counter-Revolution and the Judiciary" in the collection: Karl Marx, On Revolution, ed. by S. K. Padover, New York, 1971.
[187] The report on the decisions of the Courts of Appeal in Ratibor (Raciborz), Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) and Münster and the decision of the Berlin Supreme Court were printed in the Neue Rheinische ZeitungNo. 174, December 21, 1848.
[188] French parliaments—judicial institutions which arose in the Middle Ages. The Paris Parliament was the supreme appeal body and at the same time performed important executive and political functions, such as the registration of royal decrees, without which they had no legal force, etc. The parliaments enjoyed the right to remonstrate government decrees. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries their members were officials of high birth, representatives of the so-called silk gown nobility. The parliaments, which finally became the bulwark of Right opposition to absolutism and impeded the implementation of even moderate reforms, were abolished in 1790, during the French Revolution.
[189] The reference is to the edict of the Berlin Supreme Court of December 16, 1848, signed by Mühler and published in the Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger No. 229 on December 19, 1848.
[190] The reference is to the transfer of the sittings of the Prussian National Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg. This was the beginning of a counter-revolutionary coup d'état in Prussia which ended with the dissolution of the National Assembly and imposition of a Constitution by the King.
[191] An allusion to a German legend according to which the souls of the dead, led by the "wild hunter", fly about shrieking fearfully at night. People who meet these ghosts are doomed to wander with them for ever.
[19] The criminal code of Charles V (Constitutio criminalis Carolina), adopted by the Imperial Diet in Regensburg in 1532, was notorious for its extremely cruel penalties.
[193] In December 1848, the counter-revolutionary Austrian Government was not supported by the Imperial Diet on the question of the compulsory loan and asked the bank for a loan. However, it succeeded in obtaining a loan only after threatening the bank with confiscation of all its ready cash.
[3] This article, as well as a number of other reports below, was written by Engels during his forced stay in Switzerland. On September 26, 1848, a state of siege was declared in Cologne and an order was issued for the arrest of some of the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, including Engels. Engels emigrated from Prussia to Belgium, where he was arrested by the Brussels police and on October 4 deported to France. After a short stay in Paris Engels went on foot to Switzerland (see his travel notes "From Paris to Berne" in Vol. 7 of the present edition, pp. 507-29). About November 9 Engels arrived in Berne via Geneva and Lausanne and remained there until January 1849. While in emigration he regularly sent to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung articles and various items of information.
[1] Marx's article "The Crisis in Berlin" and his series of articles "Counter-Revolution in Berlin" were written in response to the first moves in the counter-revolutionary coup d'état in Prussia. On November 1, 1848, Frederick William IV dismissed the moderate liberal Pfuel Ministry, and an openly counter-revolutionary Ministry headed by Brandenburg and Manteuffel was formed. On November 9 a royal decree transferred the Prussian National Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg, a small provincial town. This was the beginning of the coup d'état which ended with the dissolution of the Assembly on December 5, 1848. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung, under Marx's editorship, started a campaign to mobilise the people against the counter-revolution. In English this article was first published in the collection: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Articles from the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung". 1848-49, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was founded by Marx as a militant organ intended to reach and to influence the masses and, by their ideological and political education and consolidation, to prepare the ground for a mass party of the German proletariat. At the same time, it served to direct the activities of the Communist League which Marx and Engels founded in 1847 and regarded as the embryo of the future proletarian party. At the peak of the 1848 revolution, the League itself was too weak and numerically small to immediately rally the workers. There was no point in secret activity during the revolution, and Marx and Engels instructed League members throughout Germany to use the legal opportunities afforded by joining the workers' associations and democratic societies which were being formed. In the situation that had arisen only a proletarian revolutionary newspaper could direct and co-ordinate the activities of Communist League members and mobilise the masses to carry through the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. It was decided to publish the newspaper in Cologne, the capital of the Rhine Province, one of the most economically and politically advanced regions in Germany (here there were considerable cadres of the proletariat, and the Code Napoleon which was in force provided for greater freedom of the press than Prussian Law). The newspaper was given the name of Neue Rheinische Zeitung to emphasise that it was to continue the revolutionary-democratic traditions of the Rheinische Zeitung edited by Marx in 1842 and 1843. Taking account of the specific circumstances, with no independent mass workers' party in Germany, Marx, Engels and their followers entered the political scene as the Left, actually proletarian, wing of the democratic movement. This determined the stand of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which began to appear under the subtitle Organ der Demokratie (Organ of Democracy). The first issue of the newspaper appeared in the evening of May 31, 1848, and was dated June 1. The editorial board consisted of Karl Marx (editor-in-chief), Heinrich Bürgers, Ernst Dronke, Georg Weerth, Ferdinand and Wilhelm Wolff and Frederick Engels, joined in October 1848 by the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath. All the editors were members of the Communist League. The editorial board was known for its unanimity of views, smooth working and precise division of functions. Besides reading and answering letters and helping the editor-in-chief, each member had to deal with a definite range of questions. The editorial board had its correspondents in different parts of Germany and abroad. It established regular contacts with a number of democratic periodicals in other countries. As a rule, Marx and Engels wrote the editorials formulating the newspaper's stand on the most important questions of the revolution. These were marked "* Köln" or "** Köln". Sometimes editorial articles marked with one asterisk were printed in other sections under the heading of News from Italy, France, Hungary, Switzerland and other countries. In addition to editorials, Engels wrote articles on other subjects, including the course of the revolutionary liberation movement in Italy, the revolutionary war in Hungary, the political life of Switzerland, and so on. Wilhelm Wolff contributed articles on the agrarian question, on the condition of the peasants and the peasant movement, particularly in Silesia. He was also responsible for the current events section. Georg Weerth wrote feuilletons and Ernst Dronke contributed various reports (including reports from Paris). The only article which Heinrich Bürgers wrote for the Neue Rheinische Zeitungv/as practically rewritten by Marx. He was more successful as the newspaper's representative at workers' meetings. Freiligrath published his revolutionary poems in the newspaper. The Neue Rheinische Zeitungv/as a daily (from September 1848 it appeared every day except Monday). On some days a second edition was put out in order to supply the readers with prompt information on all the most important revolutionary developments in Germany and Europe; supplements were printed when there was too much material for the four pages of the issue, and special supplements and special editions in the form of leaflets carried the latest and most important news. Even in the first months of the newspaper's existence the bourgeois shareholders started to complain of the consistent revolutionary line of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, its militant internationalism and political denunciations of the Government. Its editors were persecuted by the Government and attacked in the feudal monarchist and liberal bourgeois press. Shareholders were especially scared off by articles in defence of the June 1848 uprising of the Paris proletariat. To make Marx's stay in the Rhine Province more difficult, the Cologne authorities, on instructions from Berlin, refused to reinstate him in his rights as a Prussian citizen (which Marx had renounced in 1845), and on several occasions instituted legal proceedings against him and other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. On September 26, 1848, when a state of siege was declared in Cologne, several democratic newspapers, including the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, were suspended. To avoid arrest, Engels, Dronke and Ferdinand Wolff had to leave Germany for a time. Wilhelm Wolff stayed in Cologne but for several months lived in hiding. When the state of siege was lifted the paper resumed publication on October 12, thanks to the great efforts of Marx who contributed all his ready money to the paper. Until January 1849, the main burden of the work, including editorial articles, lay on Marx's shoulders since Engels had to stay out of Germany (in France and Switzerland). Persecution of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung editors by the legal authorities and the police was particularly intensified after the counter-revolutionary coup in Prussia in November-December 1848. On February 7, 1849, Marx, Engels and Hermann Korff, the responsible publisher, were summoned to appear before a jury in Cologne, and the next day Marx, together with Schapper and lawyer Schneider, was brought to trial as the leader of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats. But in both cases Marx and his associates were acquitted thanks to skilful defence. The failure of these prosecutions compelled the authorities to resort to other means for the prohibition of the revolutionary periodical. In May 1849, when the counter-revolution went into the offensive all over Germany, the Prussian Government issued an order for Marx's expulsion from Prussia on the grounds that he had not been granted Prussian citizenship. Marx's expulsion and new repressions against other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung put an end to the publication of the newspaper. Its last issue (No. 301), printed in red ink, came out on May 19, 1849. In their farewell address to the workers, the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung said, "Their last word everywhere and always will be: emancipation of the working classF'
[6] The Holy Hermandad (Holy Brotherhood)—a league of Spanish towns set up at the end of the fifteenth century with the approbation of the King to fight against the powerful feudal lords. From the middle of the sixteenth century the armed detachments of the Holy Hermandad performed police duties. Thus the police in general was often ironically labelled the "Holy Hermandad".