19. Two Trials of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
Cologne, February 8. Yesterday and today two press cases were again heard in the assizes against Marx, editor-in-chief of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Engels and Schapper, members of the paper's staff, and today against Marx, Schapper and the lawyer Schneider II, who are charged with having incited the people against the Government in connection with refusal to pay taxes. The crowd of people was extraordinary. In both cases the accused undertook their own defence and sought to prove that the charges were groundless, in which they succeeded insofar as the jury in both cases pronounced a verdict of not guilty.
In political trials the Government nowadays really has no luck at all with the juries. A few officers of the local garrison[3] who took part in the popular movements in September of last year may fare worse; they fled over the border to Belgium when things went awry, but have now presented themselves again and are awaiting the decision in the proceedings which have already been instituted against
Endnotes
[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.