became untenable, in spite of resolutions, appeals, interpellations,
and proclamations, they retreated, but not into the insurgent
districts; that would have been too resolute a step. They went to
Stuttgart, where the Wuertemberg Government kept up a sort of
expectative neutrality. There, at last, they declared the Lieutenant
of the Empire to have forfeited his power, and elected from their own
body a Regency of five. This Regency at once proceeded to pass a
Militia law, which was actually in all due force sent to all the
Governments of Germany.
They, the very enemies of the Assembly, were ordered to levy forces in
its defence! Then there was created--on paper, of course--an army for
the defence of the National Assembly. Divisions, brigades, regiments,
batteries, everything was regulated and ordained. Nothing was wanted
but reality, for that army, of course, was never called into
existence.
One last scheme offered itself to the General Assembly. The Democratic
population from all parts of the country sent deputations to place
itself at the disposal of the Parliament, and to urge it on to a
decisive action. The people, knowing what the intentions of the
Wuertemberg Government were, implored the National Assembly to force
that Government into an open and active participation with their
insurgent neighbors. But no. The National Assembly, in going to
Stuttgart, had delivered itself up to the tender mercies of the
Wuertemberg Government. The members knew it, and repressed the
agitation among the people. They thus lost the last remnant of
influence which they might yet have retained. They earned the contempt
they deserved, and the Imperial Lieutenant put a stop to the
Democratic farce by shutting up, on the 18th of June, 1849, the room
where the Parliament met, and by ordering the members of the Regency
to leave the country.
Next they went to Baden, into the camp of the insurrection; but there
they were now useless. Nobody noticed them. The Regency, however, in
the name of the Sovereign German people, continued to save the country
by its exertions. It made an attempt to get recognized by foreign
powers, by delivering _passports_ to anybody who would accept of them.
It issued proclamations, and sent commissioners to insurge those very
districts of Wuertemberg whose active assistance it had refused when it
was yet time; of course, without effect. We have now under our eye an
original report, sent to the Regency by one of these commissioners,
Herr Roesler (member for Oels), the contents of which are rather
characteristic. It is dated, Stuttgart, June 30, 1849. After
describing the adventures of half a dozen of these commissioners in a
resultless search for cash, he gives a series of excuses for not
having yet gone to his post, and then delivers himself of a most
weighty argument respecting possible differences between Prussia,
Austria, Bavaria, and Wuertemberg, with their possible consequences.
After having fully considered this, he comes, however, to the
conclusion that there is no more chance. Next, he proposes to
establish relays of trustworthy men for the conveyance of
intelligence, and a system of espionage as to the intentions of the
Wuertemberg Ministry and the movements of the troops. This letter never
reached its address, for when it was written the "Regency" had already
passed entirely into the "foreign department," viz., Switzerland; and
while poor Herr Roesler troubled his head about the intentions of the
formidable ministry of a sixth-rate kingdom, a hundred thousand
Prussian, Bavarian, and Hessian soldiers had already settled the whole
affair in the last battle under the walls of Rastatt.
Thus vanished the German Parliament, and with it the first and last
creation of the Revolution. Its convocation had been the first
evidence that there actually _had been_ a revolution in January; and
it existed as long as this, the first modern German Revolution, was
not yet brought to a close. Chosen under the influence of the
capitalist class by a dismembered, scattered, rural population, for
the most part only awaking from the dumbness of feudalism, this
Parliament served to bring in one body upon the political arena all
the great popular names of 1820-1848, and then to utterly ruin them.
All the celebrities of middle class Liberalism were here collected.
The bourgeoisie expected wonders; it earned shame for itself and its
representatives. The industrial and commercial capitalist class were
more severely defeated in Germany than in any other country; they were
first worsted, broken, expelled from office in every individual State
of Germany, and then put to rout, disgraced and hooted in the Central
German Parliament. Political Liberalism, the rule of the bourgeoisie,
be it under a Monarchical or Republican form of government, is forever
impossible in Germany.
In the latter period of its existence, the German Parliament served to
disgrace forever that section which had ever since March, 1848, headed
the official opposition, the Democrats representing the interests of
the small trading, and partially of the farming class. That class was,
in May and June, 1849, given a chance to show its means of forming a
stable Government in Germany. We have seen how it failed; not so much
by adverse circumstances as by the actual and continued cowardice in
all trying movements that had occurred since the outbreak of the
revolution; by showing in politics the same shortsighted,
pusillanimous, wavering spirit, which is characteristic of its
commercial operations. In May, 1849, it had, by this course, lost the
confidence of the real fighting mass of all European insurrections,
the working class. But yet, it had a fair chance. The German
Parliament belonged to it, exclusively, after the Reactionists and
Liberals had withdrawn. The rural population was in its favor.
Two-thirds of the armies of the smaller States, one-third of the
Prussian army, the majority of the Prussian Landwehr (reserve or
militia), were ready to join it, if it only acted resolutely, and with
that courage which is the result of a clear insight into the state of
things. But the politicians who led on this class were not more
clear-sighted than the host of petty tradesmen which followed them.
They proved even to be more infatuated, more ardently attached to
delusions voluntarily kept up, more credulous, more incapable of
resolutely dealing with facts than the Liberals. Their political
importance, too, is reduced below the freezing-point. But not having
actually carried their commonplace principles into execution, they
were, under _very_ favorable circumstances, capable of a momentary
resurrection, when this last hope was taken from them, just as it was
taken from their colleagues of the "pure Democracy" in France by the
_coup d'etat_ of Louis Bonaparte.
The defeat of the south-west German insurrection, and the dispersion
of the German Parliament, bring the history of the first German
insurrection to a close. We have now to cast a parting glance upon the
victorious members of the counter-revolutionary alliance; we shall do
this in our next letter.[10]
LONDON, September 24, 1852.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] After repeated search I have been unable to find the "next
letter" referred to in the above paragraph; and, if it was ever
written, there seems no doubt it was never published.--E. M. A.
XX.
THE LATE TRIAL AT COLOGNE.
DECEMBER 22, 1852.
You will have ere this received by the European papers numerous
reports of the Communist Monster Trial at Cologne, Prussia, and of its
result. But as none of the reports is anything like a faithful
statement of the facts, and as these facts throw a glaring light upon
the political means by which the continent of Europe is kept in
bondage, I consider it necessary to revert to this trial.
The Communist or Proletarian party, as well as other parties, had
lost, by suppression of the rights of association and meeting, the
means of giving to itself a legal organization on the Continent. Its
leaders, besides, had been exiled from their countries. But no
political party can exist without an organization; and that
organization which both the Liberal bourgeois and the Democratic
shopkeeping class were enabled more or less to supply by the social
station, advantages, and long-established, every-day intercourse of
their members, the proletarian class, without such social station and
pecuniary means, was necessarily compelled to seek in secret
association. Hence, both in France and Germany, sprung up those
numerous secret Societies which have, ever since 1849, one after
another, been discovered by the police, and prosecuted as
conspiracies; but if many of them were really conspiracies, formed
with the actual intention of upsetting the Government for the time
being,--and he is a coward that under certain circumstances would not
conspire, just as he is a fool who, under other circumstances, would
do so;--there were some other Societies which were formed with a wider
and more elevated purpose, which knew that the upsetting of an
existing Government was but a passing stage in the great impending
struggle, and which intended to keep together and to prepare the
party, whose nucleus they formed, for the last decisive combat which
must, one day or another, crush forever in Europe the domination, not
of mere "tyrants," "despots" and "usurpers," but of a power far
superior, and far more formidable than theirs; that of capital over
labor.
The organization of the advanced Communist party in Germany was of
this kind. In accordance with the principles of the "Manifesto"[11]
(published in 1848), and with those explained in the series of
articles on "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany," published
in the _New York Daily Tribune_, this party never imagined itself
capable of producing, at any time and at its pleasure, that revolution
which was to carry its ideas into practice. It studied the causes that
had produced the revolutionary movement in 1848, and the causes that
made them fail. Recognizing the social antagonism of classes at the
bottom of all political struggles, it applied itself to the study of
the conditions under which one class of society can and must be called
on to represent the whole of the interests of a nation, and thus
politically to rule over it. History showed to the Communist party
how, after the landed aristocracy of the Middle Ages, the monied power
of the first capitalists arose and seized the reins of Government;
how the social influence and political rule of this financial section
of capitalists was superseded by the rising strength since the
introduction of steam, of the manufacturing capitalists, and how at
the present moment two more classes claim their turn of domination,
the petty trading class and the industrial working class. The
practical revolutionary experience of 1848-1849 confirmed the
reasonings of theory, which led to the conclusion that the Democracy
of the petty traders must first have its turn, before the Communist
working class could hope to permanently establish itself in power and
destroy that system of wage-slavery which keeps it under the yoke of
the bourgeoisie. Thus the secret organization of the Communists could
not have the direct purpose of upsetting the present Governments of
Germany. Being formed to upset not these, but the insurrectionary
Government, which is sooner or later to follow them, its members
might, and certainly would, individually, lend an active hand to a
revolutionary movement against the present _status quo_ in its turn;
but the preparation of such a movement, otherwise than by spreading of
Communist opinions by the masses, could not be an object of the
Association. So well was this foundation of the Society understood by
the majority of its members, that when the place-hunting ambition of
some tried to turn it into a conspiracy for making an extempore
revolution they were speedily turned out.
Now, according to no law upon the face of the earth, could such an
Association be called a plot, a conspiracy for purposes of high
treason. If it was a conspiracy, it was one against, not the existing
Government, but its probable successor. And the Prussian Government
was aware of it. That was the cause why the eleven defendants were
kept in solitary confinement during eighteen months, spent, on the
part of the authorities, in the strangest judicial feats. Imagine,
that after eight months' detention, the prisoners were remanded for
some months more, "there being no evidence of any crime against them!"
And when at last they were brought before a jury, there was not a
single overt act of a treasonable nature proved against them. And yet
they were convicted, and you will speedily see how.
One of the emissaries of the society was arrested in May, 1851, and
from documents found upon him, other arrests followed. A Prussian
police officer, a certain Stieber, was immediately ordered to trace
the ramifications, in London, of the pretended plot. He succeeded in
obtaining some papers connected with the above-mentioned seceders from
the society, who had, after being turned out, formed an actual
conspiracy in Paris and London. These papers were obtained by a double
crime. A man named Reuter was bribed to break open the writing-desk of
the secretary of the Society, and steal the papers therefrom. But that
was nothing yet. This theft led to the discovery and conviction of the
so-called Franco-German plot, in Paris, but it gave no clue as to the
great Communist Association. The Paris plot, we may as well here
observe, was under the direction of a few ambitious imbeciles and
political _chevaliers d'industrie_ in London, and of a formerly
convicted forger, then acting as a police spy in Paris; their dupes
made up, by rabid declamations and blood-thirsty rantings, for the
utter insignificance of their political existence.
The Prussian police, then, had to look out for fresh discoveries. They
established a regular office of secret police at the Prussian Embassy
in London. A police agent, Greif by name, held his odious vocation
under the title of an attache to the Embassy--a step which should
suffice to put all Prussian embassies out of the pale of international
law, and which even the Austrians have not yet dared to take. Under
him worked a certain Fleury, a merchant in the city of London, a man
of some fortune and rather respectably connected, one of those low
creatures who do the basest actions from an innate inclination to
infamy. Another agent was a commercial clerk named Hirsch, who,
however, had already been denounced as a spy on his arrival. He
introduced himself into the society of some German Communist refugees
in London, and they, in order to obtain proofs of his real character,
admitted him for a short time. The proofs of his connection with the
police were very soon obtained, and Herr Hirsch, from that time,
absented himself. Although, however, he thus resigned all
opportunities of gaining the information he was paid to procure, he
was not inactive. From his retreat in Kensington, where he never met
one of the Communists in question, he manufactured every week
pretended reports of pretended sittings of a pretended Central
Committee of that very conspiracy which the Prussian police could not
get hold of. The contents of these reports were of the most absurd
nature; not a Christian name was correct, not a name correctly spelt,
not a single individual made to speak as he would be likely to speak.
His master, Fleury, assisted him in this forgery, and it is not yet
proved that "Attache" Greif can wash his hands of these infamous
proceedings. The Prussian Government, incredible to say, took these
silly fabrications for gospel truth, and you may imagine what a
confusion such depositions created in the evidence brought before the
jury. When the trial came on, Herr Stieber, the already mentioned
police officer, got into the witness-box, swore to all these
absurdities, and, with no little self-complacency, maintained that he
had a secret agent in the very closest intimacy with those parties in
London who were considered the prime movers in this awful conspiracy.
This secret agent was very secret indeed, for he had hid his face for
eight months in Kensington, for fear he might actually see one of the
parties whose most secret thoughts, words and doings, he pretended to
report week after week.
Messrs. Hirsch and Fleury, however, had another invention in store.
They worked up the whole of the reports they had made into an
"original minute book" of the sittings of the Secret Supreme
Committee, whose existence was maintained by the Prussian police; and
Herr Stieber, finding that this book wondrously agreed with the
reports already received from the same parties, at once laid it before
the jury, declaring upon his oath that after serious examination, and
according to his fullest conviction, that book was genuine. It was
then that most of the absurdities reported by Hirsch were made public.
You may imagine the surprise of the pretended members of that Secret
Committee when they found things stated of them which they never knew
before. Some who were baptized William were here christened Louis or
Charles; others, at the time they were at the other end of England,
were made to have pronounced speeches in London; others were reported
to have read letters they never had received; they were made to have
met regularly on a Thursday, when they used to have a convivial
reunion, once a week, on Wednesdays; a working man, who could hardly
write, figured as one of the takers of minutes, and signed as such;
and they all of them were made to speak in a language which, if it may
be that of Prussian police stations, was certainly not that of a
reunion in which literary men, favorably known in their country,
formed the majority. And, to crown the whole, a receipt was forged for
a sum of money, pretended to have been paid by the fabricators to the
pretended secretary of the fictitious Central Committee for this book;
but the existence of this pretended secretary rested merely upon a
hoax that some malicious Communist had played upon the unfortunate
Hirsch.
This clumsy fabrication was too scandalous an affair not to produce
the contrary of its intended effect. Although the London friends of
the defendants were deprived of all means to bring the facts of the
case before the jury--although the letters they sent to the counsel
for the defence were suppressed by the post--although the documents
and affidavits they succeeded in getting into the hands of these legal
gentlemen were not admitted in evidence, yet the general indignation
was such that even the public accusers, nay, even Herr Stieber--whose
oath had been given as a guarantee for the authenticity of that
book--were compelled to recognize it as a forgery.
This forgery, however, was not the only thing of the kind of which the
police was guilty. Two or three more cases of the sort came out during
the trial. The documents stolen by Reuter were interpolated by the
police so as to disfigure their meaning. A paper, containing some
rabid nonsense, was written in a handwriting imitating that of Dr.
Marx, and for a time it was pretended that it had been written by him,
until at last the prosecution was obliged to acknowledge the forgery.
But for every police infamy that was proved as such, there were five
or six fresh ones brought forward, which could not, at the moment, be
unveiled, the defence being taken by surprise, the proofs having to be
got from London, and every correspondence of the counsel for the
defence with the London Communist refugees being in open court treated
as complicity in the alleged plot!
That Greif and Fleury are what they are here represented to be has
been stated by Herr Stieber himself, in his evidence; as to Hirsch, he
has before a London magistrate confessed that he forged the "minute
book," by order and with the assistance of Fleury, and then made his
escape from this country in order to evade a criminal prosecution.
The Government could stand few such branding disclosures as came to
light during the trial. It had a jury--six nobles, two Government
officials. These were not the men to look closely into the confused
mass of evidence heaped before them during six weeks, when they heard
it continually dinned into their ears that the defendants were the
chiefs of a dreadful Communist conspiracy, got up in order to subvert
everything sacred--property, family, religion, order, government and
law! And yet, had not the Government, at the same time, brought it to
the knowledge of the privileged classes, that an acquittal in this
trial would be the signal for the suppression of the jury; and that it
would be taken as a direct political demonstration--as a proof of the
middle-class Liberal Opposition being ready to unite even with the
most extreme revolutionists--the verdict would have been an acquittal.
As it was, the retroactive application of the new Prussian code
enabled the Government to have seven prisoners convicted, while four
merely were acquitted, and those convicted were sentenced to
imprisonment varying from three to six years, as you have, doubtless,
already stated at the time the news reached you.
LONDON, December 1, 1852.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] "The Manifesto." This is the celebrated "Communist Manifesto,"
which the Communist Congress, held in London, November, 1847,
delegated Marx and Engels to draw up. It was published in 1848 (in
London). The fundamental proposition of the Manifesto, Engels writes
in his introduction to the "Communist Manifesto," translated by S.
Moore, and published by W. Reeves, "is that in every historical epoch,
the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the
social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon
which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the
political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently
the whole history of mankind has been a history of class struggles,
contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed
classes; that nowadays a stage has been reached where the exploited
and oppressed class--the proletariat--cannot attain its emancipation
... without at the same time, and once and for all emancipating
society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class
distinctions, and class struggles." As to this fundamental proposition
of the Manifesto, it "belongs," says Engels, "wholly and solely to
Marx." The "Communist Manifesto" has been translated into well-nigh
every language, and is, again to quote Engels, "the most international
production of all Socialist literature."