Defence Speech in the Trial against
the Rhenish District Committee of the Democrats
No. 231, 25 February 1849
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
* Cologne, 24 February.
Assizes trial on a charge of incitement to rebellion.
Heard at Cologne, 8 February.
[...] Karl Marx: Gentlemen of the jury! If the present proceedings had been instituted before 5 December, I should have understood
the indictment of the public prosecutor. Now, after 5 December, I do not understand how the public prosecutor still dares to invoke
laws against us which the Crown itself has trampled underfoot.

On what has the public prosecutor based his criticism of the National Assembly, his criticism of the tax refusal resolution?
On the laws of 6 and 8 April 1848. And what did the government do when, on 5 December, it arbitrarily imposed a constitution and
forced a new electoral law upon the country? It tore up the laws of 6 and 8 April 1848. These laws no longer exist for the supporters of the
government; are they still to exist for its opponents? On 5 December the government placed itself on revolutionary ground, namely on
counter-revolutionary ground. In confronting it, there are only revolutionaries or accomplices. It even transformed the mass of citizens
who move within the framework of the existing laws, who uphold the existing law against the violation of the law, into insurrectionists.
Before 5 December one could hold differing opinions about the violation, the dispersal of the National Assembly, about the state of siege
in Berlin. After 5 December it is an authenticated fact that these measures were intended to usher in the counter-revolution, that therefore
every means was permitted against a faction that no longer recognised the conditions under which it was the government, and that
consequently could no longer be recognised as a government by the country either.

Gentlemen, the Crown could at least have saved the appearance
of legality; it disdained to do so. It could have driven the National Assembly from its seat and then had the ministry step before the
country and say: “We have ventured a coup d’état; circumstances compelled us to do so. We have formally set ourselves above the law,
but there are moments of crisis when the very existence of the state is at stake. In such moments there is only one inviolable law, the
existence of the state. When we dissolved the Assembly, no constitution existed. We could not, therefore, violate the constitution. Two
organic laws, however, did exist, the laws of 6 and 8 April 1848. Indeed, in truth only a single organic law exists, the electoral law. We
call upon the country to assemble for new elections under this law. We shall step before the assembly that emerges from these direct
elections—we, the responsible ministry. This assembly, we expect, will recognise the coup d’état as a redemptive act, dictated by the
necessity of circumstances. It will subsequently sanction this coup d'état. It will declare that we have violated a legal formula in order to
save the fatherland. It may cast the dice over us.”

If the ministry had acted thus, it could with some appearance of right
refer us to the bar of your court. The Crown would have saved the appearance of legality. It could not do so, it would not do so.

In the eyes of the Crown, the March revolution was a brute fact. One brute fact can only be expunged by another.
By cancelling the new elections on the basis of the law of April 1848, the ministry renounced its responsibility, cancelled the very court
before which it was responsible. It thus transformed the appeal from the National Assembly to the people from the outset into a pure
semblance, into a fiction, into a fraud. By inventing a first chamber based on a property qualification as an integral part of the legislative
assembly, the ministry tore up the organic laws, abandoned the legal ground, falsified the popular elections, cut off the people’s every
judgment upon the “redemptive act” of the Crown.

Thus, gentlemen, the fact cannot be denied—no future historian will deny it: the Crown has made a revolution, it has overthrown
the existing legal order, it cannot appeal to the laws that it has itself so ignominiously overturned. When one successfully carries out a
revolution, one can hang one’s opponents, but not condemn them. One can remove them as vanquished enemies, one cannot pass judgment
on them as criminals. After a completed revolution or counter-revolution, one cannot apply the overturned laws against the defenders
of those same laws. This is a cowardly hypocrisy of legality, which you, gentlemen, will not sanction by your verdict.

I have told you, gentlemen, that the government falsified the judgment of the people on the “redemptive act of the Crown”. And
yet the people have already decided against the Crown in favour of the National Assembly. The elections to the second chamber are
the only legal ones, because they alone took place on the basis of the law of 8 April 1848. And almost all those who refused the
taxes have been re-elected to the second chamber, many of them twice, three times. My co-defendant himself, Schneider II, is a deputy
for Cologne. The question of the right of the National Assembly to resolve the tax refusal has thus already been decided in fact
by the people.

Setting aside this supreme judgment, you will all concede, gentlemen, that here there is no crime in the usual sense, that here there
is no conflict with the law at all that belongs before your forum. In normal circumstances the public power is the executor of the
existing laws; the criminal is he who violates these laws or forcibly opposes the public power in the exercise of them. In our case the
one public power has broken the law; the other public power, irrespective of which one, has upheld it. The struggle between two state
powers comes within the province neither of private law nor of criminal law. The question of who was in the right, the Crown or the
National Assembly, is a historical question. All the juries, all the courts in Prussia taken together cannot decide it. There is only one
power that will resolve it—history. I cannot therefore understand how we could be placed in the dock on the basis of the Code pénal.

That what was involved here was a struggle between two powers, and that between two powers only power can decide—this,
gentlemen, was equally expressed by the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary press. An organ of the government itself proclaimed
it shortly before the decision of the struggle. The Neue Preußische Zeitung, the organ of the present ministry, had clearly recognised
this. A few days before the crisis it said, approximately: What matters now is no longer right but might, and it will be seen that the old
monarchy by the grace of God still has might. The Neue Preußische Zeitung had grasped the situation correctly. Might against might.
Victory had to decide between the two. The counter-revolution has triumphed; but only the first act of the drama is over. In England the
struggle lasted over twenty years. Charles I was repeatedly the victor; in the end he mounted the scaffold. And who can guarantee
you, gentlemen, that the present ministry, that those officials who made and make themselves its tools, may not be condemned as
traitors by the present chamber or by its successors?

Gentlemen! The public prosecutor has sought to base his indictment on the laws of 6 and 8 April. I was compelled
to prove to you that precisely these laws acquit us. But I do not conceal from you that I have never recognised these laws, I shall
never recognise them. They have never had any validity for the deputies who emerged from the election of the people; still less
could they prescribe the course for the March revolution.

How did the laws of 6 and 8 April arise? By agreement between the government and the United Diet. The intention was to link
up with the old legal situation in this way and to whitewash the revolution, which had precisely swept away this situation. Men like
Camphausen and the like considered it important to save the semblance of legal progress. And how did they save this semblance?
Through a series of glaring and absurd contradictions. Stand, gentlemen, for a moment on the old legal standpoint! Was not the bare
existence of Minister Camphausen, a responsible minister, a minister without a bureaucratic career, an illegality? Camphausen’s position,
that of the responsible prime minister, was an illegal position. This officially non-existent official summons the United Diet in order to
have laws passed through it which this same Diet had no legal authority to pass. And this self-annulling, self-contradictory play of
forms was called legal progress, upholding the legal ground!

But let us disregard the formal aspect, gentlemen! What was the United Diet? The representative of old, decaying social conditions.
The revolution had just taken place against these conditions. And organic laws, which are supposed to recognise, regulate, organise the
revolution against this old society, are laid before the representatives of the defeated society? What an absurd contradiction! The Diet was
overthrown together with the old monarchy.

On this occasion, gentlemen, let us squarely face the so-called legal ground. I am all the more compelled to go into this point
since we are rightly regarded as enemies of the legal ground, since the laws of 6 and 8 April owe their existence solely to the formal
recognition of the legal ground.

The Diet represented above all the large landed property. Large landed property was truly the basis of medieval, of feudal society. Modern bourgeois society, our society, by contrast, rests upon industry and commerce. Landed property itself has lost all its former conditions of existence; it has become dependent upon commerce and industry. Agriculture is therefore nowadays conducted industrially, and the old feudal lords have sunk to the level of manufacturers of cattle, wool, corn, mangel-wurzels, schnapps, and the like, to people who trade in these industrial products like any other tradesman! However firmly they may cling to their old prejudices, in practice they are transforming themselves into bourgeois who produce as much as possible at the lowest possible cost, who buy where it is cheapest and sell where it is dearest. The mode of life, the mode of production, the mode of acquisition of these gentlemen therefore already gives the lie to their inherited high-flown conceits. Landed property, as the dominant social element, presupposes the medieval mode of production and intercourse. The United Diet represented this medieval mode of production and intercourse, which had long ceased to exist, and whose representatives, however firmly they cling to the old privileges, just as much share and exploit the advantages of the new society. The new bourgeois society, resting on entirely different foundations, on a changed mode of production, had to seize political power as well; it had to snatch it from the hands of those who represented the interests of the society in decline, a political power whose whole organisation had arisen out of quite different material social relations. Hence the revolution.

The revolution was therefore directed just as much against absolute monarchy, the supreme political expression of the old society, as against the representation by estates, which represented a social order long since destroyed by modern industry, or at most the presumptuous remnants of estates daily overtaken by bourgeois society, pushed into the background, dissolved. How, then, did anyone hit upon the notion of having the United Diet, the representative of the old society, dictate laws to the new society, which in the revolution was asserting its rights?

Allegedly, in order to uphold the legal basis. But, gentlemen, what do you understand by upholding the legal basis? Upholding laws that belong to a past epoch of society, which were made by representatives of social interests that have disappeared or are disappearing, and which therefore raise to law only those interests that are in contradiction with the general needs. But society does not rest on the law. That is a juridical illusion. On the contrary, the law must rest on society; it must be the expression of its common interests and needs arising from the material mode of production of the time, as against the arbitrariness of the individual. Here, the Code Napoléon, which I hold in my hand, did not produce the modern bourgeois society. The bourgeois society that arose in the 18th century and developed further in the 19th finds in the Code merely a legal expression. As soon as it no longer corresponds to social relations, it is nothing but a bale of paper. You cannot make the old laws the foundation of the new social development, any more than these old laws created the old social conditions.

They arose out of these old conditions, and they must perish with them. They necessarily change with the changing conditions of life. Upholding the old laws against the new needs and demands of social development is basically nothing but the hypocritical upholding of outmoded particular interests against the current common interest. This upholding of the legal basis seeks to assert such particular interests as dominant, while they have ceased to dominate; it seeks to force upon society laws which are condemned by the very conditions of life of this society, by its mode of acquisition, by its commerce, by its material production itself; it seeks to retain in office legislators who pursue only particular interests; it seeks to misuse state power in order to forcibly subordinate the interests of the minority to the interests of the majority. It therefore comes into contradiction at every moment with existing needs, it obstructs commerce and industry, it prepares social crises that erupt in political revolutions.

That is the true meaning of the attachment to the legal basis and the upholding of the legal basis. And it was on this phrase of the legal basis, which rests either on conscious fraud or on unconscious self-deception, that the convening of the United Diet was based; this Diet was allowed to fabricate organic laws for the National Assembly which had been made necessary by the revolution and generated by it. And it is by these laws that the National Assembly is to be judged!

The National Assembly represented the modern bourgeois society as against the feudal society represented in the United Diet. It was elected by the people to independently establish a constitution that would correspond to the conditions of life which had come into conflict with the previous political organisation and the previous laws. It was therefore from the outset sovereign, constituent. If, nonetheless, it stooped to the standpoint of agreement, this was purely a formal politeness to the crown, pure ceremony. I need not examine here whether, vis-à-vis the people, the Assembly had the right to adopt the standpoint of agreement. In its opinion, the collision with the crown was to be prevented by the good will of both sides.

Thus much is certain: the laws of April 6 and 8 agreed upon with the United Diet were formally invalid. Materially, they have significance only insofar as they state and lay down the conditions under which the National Assembly could be the genuine expression of popular sovereignty. The legislation of the United Diet was only a form that spared the crown the humiliation of proclaiming: I am vanquished! (To be continued.)

Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
Nr. 232, 27. Februar 1849
* Köln, 26. Februar.

Assizes Trial for Incitement to Rebellion.
Tried at Cologne, February 8.
(Continuation. See No. 231.)

Karl Marx: I now proceed, gentlemen of the jury, to a closer examination of the address of the public prosecution.

The public prosecution has said:

“The Crown has divested itself of a part of the power that lay fully in its hands. Even in ordinary life, my deed of renunciation does not go beyond the clear words in which I renounce. But the law of April 8, 1848, neither grants the National Assembly a right of tax refusal, nor does it establish Berlin as the necessary seat of the National Assembly.”

Gentlemen! The power lay shattered in the hands of the crown; it divested itself of power in order to save its fragments. You remember, gentlemen, how the king, immediately after his accession to the throne, formally pledged his word of honour in Königsberg and Berlin in return for the concession of a constitutional constitution. You remember how, in 1847, at the opening of the United Diet, the king swore most solemnly that he would not tolerate a piece of paper between himself and his people. After March 1848, the king proclaimed himself a constitutional king, even in the imposed constitution. He has thrust this abstract foreign frippery, the piece of paper, between himself and his people. Will the public prosecution dare to assert that the king voluntarily gave so glaring a contradiction to his solemn assurances, that he voluntarily made himself guilty, before all Europe, of the intolerable inconsistency of granting the agreement or the constitution! The king made the concessions to which the revolution compelled him. No more, no less!

The popular simile of the public prosecution unfortunately proves nothing. Certainly! When I renounce, I renounce nothing more than what I expressly renounce. If I make you a gift, it would truly be impudent of you to try to force further performances from me on the basis of my deed of gift. But it was precisely the people that gave after March; the crown received the gift. It goes without saying that the gift must be interpreted in the sense of the giver and not of the recipient, in the sense of the people and not of the crown.

The absolute power of the crown was broken. The people had triumphed. Both concluded an armistice and the people were deceived. That it was deceived, gentlemen, the public prosecution itself has taken the trouble to prove to you in detail. In order to deny the National Assembly’s right of tax refusal, the public prosecution has set out at length for you that if anything of the kind was contained in the law of April 6, 1848, it is in no case still to be found in the law of April 8, 1848. So this interval had been used to withdraw from the people’s representatives, two days later, the rights that had been conferred upon them two days earlier. Could the public prosecution more brilliantly compromise the honesty of the crown, could it more irrefutably prove that the intention was to deceive the people?

The public prosecution further says: “The right to transfer and adjourn the National Assembly is a function of the executive power and is recognized in all constitutional countries.” As regards the right of the executive power to transfer the legislative chambers, I challenge the public prosecution to cite even a single law or example for this assertion. In England, for example, the king, by ancient historical right, could summon Parliament to any place he chose. There exists no law whereby London is determined as the legal seat of Parliament wou-

You know, gentlemen, that in England the greatest political liberties generally are sanctioned by customary right, not by written statute, for example, freedom of the press. Yet the idea of an English ministry moving Parliament from London to Windsor or Richmond—merely to utter it is enough to recognise its impossibility.

Quite so! In constitutional countries the crown has the right to adjourn the chambers. But do not forget that, on the other hand, every constitution stipulates how long the chambers may be adjourned and after what period they must be recalled. In Prussia there was no constitution; one was still to be made. There was no legal term for recalling the adjourned chamber, hence also no right of adjournment for the crown. The crown could otherwise adjourn the chambers for ten days, for ten years, for ever. Where was the guarantee that the chambers would ever be convened or ever remain together? The existence of the chambers alongside the crown was left to the crown’s discretion, the legislative power turned into a fiction, if indeed one may speak here of a legislative power at all.

Gentlemen! You see from this example what comes of trying to measure the conflict between the Prussian crown and the Prussian National Assembly by the conditions of constitutional countries. It leads to the affirmation of absolute monarchy. On one side, one claims for the crown the rights of a constitutional executive power; on the other, there exists no law, no custom, no organic institution imposing on it the restraints of a constitutional executive power. One makes the following demand on the people’s representatives: Face to face with an absolute king, play the role of a constitutional chamber!

Is it still necessary to elaborate that in the present case no executive power confronted a legislative power, that the constitutional separation of powers cannot be applied to the Prussian National Assembly and the Prussian crown? Disregard the revolution; keep only to the official agreement theory. According to that theory itself, two sovereign powers confronted each other. No doubt about it! Of these two powers, one had to break the other. Two sovereign powers cannot function simultaneously, side by side, in one state. That is an absurdity, like squaring the circle. Material force had to decide between the two sovereignties. But we—we are not called upon here to examine the possibility or impossibility of agreement.

Enough! Two powers entered into relation with one another in order to conclude a contract. Camphausen himself conceded the possibility that the contract might not come about. From the tribune he pointed out to the negotiators the danger threatening the country if the settlement did not materialise. The danger resided in the original relation of the negotiating National Assembly to the crown, and afterwards they wish to hold the National Assembly responsible for this danger by disowning that original relation, by transforming it into a constitutional chamber! They wish to resolve the difficulty by abstracting from it!

I believe, gentlemen, I have proved to you that the crown had the right neither to transfer the Assembly of Agreement nor to adjourn it.

But the public prosecutor’s office has not confined itself to investigating whether the crown had the right to transfer the National Assembly; it seeks to demonstrate the expediency of this transfer. “Would it not have been expedient,” it exclaims, “if the National Assembly had complied with the crown and gone to Brandenburg?” The public prosecutor finds this expediency founded in the situation of the chamber itself. It was unfree in Berlin, and so forth.

Meanwhile, is not the crown’s intention in this transfer perfectly clear? Has it not itself stripped every semblance from all the officially cited motives for the transfer? It was not a question of the freedom of deliberation; it was a question either of sending the Assembly home and octroying a constitution, or of creating a sham representation by summoning compliant substitutes. When, contrary to expectation, a quorum of deputies appeared in Brandenburg, they dropped the hypocrisy and declared the National Assembly dissolved.

Moreover, it goes without saying, the crown had no right to declare the National Assembly free or unfree. Nobody but the Assembly itself could decide whether or not it enjoyed the necessary freedom of deliberation. What could be more convenient for the crown than to declare the National Assembly unfree, incapable of responsible action, and to interdict it, whenever it passed a resolution displeasing to the crown?

The public prosecutor’s office has also spoken of the government’s duty to protect the dignity of the National Assembly against the terrorism of the Berlin population.

This argument sounds like a satire on the government. I will not speak of the treatment of the persons—and these persons were, after all, the elected representatives of the people. By every means they sought to humiliate them, persecuted them in the most infamous manner, conducted what was virtually a manhunt against them. Let us leave the persons aside. How did they safeguard the dignity of the National Assembly in its labours? Its archives were handed over to the soldiery, who turned the documents of the sections, the royal messages, the draft laws, the preliminary studies into spills, heated the stove with them, trampled them underfoot. Not even the forms of a judicial execution were observed; they seized the archives without drawing up an inventory. The intention was to destroy these labours, so costly to the people, in order to slander the National Assembly more effectively, to get rid of reform plans hateful to the government and the aristocrats. And after all this, is it not simply ludicrous to maintain that the government, out of tender solicitude for its dignity, transferred the National Assembly from Berlin to Brandenburg?

I now come to the exposition of the public prosecutor’s office on the formal validity of the tax-refusal resolution.

To elevate the tax-refusal resolution to a formally valid resolution, says the ministry, the Assembly was obliged to submit its resolution to the sanction of the crown.

But, gentlemen, the crown did not confront the Assembly in its own person; it confronted it in the person of the Brandenburg ministry. With the Brandenburg ministry, therefore—this is the nonsense the public prosecutor demands—the Assembly was supposed to come to an agreement in order to proclaim this ministry guilty of high treason, in order to refuse it taxes! What does such a demand amount to, other than that the National Assembly should resolve upon unconditional submission to every demand of the Brandenburg ministry?

The tax-refusal resolution was also formally invalid, says the public prosecutor, since a motion can only be raised to the status of a law on the second reading.

On the one hand, one sets aside the essential forms to which one was bound towards the National Assembly; on the other, one expects the National Assembly to observe the most inessential formalities. Nothing could be simpler! A motion displeasing to the crown passes in the first reading; the second is prevented by armed force—the law is and remains invalid because it lacks the second reading. The public prosecutor’s office overlooks the exceptional state of affairs that prevailed when the people’s representatives, threatened in their chamber by bayonets, passed that resolution. The government commits one coup de force after another. It recklessly violated the most important laws, the Habeas-Corpus-Act, the civil militia law. It arbitrarily introduced unlimited military despotism under the label of a state of siege. It sent the people’s representatives packing to the devil. And while, on the one hand, all laws are shamelessly violated, on the other hand, the most delicate observance of a mere regulation is demanded?

I do not know, gentlemen, whether it is deliberate falsification—I am far from assuming it on the part of the public prosecutor’s office—or ignorance, when it says: “The National Assembly did not want any mediation,” “it made no attempt at mediation.” If the people have any reproach to make to the Berlin National Assembly, it is its hankering after mediation. If any members of this Assembly themselves feel remorse, it is remorse over their craving for agreement. It was this craving for agreement that gradually alienated the people from it, that made it lose all positions, that finally exposed it to the attacks of the crown without a nation standing behind it. When it at last tried to assert a will, it stood isolated, powerless, precisely because at the proper time it had not known how to have and assert a will. It first exhibited this craving for agreement when it disowned the revolution and sanctioned the agreement theory, when it degraded itself from a revolutionary National Assembly to an ambiguous society of negotiators. It drove this mediating weakness to the extreme when it accepted from Pfuel a sham acknowledgement of Stein’s army order as fully valid. The proclamation of this army order itself had become a farce when it could be no more than a comical echo of Wrangel’s army order. And yet, instead of going beyond it, the Assembly grasped with both hands at the weakening, entirely vacuous interpretation of it by the Pfuel ministry. To avoid every serious conflict with the crown, it accepted the mere semblance of a demonstration against the old reactionary army as a real demonstration. It made a show of seriously holding something that was not even a sham solution of the conflict to be its real solution. So little eager for combat, so eager for mediation was this Assembly, which the public prosecutor’s office portrays as a wanton seeker of quarrels?

Shall I point to yet another symptom of the mediation-addicted nature of this Chamber? Recall, gentlemen, the agreement of the National Assembly with Pfuel on the law suspending the redemption payments. If the Assembly did not know how to écraser the enemy in the army, then the first thing was to win the friend among the peasantry. It renounced that too. Its first concern, its concern before the interests of its own self-preservation, was to mediate, to avoid the conflict with the Chamber, to avoid it at all costs. And this Assembly is reproached for having wanted no mediation, for having attempted no mediation?

It attempted mediation even when the conflict had already broken out. You know, gentlemen, the brochure by Unruh, a man of the Centre. From it you have seen all that was attempted to avoid the rupture, how deputations were sent to the Crown that were not received, how individual deputies sought to persuade the ministers, who haughtily and arrogantly rebuffed them, how one wanted to make concessions that were laughed at. Even at the moment when it was only a question of preparing for war, the Assembly still wanted to conclude peace. And this Assembly accuses the public prosecutor of having wanted no mediation, of having attempted no mediation!

The Berlin National Assembly evidently surrendered to the greatest illusion, did not understand its own position, its own conditions of existence, when before the conflict, and during the conflict, it still considered an amicable understanding, a mediation with the Crown, possible and sought to bring it about.

The Crown wanted no mediation, could want no mediation. Let us not deceive ourselves, gentlemen of the jury, as to the nature of the struggle that broke out in March, that was later waged between the National Assembly and the Crown. This is not a question of an ordinary conflict between a ministry and a parliamentary opposition, it was not a conflict between people who were ministers and people who wanted to become ministers, it is not a question of the party struggle between two political factions in a legislative chamber. It is possible that members of the National Assembly, whether belonging to the minority or the majority, imagined all this. Not the opinion of the compromisers, but the actual historical position of the National Assembly, as it emerged from the European revolution and the March revolution conditioned by it, alone decides. What was present here was not a political conflict between two factions on the basis of a single society,

it was the conflict of two societies themselves, a social conflict which had assumed a political form, it was the struggle of the old feudal-bureaucratic society with modern bourgeois society, the struggle between the society of free competition and the society of the guild system, between the society of landed property and the society of industry, between the society of faith and the society of knowledge. The corresponding political expression of the old society was the Crown by the grace of God, the tutelary bureaucracy, the independent army. The corresponding social basis of this old political power was privileged aristocratic landed property with its peasants in bondage or semi-bondage, the petty patriarchal or guild-organised industry, the mutually isolated estates, the brutal antithesis of town and country, and above all the domination of the countryside over the town. The old political power – divinely ordained Crown, tutelary bureaucracy, independent army – saw its own material basis vanish beneath its feet as soon as the basis of the old society, privileged aristocratic landed property, the aristocracy itself, the domination of the countryside over the town, the dependency of the rural population and the legislation corresponding to all these conditions of life, such as the communal order, criminal legislation, etc., were touched. The National Assembly committed this outrage. On the other hand, that old society saw political power torn from its hands as soon as the Crown, the bureaucracy and the army forfeited their feudal privileges. And the National Assembly wanted to annul these privileges. No wonder, then, that army, bureaucracy and aristocracy unitedly pressed the Crown towards a coup de force, no wonder that the Crown, which knew its own interest to be most intimately bound up with that of the old feudal-bureaucratic society, allowed itself to be pressed towards the coup d’état. The Crown was precisely the representative of feudal-aristocratic society, just as the National Assembly was the representative of modern bourgeois society. It lies in the conditions of existence of the latter that bureaucracy and army must be degraded from masters of trade and industry into their tools, into mere organs of bourgeois intercourse. It cannot tolerate agriculture being restricted by feudal privileges, or industry by bureaucratic tutelage. This conflicts with its vital principle of free competition. It cannot tolerate foreign commercial relations being regulated, not by the interests of national production, but by the considerations of an international court policy. It must subordinate financial administration to the needs of production,

whereas the old state must subordinate production to the needs of the Crown by the grace of God and to the patching up of the royal walls, the social buttresses of this Crown. Just as modern industry actually levels, so modern society must tear down every legal and political barrier between town and country. Within it there are still classes, but no longer estates. Its development consists in the struggle of these classes, but these are united in opposition to the estates and their divinely ordained monarchy.

The monarchy by the grace of God, the highest political expression, the highest political representative of the old feudal-bureaucratic society, can therefore make no sincere concessions to modern bourgeois society. Its own instinct of self-preservation, the society that stands behind it, on which it relies, will ever and again drive it to withdraw the concessions that have been made, to assert the feudal character, to risk the counter-revolution! After a revolution, counter-revolution is the constantly renewed condition of life of the Crown.

On the other hand, modern society also cannot rest until it has shattered and eliminated the official inherited power by which the old society still forcibly maintains itself, until it has shattered its state power. The rule of the Crown by the grace of God is precisely the rule of the obsolete elements of society.

Hence no peace between these two societies. Their material interests and needs necessitate a struggle for life and death; one must conquer, the other must succumb. That is the only possible mediation between them. Hence also no peace between the highest political representatives of these two societies, between the Crown and the people’s representation. The National Assembly therefore had only the choice of giving in to the old society, or of confronting the Crown as an independent power.

Gentlemen! The public prosecutor has described the refusal of taxes as a measure “that shakes the foundations of society”. The refusal of taxes has nothing to do with the foundations of society.

Whence does it come about at all, gentlemen, that taxes, the granting and the refusal of taxes, play so great a role in the history of constitutionalism? This is very simply explained. Just as bondsmen bought their privileges from the feudal barons with ready money, so whole peoples bought them from the feudal kings. The kings needed money in the wars with foreign peoples and especially in their struggles against the feudal lords. The more trade

and industry developed, the more they needed money. But in the same measure the third estate, the estate of the burghers, developed, and in the same measure it had greater money resources at its disposal. In the same measure it bought more liberties from the kings by means of taxes. To secure these liberties for itself, it reserved the right to renew the payments of money at certain terms – the right to grant and refuse taxes. In English history especially you can follow this development in detail.

In medieval society, taxes were therefore the sole bond between the emerging bourgeois society and the ruling feudal state, the bond by which the latter was compelled to make concessions to the former, to give way to its development and to adapt itself to its needs. In modern states this right to grant and refuse taxes has been transformed into a control of bourgeois society over the administrative committee of its general interests, the government.

Partial refusal of taxes you therefore find as an integral part of every constitutional mechanism. This kind of tax refusal takes place whenever the budget is rejected. The current budget is granted only for a specific period; the chambers must, moreover, as soon as they are adjourned, be reconvened after very short intervals. The Crown’s making itself independent is therefore impossible. The taxes are definitively refused by the rejection of a budget as soon as the new chamber brings no majority to the ministry or the Crown does not appoint a ministry in the spirit of the new chamber. The rejection of the budget is thus a refusal of taxes in parliamentary form. This form was not applicable in the present conflict because the constitution did not yet exist, but was still to be created.

But the refusal of taxes as it is present here, a refusal of taxes that not only rejects the new budget but even prohibits the payment of the current taxes, is also nothing unheard of. It was a very frequent occurrence in the Middle Ages. Even the old German Reichstag and the old feudal Brandenburg Estates passed resolutions refusing taxes. And in modern constitutional countries there is no lack of examples. In 1832 the refusal of taxes in England brought about the fall of the Wellington ministry. And pray consider, gentlemen! In England it was not Parliament that decided the refusal of taxes, the people proclaimed and carried it out on their own sovereign authority. England, however, is the historical land of constitutionalism.

I am far from denying it: the English revolution, which brought Charles I to the scaffold, began with the refusal of taxes. The North American revolution, which ended with the declaration of independence of North America from England, began with the refusal of taxes. The refusal of taxes can also be the precursor of very grievous things in Prussia. But John Hampden did not bring Charles I to the scaffold; it was only his obstinacy, his dependence on the feudal estates, his presumption in seeking to forcibly suppress the unpostponable demands of the newly emerging society. The refusal of taxes is merely a symptom of the discord between crown and people, merely a proof that the conflict between government and people has already reached a high, menacing degree. It does not bring the discord, the conflict, into being. It only expresses the existence of this fact. In the worst case, it is followed by the overthrow of the existing government, of the existing form of state. The foundations of society are not affected thereby. In the present case, indeed, the refusal of taxes was a measure of self-defence on the part of society precisely against the government by which it was threatened in its foundations.

The public prosecutor finally reproaches us with having gone further in the incriminated appeal than the National Assembly itself. “For one thing, the National Assembly did not publish its resolution.” Am I seriously to answer, gentlemen, that the tax refusal resolution was not even published by the statute book?

Then, according to him, the National Assembly did not, as we did, call for violence, nor did it, as we did, set foot on revolutionary ground; it wished to keep to legal ground.

Just now the public prosecutor depicted the National Assembly as illegal, now as legal, each time in order to depict us as criminals. When the levying of taxes is once declared illegal, must I not forcibly repel the forcible implementation of illegality? Even from this standpoint, therefore, we were justified in driving out violence by violence. Moreover, it is quite correct: the National Assembly wished to keep on purely legal ground, on the ground of passive resistance. Two paths lay open to it. The revolutionary path. It did not take it; those gentlemen did not want to risk their heads. Or the refusal of taxes, which stopped at passive resistance. It entered upon this path. But the people, in exercising the refusal of taxes, had to place itself on revolutionary ground. The conduct of the National Assembly was in no way binding for the people. The National Assembly has no rights of its own; the people has merely transferred to it the upholding of its own rights. If it does not fulfil its mandate, that mandate is extinguished. The people itself then appears on the scene in its own person and acts by virtue of its own plenary power. If, for instance, a National Assembly had sold itself to a treasonable government, then the people would have to chase away both, government and National Assembly. If the crown makes a counter-revolution, the people rightly answers with a revolution. This requires the authorisation of no National Assembly. However, that the Prussian government has attempted a highly treasonable outrage, the National Assembly itself has pronounced.

I will briefly summarise, gentlemen of the jury. The laws of 6 and 8 April 1848 cannot be invoked against us by the public prosecutor after the crown itself has torn them to shreds. These laws are not decisive in and for themselves, for they are arbitrary botch-jobs of the United Diet. The tax refusal resolution of the National Assembly was formally and materially valid. In our appeal we have gone further than the National Assembly. This was our right and our duty.

Finally, I repeat that only the first act of the drama is over. The struggle between the two societies, the medieval and the bourgeois, will be waged anew in political forms. The same conflicts will begin again as soon as the Assembly has been convened. Already the organ of the ministry, the “Neue Preußische Zeitung”, prophesies: The same people have been re-elected; it will be necessary to chase the Assembly away for the second time.

But whatever new path the new National Assembly may strike out, the necessary result can be none other than: complete victory of the counter-revolution or a new, victorious revolution. Perhaps the victory of the revolution is only possible after the completion of the counter-revolution.