M. Adolphe Bartels claims that public life is finished for him. 
Indeed, he has withdrawn into private life and does not mean to 
leave it; he limits himself, each time some public event occurs, to 
hurling protests and proclaiming loudly that he believes he is his 
own master, that the movement has been made without him, M. Bar- 
tels, and in spite of him, M. Bartels, and that he has the right to 
refuse it his supreme sanction. It will be agreed that this is just as 
much a way of participating in public life as any other, and that by all 
these declarations, proclamations and protestations the public man 
hides behind the humble appearance of the private individual. This 
is the way in which the unappreciated and misunderstood genius 
reveals himself. 

M. A. Bartels knows very well that the democrats of the different 
nations, in forming a body under the name of a democratic 
association, have had no other object but to exchange ideas and come 
to an understanding about the principles which will serve to bring 
about the union and fraternity of peoples. It goes without saying 
that, in a society which proposes such a goal for itself, it is the duty of 
all foreigners to state their opinions frankly, and it is truly ridiculous 
to call them schoolmasters every time they take the floor to fulfil this 
duty in the association to which they belong. If M. A. Bartels accuses 
foreigners of wanting to teach lessons it is because they refuse to take 
lessons from him. 

M. A. Bartels will recall, no doubt, that in the provisional 
committee in which he took part he even proposed to make the 
Society of German Workers” the nucleus of the new society to be 
founded. I had to reject this proposal, in the name of the German 

Remarks on the Article by M. Adolphe Bartels 403 

workers. Might it perhaps be that M. A. Bartels meant to lay a trap 
for us, to contrive the means for a false denunciation? 

M. Bartels is free to decry our doctrines as “filthy and barbarous”. 
He does not criticise, he does not prove, he condemns; and he gives 
proof of his orthodoxy by condemning in advance what he does not 
understand. 

We are more tolerant than M. A. Bartels. We overlook his “blue 
devils”,? which are quite innocent devils. 

M. A. Bartels being more theocratic than democratic, it is quite 
natural that he finds an accomplice in the Journal de Bruxelles. This 
paper accuses us of wanting to “improve the human race” .?° Let it calm 
down! Fortunately, we Germans are not unaware that since 1640 the 
Congregatio de propaganda fide 21° has had the monopoly in improving 
the human race. We are too modest and too few to want to compete 
with the reverend fathers in that humanitarian industry. Let them 
take the trouble to compare the report in the Deutsche-Brüsseler- 
Zeitung» with that of The Northern Star, and they will be able to assure 
themselves that it is only by a mistake that The Northern Star makes 
me say “Chartists—you will be hailed as the saviours of the human 
race.”’ 211 

The Journal de Bruxelles is moved by a more charitable spirit when 
it reminds us of the example of Anacharsis Cloots mounting the 
scaffold for having wanted to be more patriotic than the patriots of 
1793 and 1794. In this respect the reverend fathers are free from all 
reproach. They have never been more patriotic than the patriots. On 
the contrary, they have always and everywhere been accused of 
wanting to be more reactionary than the reactionaries and, what is 
still worse, of wanting to be more governmental than the national 
government. When we think of the said experiences which they have 
just undergone in Switzerland, we are all ready to recognise that the 
admonitions they address to us so that we should avoid the opposite 
extreme and similar dangers, are of a generosity worthy of the early 
Christians. We thank them for this 

Deutsche-Briisseler-Zeitung No. 101, . : . : 

December 19, 1847 Published in English for the first 
time