"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" — Lassalle

[Dissolution]
Contents
Prohibition of the Rhenish Communal Council Assembly

Page numbers refer to: Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels - Werke, Volume 6, pp. 462-466

Lassalle

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 288 of May 3, 1849]

Cologne, May 2. Yesterday we promised to return to the indictment against Lassalle.

Lassalle is accused of a "crime against Arts. 87 and 102 of the Penal Code".

Art. 87 is directed against the "attentat or complot whose purpose is to incite (exciter) the citizens or inhabitants to arm themselves against the imperial authority".

Art. 102 subjects to the penalties (mostly the death penalty) laid down in the preceding section (to which Art. 87 also belongs) all those who, by speeches in public places and at public meetings or by posted placards, incite (excitent) the citizens to commit these crimes. Only in the event that the incitement has no effect is the penalty commuted to banishment.

Now, what is Lassalle accused of?

Since he is alleged to have simultaneously offended against Art. 87 and against Art. 102, he can only be accused of:

having incited, in the manner of Art. 102, to the crimes of Art. 87, i.e.:

having incited the citizens to make an attentat or complot whose purpose is the incitement to arm against the royal authority, i.e.:

having incited the citizens to the incitement to arm!

To ordinary common sense that is fairly palpable nonsense. But the public ministry and the indictment chamber have willed it thus.

Art. 102, which equates incitement to the crimes of Arts. 86-101 with the commission of the crime itself, if the incitement has consequences, fits in fact quite well with all these articles. It even fits with the other points of the same Art. 87. For all these articles are directed against specific factual acts to which one can incite. For example, Art. 87, which is directed against attentat and complot, also speaks of attentat and complot against the life and person of the Emperor, of attentat and complot whose purpose is to change or destroy the form of government and the order of succession to the throne. These are all things to which one can "incite". Incitement to regicide, to revolution, is a possible fact; incitement to a complot whose purpose is regicide or revolution can also occur. But "incitement to the formation of an attentat or complot for the incitement to arm against the royal authority", in a word, incitement to incitement, is a crime as impossible, as absurd as the "attempt at the remote attempt at high treason", which cost many a poor devil of a Burschenschaft member ten years in a fortress in the old pious days of the General Land Law, or as the famous suspect de suspicion d'incivisme (suspected of being suspected of lack of civic spirit), which legitimist spectacles claim to have found in the prison registers of the Terror of '93.

Or else: If "incitement to incitement to arm" is truly a logically and juridically possible crime, then Lassalle, in order to fall simultaneously under the passage in question of Art. 87 and under Art. 102, should have been indicted not on account of the Neuss speech, but on account of the address to the National Assembly, in which it says: "We implore the National Assembly: Issue the call to arms!"

Here is "incitement to incitement to arm". But not even this non plus ultra <unsurpassable> of an indictment act has thought of seeing a crime in these words.

But how does the public ministry come to pick out from the long series of articles of the section in question precisely the passage to which Art. 102 does not fit at all, and connect it with Art. 102?

Very simple. The crime against Art. 87 carries the death penalty. And to help have Lassalle condemned to death, no jury was to be found in the whole Rhine Province. They therefore preferred to drag in Art. 102, which prescribes, in the event that the incitement to the "crime" is unsuccessful, the commutation of the penalty to banishment. And for that, they believed, a jury would soon be found willing.

Thus, to get rid of Lassalle, the public ministry invented an impossible crime, coupled two passages of the law which, in the coupling, have no other meaning than pure nonsense.

Therefore: Either Lassalle is guilty of having violated Art. 87, and then let them have the courage to condemn him directly to death; or he is not guilty of having violated Art. 87, and then he has also not violated Art. 102 and must absolutely be acquitted. But to violate Art. 87 in the passage cited and Art. 102 at the same time is an impossibility.

Note the cunning of the public ministry. The charge against Lassalle actually falls under Art. 87 (death penalty). They dare not accuse him of that: they accuse him under Art. 87 in conjunction with Art. 102 (banishment); and if that does not help, if the jury acquits him, then they bring him before the correctional police court and push forward Articles 209 and 217 (six days to one year imprisonment). And all that for one and the same fact, for his activity as an agitator during the tax-refusal movement!

Let us now look at the actual corpus delicti, the Neuss speech of November 21.

Lassalle is accused of having directly incited to arm against the royal power.

According to the three witness statements on which the indictment relies, Lassalle did indeed very directly incite the people of Neuss to arm themselves, to procure munitions, to preserve the liberties won by force of arms, to support the National Assembly by active action, etc. Now, incitement to arm in general is by no means an offence, let alone a crime, least of all since the Revolution and the law of April 6, 1848, which guarantees every Prussian the right to bear arms. Incitement to arm first becomes punishable under the Code when the arming is directed against individual officials (rebellion) or against the royal power, or against another section of the citizens (insurrection). Here it is specifically the incitement, and indeed the direct incitement, to arm against the royal power.

But in all three witness statements there is not a word about arming against the royal power; there is merely talk of arming for the protection of the National Assembly. And the National Assembly was a legally convened, legally existing organ, an essential part of the legislative, indeed here even of the constituent power. Just as the constituent power stands above the executive, precisely so highly did the National Assembly stand above the "royal government". To provoke a general arming of the people for the protection of this highest legal authority of the land, alongside the King, is regarded by our Parquets as a serious crime!

The only passage in which a subtle public prosecutor's nose might detect a remote reference to the "royal government" would be the one about the batteries in Neuss. But does Lassalle incite the people of Neuss, does he even incite them "directly", as the indictment claims in its summary and as is necessary for a conviction, to arm themselves in order to take the batteries on the left bank of the Rhine?

On the contrary! He incites them to do so neither "directly" nor indirectly. He merely says that the people of Düsseldorf expected that the people of Neuss would take these batteries. And this merely uttered "expectation" is, in the opinion of the estimable Parquet, an excitation directe, a direct incitement to arm against the royal power!

Thus, in the whole actual arming of Düsseldorf, openly organised for the protection of the National Assembly and yet doubtless directed against no one else but the Prussian troops, i.e. against the royal government (le gouvernement de l'empereur), there lies no crime, there lies merely the offence of resistance to individual officials; and in this mere expression, in these four words, there lies a serious criminal crime!

What Lassalle did, they dare not charge; what he said is supposed to be a serious crime. And what did he say? That it was expected that the people of Neuss would take batteries. And who, he says, expects this — is it he himself, Lassalle? On the contrary, the people of Düsseldorf!

Lassalle says: Third persons expect that you will do this or that, and according to the logic of the public ministry that is a "direct incitement" to you to actually do what is expected.

In Berlin the ministers have now dissolved the Chamber and are preparing for further octroyings. Let us suppose that today the general suffrage were forcibly abolished, the right of association suppressed, the freedom of the press annihilated. We say: We expect that the people will reply to this disgraceful breach of faith with barricades — then, says the Parquet, we have thereby "directly incited" the citizens of Berlin to arm themselves against the royal power, and if it goes according to the wish of the Parquet, we shall, according to circumstances, be condemned to death or to banishment!

The secret of the whole trial against Lassalle is the trial of tendency against the troublesome agitator. It is a covert trial for "exciting discontent", such as we had the pleasure of experiencing here on the Rhine too until March. Precisely the same is the trial against Weyers a covert trial for lèse-majesté. Weyers said: "Death to the King", and: "The crown must not be left on the King's head for another quarter of an hour": and these few words, according to the concepts of the Code pénal very innocent, are likewise supposed to contain "direct incitement to arm"!

And even if Lassalle really did incite to arm against the royal power, what then? Let us place ourselves on the constitutional standpoint, let us speak according to constitutional concepts. Was it not the duty of every citizen at that time, in November, not only "to incite to arm", nay, to arm themselves for the protection of the constitutional representatives of the people, against a perjured "royal government" that chased the Assembly of the people's representatives from hotel to hotel with soldiers, broke up its sittings, left its papers to the soldiers for spills and for heating stoves, and finally chased it home? Was not, according to the resolutions of the United Diet, according to the celebrated legal basis of Herr Camphausen, to say nothing of the conquests of March 19, the Assembly an "equally entitled contracting party" with the Crown? And such an Assembly is not to be allowed to be protected against encroachments by the so-called "royal government"?

It has, moreover, been seen how it has become second nature to the "royal government" to treat the people's representatives with kicks. The octroyed Chambers have scarcely been together for two months when the same royal government disperses them at the first objectionable resolution — the same Chambers that were supposedly to revise the constitution! Now the Chambers have recognised the octroyed constitution as valid, and now we really do not know whether we have a constitution or not. Who knows what will be octroyed to us tomorrow!

And the people who had foreseen all this, who acted accordingly, who sought energetically to oppose this violent goings-on of an overbearing camarilla, who, in the view of all constitutional countries and especially of England, stood entirely on legal ground — such people Manteuffel, Simons and Company have arrested, held in prison for six months and finally put before a jury, accused of incitement to insurrection!