"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" – The Trial on Refusal to Pay Taxes

The Trial on Refusal to Pay Taxes

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 218 of 10 February 1849]

*
Cologne
, 9 February. If the decision of the jury in our press trial the day before yesterday was of importance for the press, yesterday’s acquittal of Marx, Schneider and Schapper is decisive for all the proceedings pending before Rhenish courts arising from the refusal to pay taxes. The fact itself was perfectly simple and not subject to any doubt. The incriminated document <See
"[Appeal of the Democratic District Committee to Refuse Payment of Taxes]"
> read as follows:

"The Rhenish District Committee of Democrats calls upon all democratic associations of the Rhine Province to bring about the adoption and implementation of the following measures:

1. After the Prussian National Assembly itself has resolved upon the refusal to pay taxes, their forcible collection is to be resisted
everywhere
by
every kind of resistance.

2. The
Landsturm for defence against the enemy
is to be organised everywhere.

3. The authorities are everywhere to be called upon to declare publicly whether they recognise and intend to carry out the decisions of the National Assembly. In the event of refusal,
Committees of Public Safety
are to be appointed. Municipal councils that oppose the legislative assembly are to be replaced by
general popular election."

This document is surely clear enough. Apart from the question of the validity or invalidity of the tax refusal resolution <See
"No More Taxes!!!"
>, there was obviously here a case of incitement to insurrection and civil war. The defendants also made no secret of the fact that by the "enemy" (in paragraph 2) the
internal
enemy, the armed force of the

government, was to be understood. Nevertheless, the state prosecuting authority, despairing of a conviction under this article of the Code, had chosen the milder charge: incitement to rebellion and resistance against the agents of state authority (Art. 209 et seq.).

The question, accordingly, turned solely on the political issue of whether the defendants had been authorised by the Assembly’s resolution on the refusal to pay taxes to call in this manner for resistance against the state authority, to organise an armed force against that of the state, and to have authorities dismissed and installed by their own plenipotentiary power.

The jury answered this question in the affirmative after a very brief deliberation.

Following this decision,
Lassalle
and
Cantador
will probably soon be set at liberty as well. It is not to be expected that the Indictment Chamber of Cologne will be of a different opinion with regard to them than the jury with regard to Marx, Schneider and Schapper.

We shall, incidentally, return to Lassalle in particular tomorrow. There appears to be a well-meaning intention to drag his case out beyond the next assizes (in March) and thus to impose on him a further three months of detention on remand. Hopefully, however, the verdict of the Cologne jury will put a stop to such philanthropic plans. As to how Lassalle is being treated in Düsseldorf prison, some pleasant details tomorrow. <See
"Lassalle"
>