The destruction of the last remnants of an independent press 
on the Continent has made it the honourable duty of the English 
press to record every act of illegality and oppression in that 
quarter of Europe. Allow me, therefore, through your columns, to 
lay before the public a fact, which shows that the judges in Prussia 
are quite on a level with the political menials of Louis Napoleon. 

You know what a valuable moyen de gouvernement* a well got-up 
conspiracy may turn out, if brought forward at the proper 
moment. The Prussian government, in order to render their 
parliament pliable, wanted such a plot in the beginning of last 
year. Accordingly, numbers of persons were arrested, and the 
police was set to work all over Germany. But nothing was made 
out, and after all, but a few individuals were ultimately retained in 
prison at Cologne, under the pretext of being the chiefs of a 
widespread revolutionary organisation. The principal of them are 
Dr. Becker and Dr. Burgers, two gentlemen connected with the 
press, Dr. Daniels, Dr. Jacobi and Dr. Klein, medical practitioners 
two of whom had honourably filled the arduous duties of a 
physician to the administration of the poor, and M. Otto, director 
of extensive chemical works, and well known in his country by his 
attainments in chemical science. There being, however, no 
evidence against them, their release was expected every day. But 
while they were in prison, the “Disciplinary Law” was promul- 
gated, enabling the government, by a very short and easy 
proceeding, to rid themselves of any obnoxious judicial func- 
tionary. The effect of this enactment upon the hitherto slow and 
languishing proceedings against the above-named gentlemen was 

* Means of government.— Ed. 

To the Editor of The Times 211 

almost instantaneous. Not only were they placed au secret, denied 
every communication with each other or their friends, even by 
letter, and deprived of books and writing materials (allowed, in 
Prussia, to the meanest felon before conviction); but the judicial 
proceedings took a quite different turn. The Chambre du Conseil 
(you know we are judged, in Cologne, by the Code Napoléon) was 
at once found ready to make out a case against them, and the 
matter went before the Senate of Accusation, a body of judges 
fulfilling the functions of an English Grand Jury. It is to the 
unparalleled judgment of this body that I beg particularly to draw 
your attention. In this judgment there occurs, literally translated, 
the following extraordinary passage: 

“Considering, that no reliable evidence has been brought forward, that, 
therefore, no case having been made out, there exists no reason for maintaining the 
indictment” —(the prisoners are ordered to be set at liberty, you suppose, is the 

necessary conclusion? Not it indeed)— “the whole of the minutes and documents is 
to be returned to the juge d’instruction* for a fresh investigation.” 

This means, then, that after a detention of ten months, during 
which time neither the activity of the police nor the acumen of the 
counsel for the Crown have been able to make out the shadow of 
a case—the whole proceeding is to begin again from the 
beginning, in order, perhaps, after another year’s investigation, to 
be handed over a third time to the juge d’instruction! 

The explanation of such a glaring breach of the law is this: the 
government are just now preparing the organisation of a High 
Court of Justice to be made up of the most subservient materials. 
As a defeat before a jury would be certain, the government must 
delay the final trial of this affair until it may go before this new 
Court, which of course, will give every guarantee to the Crown 
and none to the prisoners. 

Would it not be far more honourable for the Prussian 
government to pass sentence at once, by Royal Decree, upon the 
prisoners, in the way M. Louis Bonaparte has done? 

I am, Sir, your most obedient servant. 

London, 29 January 1852 Ae Dreenne 

Der Briefwechsel zwischen Friedrich Engels copy in English 

und Karl Marx, Erster Band, Stuttgart, 

1913