** Cologne, July 4. We promised our readers yesterday to return to the arrest of Messrs Dr Gottschalk and Anneke in No. 35, July 5, 1848, of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. So far, detailed information has reached us only concerning Anneke’s arrest.

Between 6 and 7 o’clock in the morning 6–7 gendarmes entered Anneke’s residence, immediately mistreated the servant-girl in the hallway, and crept softly up the stairs. Three remained in the anteroom, four forced their way into the bedroom, where Anneke and his heavily pregnant wife were sleeping. Of these four pillars of justice, one was more or less reeling, already at this early hour filled with the “spirit”, the water of true life, the burnt water.

Anneke asked what they wanted. – He was to come along! was the laconic reply. Anneke begged at least to spare his sick wife and to go into the anteroom. The gentlemen of the Holy Hermandad declare they do not intend to leave the bedroom, urge Anneke to dress quickly, and do not even permit him to speak with his wife. This urging turns into physical violence in the anteroom, in the course of which one of the gendarmes smashes the glass door to pieces. Anneke was shoved down the stairs. Four gendarmes led him off to the new prison, three remained with Mrs. Anneke to guard her until the arrival of the state prosecutor.

According to legal regulation, at least one officer of the judicial police – a police commissioner and the like – must be present at the arrest. What need for such formalities, now that the people have two assemblies to represent their rights, one in Berlin and one in Frankfurt?

Half an hour later, Mr. State Prosecutor Hecker and examining magistrate Geiger came to conduct the house search.

Mrs. Anneke complains that the state prosecutor left the arrest to brutal gendarmes, restrained by the presence of no magistrate. Mr. Hecker declares he gave no order for brutality. As if Mr. Hecker could command brutality! Mrs. Anneke: It seems the gendarmes were sent on ahead alone so as not to have to answer for their brutality. The arrest, moreover, did not take place in legal form, since no gendarme presented an arrest warrant, but merely one pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, which Anneke was not allowed to read.

Mr. Hecker: “The gendarmes were judicially ordered to make the arrest.” And is the command of the judges not subject to the command of the law? State prosecutor and examining magistrate confiscated a mass of papers, pamphlets, among them the entire portfolio of Mrs Anneke, etc. Mr. Examining Magistrate Geiger is, incidentally, designated as police director.

In the evening, Anneke was interrogated for half an hour. The reason for his arrest was allegedly a seditious speech he had delivered at the last popular assembly in the Gürzenich. Article 102 of the Code pénal speaks of public speeches that directly incite to plots against the Emperor and his family or that aim to disturb the public peace by civil war, by the unlawful use of armed force, by public devastation and plunder. The Code does not know the Prussian “incitement to discontent”. In default of the Prussian Landrecht, Article 102 will for the time being be applied wherever its application belongs among juridical impossibilities.

At the arrest itself, a large military force was deployed – troops confined to barracks since four o’clock. Bakers and artisans were let in but not let out again. The hussars moved from Deutz to Cologne around 6 o’clock and rode through the entire town. The new prison was occupied by 300 men. For today, four new arrests, of Jansen, Kalker, Esser and a fourth, are announced. The placard of Jansen, in which he urged the workers to keep calm, was, as eyewitnesses assure us, torn down by the police yesterday evening. Was that done in the interest of order? Or was a pretext sought to carry out long-cherished plans in the good city of Cologne?

Mr. Chief Prosecutor Zweiffel is said to have earlier inquired at the Higher Regional Court in Arnsberg whether he should arrest Anneke on account of his earlier conviction and transport him to Jülich. The royal amnesty seems to have stood in the way of this well-meant intention. The matter went to the ministry.

Mr. Chief Prosecutor Zweiffel is also said to have declared that within 8 days he would put an end, in Cologne on the Rhine, to the 19th of March, to the clubs and the freedom of the press, and to other degenerations of the evil year 1848. Mr. Zweiffel is not one of the sceptics.

Does Mr. Zweiffel perhaps combine the executive power with the legislative? Are the laurels of the chief prosecutor to cover the nakedness of the people’s representative? Once again we shall go through our dearly beloved shorthand reports and draw for the public a faithful picture of the activity of the people’s representative and chief prosecutor Zweiffel.

These, then, are the deeds of the Ministry of Action, the ministry of the Left Centre, the ministry of transition to a ministerium of old nobility, old bureaucracy, old Prussia. As soon as Mr. Hansemann has fulfilled his transitory vocation, he will be dismissed.

But the Left in Berlin must see that the old power can safely leave to it minor parliamentary victories and grand constitutional drafts if only it meanwhile seizes all the really decisive positions. It can safely recognise the revolution of 19 March in the Chamber if that revolution is only disarmed outside the Chamber. The Left might one fine morning find that its parliamentary victory and its real defeat coincide. German development perhaps needs such contrasts.

The Ministry of Action recognises the revolution in principle in order to carry out the counter-revolution in practice.