Judicial Inquiry against the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung

* Cologne, 6 July. We have just received the following reply to the
article, dated Cologne, 4 July, concerning the arrest of Messrs. Dr. Gottschalk and Anneke,
published in yesterday’s Rheinische Zeitung:
“I declare it to be an untruth that in response to Frau Anneke’s complaint
about the arrest of her husband being carried out without the presence of a
municipal official I replied:
I gave no order for brutalities.
On the contrary, I merely stated that I must regret it if the gendarmes
should have behaved improperly.
I further declare it to be an untruth that I made use of the expression:
the gendarmes had been judicially commanded to make the arrest, and I
merely remarked that the arrest had been effected by virtue of a warrant to
appear issued by the examining magistrate.
By law, warrants to appear are executed by bailiffs or agents of the
armed power. The presence of an officer of the judicial police is nowhere
prescribed.
The calumnies or insults contained in the article against Herr Chief Public
Prosecutor Zweiffel and the gendarmes who carried out the arrest will be
duly appraised in the judicial inquiry that is to be instituted in consequence.
Cologne, 5 July 1848.
The State Prosecutor,
Hecker.”

From the foregoing our esteemed readers will perceive that the Neue
Rh. Ztg. has acquired a new, highly promising contributor –
the Parquet.
We were mistaken on one juridical point. An arrest requires no “officer
of the judicial police”, but merely an agent of the public authority. With
what solicitous guarantees the Code surrounds personal security!
It remains, incidentally, as unlawful as ever that the gendarmes did not
produce their warrant of arrest. It remains unlawful that, as we are
subsequently assured, they scrutinised papers even before the appearance
of Herr Hecker and his companion. Above all, however, the brutalities
which Herr Hecker regretted remain unlawful. We are astonished to see
a judicial inquiry imposed not upon the gendarmes, but upon the newspaper
which denounced the impropriety of the said gendarmes.
The insult could refer only to the one gendarme of whom it was asserted
that at a timely hour he “staggered” from more or less spiritual or spirituous
causes. Should the investigation, however, as we do not doubt for a
moment, establish the correctness of the facts – the brutalities committed
by these agents of the public authority – we believe we have only singled
out, with the most solicitous care, the sole “extenuating circumstance”,
with all the impartiality proper to the press, in the very interest of the
gentlemen we have accused, and the humane indication of the sole
extenuating circumstance is transformed by the Parquet into an “insult”!
And now the insult, or calumny, against Herr Chief Public Prosecutor
Zweiffel!
We simply reported, and, as we ourselves intimated in the report,
reported rumours, rumours that reached us from a good source. The press,
however, has not only the right, but the duty, to keep the closest watch on
the people’s representatives. We at the same time intimated that Herr
Zweiffel’s parliamentary activity to date makes those anti-popular
utterances attributed to him not improbable – and is the press to be denied
the right to pass judgement on the parliamentary activity of a people’s
representative? What, then, is the press for?
Or has the press no right to find too much of the Chief Public Prosecutor
in the people’s representative Zweiffel and too much of the people’s
representative in the Chief Public Prosecutor? What, then, are the debates
on incompatibilities for, in Belgium, in France, etc.?
As regards constitutional usus, one should read up on how the
Constitutionnel, the Siècle, the Presse under Louis Philippe passed
judgement on the parliamentary activity of Messrs. Hébert, Plougoulm,
etc., at the time when these gentlemen were the supreme heads of the
Parquet and, at the same time, deputies. One should read the Belgian
papers – and, indeed, the strictly constitutional ones, the Observateur,
the Politique, the Émancipation – and see how they passed judgement on
the parliamentary activity of Herr Bavay scarcely a year ago, when Herr
Bavay united in one person the deputy and the procurator-general.
And what was always permitted under the Guizot ministry, under the
Rogier ministry, is not to be permitted in the monarchy on the broadest
democratic basis? A right which no ministry of the French Restoration
contested becomes a wrong under the Ministry of Action, which recognises
the revolution in principle?
The public has meanwhile convinced itself from our extra supplement
of this morning how correctly we have judged the course of events.
Rodbertus has left the ministry and Ladenberg has entered the ministry.
The ministry of the Left Centre has, after a few days, been transformed
into a decidedly old-Prussian reactionary ministry. The Right has ventured
a coup d’état, the Left has withdrawn menacingly.
And is it not as plain as a pikestaff that the latest deeds in Cologne
were inscribed in the great campaign plan of the Ministry of Action?
We are just informed that the Neue Rheinische Zeitung is barred from
access to the house of detention. Does the prison regulation authorise this
prohibition? Or are those politically accused condemned as a punishment
to read the Kölnische Zeitung exclusively?