Most excellent, most powerful King, 
Most gracious King and Lord, 


Scarcely a year has elapsed since Your Majesty by Your 
memorable, royal, free decision released the press from the 
oppressive shackles in which it had been laid by unfortunate 
circumstances. Every citizen inspired by a genuine feeling of 
freedom and patriotism looked with redoubled confidence to the 
present and the immediate future, in which public opinion with its 
manifold convictions and deep-seated contradictions has acquired 
appropriate organs of the press, and by means of ever more 
thorough development and ever-renewed justification of its own 
content will refine itself until it reaches that purity, clarity and 
resoluteness by which it offers the richest, surest and most 
vivifying source of national legislation. The Rhinélander in par- 
ticular, Your Majesty, was filled with the most noble joy when he 
saw that free, public utterance—whose high value and inner 
worth he had come to appreciate so thoroughly in his judicial 
system —had at least been given an opening also in other areas of 
state life, where the need for it is greatest, in the sphere of 
political conviction, which is the most essential element of state 
life, and in which morality is of the highest significance. 

That confidence and this joy were, we say frankly, most 
painfully affected by the news of the measures decided upon 
against the Rheinische Zeitung. Participating directly in the upsurge 


* Added in a different handwriting at the top of the page: “To Minister of 
State, Count von Arnim. Berlin, March 5, 1843.”— Ed. 


Appendices 711 


of public life evoked by Your Majesty’s accession to the throne, 
that newspaper developed its conception of state affairs at all 
events with uncompromising consistency, and indeed was not seldom 
bluntly outspoken. One may favour the political views of 
this newspaper, one may, like many of the undersigned, not share 
them, one may indeed be definitely hostile to them, in any case, 
the true friend of an efficient and free state life must sincerely 
regret the blow that has befallen this newspaper. By the suppres- 
sion of this one newspaper alone, the entire press of the 
Fatherland is deprived of that independence which, as it is the 
foundation of all moral relationships, is also absolutely essential 
for a principled discussion of specific state affairs, and without 
which neither outstanding talent nor firm character can be applied 
to political literature. 

The undersigned citizens of Cologne, in whose midst the 
threatened newspaper found its origin, feel themselves above all 
obliged and impelled to express frankly to Your Majesty, whom 
they have learnt to honour as the mightiest protector of free 
speech, their feeling of pain at the decreed suppression and to 
submit before the steps of the throne the most humble request: 

That Your Majesty will most graciously order that the measures 
projected against the Rheinische Zeitung by the high censorship 
authorities on January 21 of this year shall be annulled and that 
this newspaper shall continue to exist without any restriction of 
the freedom hitherto accorded to our domestic press in general by 
Your Majesty yourself. 

We remain most humble and obedient subjects of Your Majesty, 
loyal citizens of Cologne 

[signatures follow]?