[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”  
| No. 237 of March 4, 1849]

* Cologne, March 3. People still remember that famous procedure: an unfortunate girl was brought before the assizes for infanticide. The jury acquitted her. Later she was summoned before the correctional police court for concealment of pregnancy. Amid general laughter from the public, the committal order of the Chamber of the Court was quashed.

The Düsseldorf Chamber of the Court is following in the footsteps of its celebrated predecessor.

By order of the Düsseldorf Chamber of the Court of February 22, Lassalle, Cantador and Weyers have been committed to the assizes for seditious speeches. We have no objection to that. But by order of the same Chamber of the Court Lassalle has also been, secondly, committed to the correctional police court, because he is alleged, in a speech at Neuss, to have called for “forcible resistance to officials” (offence against Arts. 209, 217).

Let us first establish the fact.

Among the circumstances which motivate Lassalle’s committal to the assizes is the same speech at Neuss. The Chamber of the Court states that in this speech he “called for an armed uprising against the sovereign power”. (Offence against Arts. 87, 91, 102.)

On the basis of the same speech, then, Lassalle is committed at one time to the assizes, at another time to the correctional police court. If the jury acquits him, the correctional police court condemns him. If the correctional police court does not convict him, he still remains in provisional detention until the correctional police court has acquitted him. Whatever the verdict of the jury may be — he remains deprived of his liberty, and the Prussian state is saved.

It is, we repeat, one and the same speech on the basis of which Lassalle

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is committed by the Düsseldorf Chamber of the Court at one time to the assizes, at another time to the correctional police court. It is the same fact.

Quite apart from that.

If in a speech I “call for an armed uprising against the sovereign power,” does it not go without saying that I am calling for “forcible resistance to officials”? The existence of the sovereign power consists precisely in its officials, army, administration, judges. Apart from this its body, it is a shadow, a figment, a name. The overthrow of the government is impossible without forcible resistance to its officials. If in a speech I call for revolution, it is superfluous to add: “Resist the officials by force.” After the precedent set by the Düsseldorf Chamber of the Court, it would be possible to commit every person without exception who is committed to the assizes on the basis of Arts. 87, 102 for incitement to the overthrow of the government, subsequently to commit him to the correctional police court on the basis of Arts. 209, 217.

And does there not exist somewhere in the Code d’instruction criminelle an article that reads as follows:

[306] “Toute personne acquittée légalement ne pourra plus être reprise ni accusée à raison du même délit”? In German: “No one who has been lawfully acquitted may ever again be proceeded against or indicted for the same offence.”

It makes no difference to the situation, however, whether I am summoned before the correctional police court after the acquitting verdict of the jury for the same offence, or whether the verdict of the jury is quashed in advance by committing me in advance, first, to the assizes and, second, to the correctional police court for the same offence.

We ask the Düsseldorf Chamber of the Court whether its patriotic zeal has not outwitted its legal acumen. We ask the investigating magistrate Ebermeier whether he is entirely free from personal hostility towards Lassalle. We ask, finally, an official of the Düsseldorf parquet whether he did not remark: “The acquittal of Cantador and Weyers is not of much importance to us, but we must keep hold of Lassalle in any case.”

We doubt whether Lassalle has the same inclination to be entered in the inventory of “state nationals” par excellence¹ for time immemorial.

The pending case is important not only for us, because it concerns the liberty and the right of a fellow citizen, one of our party friends. It

¹ in the truest sense of the word

21 Marx/Engels, Werke, Vol. 6

32 Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels * “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”

is above all important because it concerns whether the exclusive competence of the jury court for political crimes is to share the fate of all the so-called March achievements or not, whether it is left to the discretion of the salaried gowns to degrade the unsalaried jury court to a mere sham court by subjecting the same fact, in case it is not recognised as a political crime or offence by the juries, at the same time as a common offence to the judgement of the correctional police court. Why were crimes and offences withdrawn from the ordinary courts and assigned to jury courts in the first place? Evidently, in spite of the honour and delicacy of the salaried judges, it was assumed that in political trials they represent everything except the interest of the accused.

We shall return to the subject.![^1]


X See the present volume, pp. 444/445, 454-458 and 462-466

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