ery.

This forgery, however, was not the only thing of the kind of which the
police was guilty. Two or three more cases of the sort came out during
the trial. The documents stolen by Reuter were interpolated by the
police so as to disfigure their meaning. A paper, containing some
rabid nonsense, was written in a handwriting imitating that of Dr.
Marx, and for a time it was pretended that it had been written by him,
until at last the prosecution was obliged to acknowledge the forgery.
But for every police infamy that was proved as such, there were five
or six fresh ones brought forward, which could not, at the moment, be
unveiled, the defence being taken by surprise, the proofs having to be
got from London, and every correspondence of the counsel for the
defence with the London Communist refugees being in open court treated
as complicity in the alleged plot!

That Greif and Fleury are what they are here represented to be has
been stated by Herr Stieber himself, in his evidence; as to Hirsch, he
has before a London magistrate confessed that he forged the "minute
book," by order and with the assistance of Fleury, and then made his
escape from this country in order to evade a criminal prosecution.

The Government could stand few such branding disclosures as came to
light during the trial. It had a jury--six nobles, two Government
officials. These were not the men to look closely into the confused
mass of evidence heaped before them during six weeks, when they heard
it continually dinned into their ears that the defendants were the
chiefs of a dreadful Communist conspiracy, got up in order to subvert
everything sacred--property, family, religion, order, government and
law! And yet, had not the Government, at the same time, brought it to
the knowledge of the privileged classes, that an acquittal in this
trial would be the signal for the suppression of the jury; and that it
would be taken as a direct political demonstration--as a proof of the
middle-class Liberal Opposition being ready to unite even with the
most extreme revolutionists--the verdict would have been an acquittal.
As it was, the retroactive application of the new Prussian code
enabled the Government to have seven prisoners convicted, while four
merely were acquitted, and those convicted were sentenced to
imprisonment varying from three to six years, as you have, doubtless,
already stated at the time the news reached you.

LONDON, December 1, 1852.

FOOTNOTE