g called upon to see a scientific doctrine cited
before the court.

The keenest attacks, attacks which, taken by themselves, might easily
have been subject to criminal prosecution, have suffered no
prosecution in any case where they have been embodied in a scientific
work and when promulgated in the form of a scientific doctrine.

I am myself in a position to testify on this point. It is not quite
two years since I published a work in which, I believe, I have
succeeded in contributing something to the advancement of your own
science, Gentlemen,--the science on which the administration of
justice is based. The work of which I speak is my "System of Acquired
Rights." _(System der erworbenen Rechte.)_ In this work I take
occasion to say (Vol. I., p. 238): "Science, whose first duty is the
most searching inquiry and concise thinking, can on this account in no
way deprive itself of the right to formulate its conceptions with all
the definiteness and concision which the clearness of these
conceptions itself requires." And proceeding on this ground I go on,
in the further discussion, to show that the agrarian legislation of
Prussia subsequent to 1850 is nothing else--to quote my own words
literally--than a robbery of the poor for the benefit of the wealthy
landed aristocracy, illegal and perpetrated in violation of the
perpetrators' own sense of equity.

How easy would it not have been, if the expressions had occurred
elsewhere than in a scientific treatise, to find that they embodied
overt contempt of the institutions of the State, and incitement to
hatred and disregard of the regulations of the government. But they
occurred in a scientific treatise--they were the outcome of a
painstaking scientific inquiry,--therefore they passed without
indictment.

But that was two years ago.

In return for the accusation which has been brought against me, I, in
my turn, retort with the accusation that my accusers have this day
brought upon Prussia the disgrace that now for the first time since
the State came into existence scientific teaching is prosecuted before
a criminal court. For what can the public prosecutor say to my
accusation, since he concedes the substance of my claims, since he is
compelled to acknowledge that science and its teaching is free, and
therefore free from all penal restraint? Will he contend, perhaps,
that I do not represent science? Or will he, possibly, deny that the
work with which this indictment is con