ovements continued to show signs of life, they were
ruthlessly hunted down. Thus the Prussian police hunted out the
Central Board of the Communist League, then located in Cologne. The
members were arrested, and, after eighteen months' imprisonment, they
were tried in October, 1852. This celebrated "Cologne Communist trial"
lasted from October 4 till November 12; seven of the prisoners were
sentenced to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to
six years. Immediately after the sentence the League was formally
dissolved by the remaining members. As to the "Manifesto," it seemed
thenceforth to be doomed to oblivion.

When the European working class had recovered sufficient strength for
another attack on the ruling classes, the International Workingmen's
Association sprang up. But this association, formed with the express
aim of welding into one body the whole militant proletariat of Europe
and America, could not at once proclaim the principles laid down in the
"Manifesto." The International was bound to have a programme broad
enough to be acceptable to the English Trades' Unions, to the followers
of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, and to the
Lassalleans(a) in Germany. Marx, who drew up this programme to the
satisfaction of all parties, entirely trusted to the intellectual
development of the working class, which was sure to result from
combined action and mutual discussion. The very events and
vicissitudes of the struggle against Capital, the defeats even more
than the victories, could not help bringing home to men's minds the
insufficiency of their various favorite nostrums, and preparing the way
for a more complete insight into the true conditions of working-class
emancipation. And Marx was right. The International, on its breaking
up in 1874, left the workers quite different men from what it had found
them in 1864. Proudhonism in France, Lassalleanism in Germany, were
dying out, and even the conservative English Trades' Unions, though
most of them had long since severed their connection with the
International, were gradually advancing towards that point at which,
last year at Swansea, their President could say in their name,
"Continental Socialism has lost its terrors for us." In fact, the
principles of the "Manifesto" had made considerable headway among the
workingmen of all countries.

The Manifesto itself thus came to the front again. The German text had
been, since 1850,