However, audiatur et altera pars.[58] Let us take one last look at the motivation which the indictment offers. In so doing it is possible that we shall find that in what I have been saying I have, by some highly ingenious artifice of exposition, succeeded in concealing the legally offensive features of my action; or on the other hand it may turn out that the totally nugatory character of this indictment will by this means be brought out in even more startling fashion than has yet appeared.
There is one sentence in this indictment which serves as underpinning to the whole structure. This sentence may, therefore, be expected to be of selected timber. The preamble of the document says: "The leading ideas of this address are as follows:—" and then, having given an ostensible resumé of these ideas, it goes on to the following effect: "By these expositions, and by the frequently recurring allusions to an imminent social revolution, the workingmen will manifestly be provoked to hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie; that is to say, the unpropertied classes will be stirred up against the propertied, whereby the public peace will be endangered, particularly since the address contains a direct appeal to make the mastery of the working class over the other classes of society the end of their endeavors, to be pursued with the most ardent and consuming passion."
This is the only passage in the document that is of the nature of a legal motivation. Let us look more closely into this sentence. This is a sentence which might give the asthma to a person with weak lungs, and it is so constructed as to hide its total lack of substance from any superficial view under a shimmering verbiage and a confusion of ideas. If you will look more closely into this passage, Gentlemen, you will be astonished at the quantity of juristic monstrosities, absurdities, misstatements and misconstructions of fact which it contains.
Now, whereby, according to this passage, have I accomplished my alleged incitement to hatred and contempt? "By these expositions," says the document. That is to say by a purely theoretical, purely objective exposition of historical events; by what the indictment itself designates as the exposition of my leading ideas; by nothing else, therefore, than the scientific doctrine simply. It is by this means that I am alleged to have incited to hatred and contempt. The indictment may shift and turn as it likes; it cannot escape the avowal that its accusation runs against nothing else than purely scientific arguments,—against science and its teaching.
But the passage goes on to add an "and." By these expositions and by the frequently recurring allusions to an imminent social revolution is the instigation alleged to have been effected.
What are these allusions to an imminent social revolution? Where are they to be found? Why does not the public prosecutor cite them? I call upon him to do so. But he cannot cite them. There is no passage in this pamphlet which will bear out his insinuations on this point.
It is true, throughout this pamphlet I make frequent use of the words "revolutionary" and "revolution;" although I do not speak of an "imminent social revolution," as the public prosecutor alleges. What I speak of is a social revolution which supervened in February, 1848. But with this word, "revolution," the public prosecutor hopes to crush me. For he, taking the word in its narrower legal sense alone, cannot read this word, "revolution," without conjuring up before his fancy the brandishing of pitchforks. But such is not the meaning of the word in its scientific use, and the consistent use of the term in my pamphlet might have apprised the public prosecutor of the fact that the term is there employed in its alternative, scientific signification. So, for instance, I speak of the development of the territorial principality as a "revolutionary" phenomenon.
And so again, on the other hand, I expressly declare that the peasant wars, which, assuredly, were sufficiently garnished with violence and bloodshed,—I declare these wars to have been a movement which was revolutionary only in the imagination of those who participated in them, whereas they were in reality not a revolutionary, but a reactionary movement.
The progress of industry which took place in the sixteenth century, on the contrary, I repeatedly and constantly characterize as a "really and veritably revolutionary fact" (page 7), although no sword was drawn on its account. Likewise I characterize (page 7) the invention of the spinning jenny in 1775 as a radical and effectual revolution.
Is this an abuse of language, or am I hereby introducing a novel use of words in making use of the term "revolution" in this sense,—in that I apply it to peaceful developments and deny it to sanguinary disturbances!