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Updated: May 17, 2025
As to this second part of the indictment: I am accused of instigating the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes. "By this presentation," says the indictment, "working men will plainly be incited to hatred and contempt of the bourgeoisie, that is to say, the unpropertied classes will be inflamed against the propertied classes."
Possibly, even, the régime may be permanently deranged, and there is even a shadowy doubt possible to be entertained as to whether the vested pecuniary rights, on which the class of gentlemen rests, may not suffer some derangement, in case the control should pass into the hands of the underbred and unpropertied for so long a season as to let the common man get used to thinking that the vested interests and the sacred rights of gentility are so much ado about nothing.
Not only did it provide subsistence, although scantier upon the whole, for as many families in proportion as the intermediate and smaller properties; but the landlords moreover, occupying a comparatively elevated and free position, supplied the community with its natural leaders and rulers, while the agricultural and unpropertied tenants-on-sufferance furnished the genuine material for the Roman policy of colonization, without which it never would have succeeded; for while the state may furnish land to him who has none, it cannot impart to one who knows nothing of agriculture the spirit and the energy to wield the plough.
Not only did it provide subsistence, although scantier upon the whole, for as many families in proportion as the intermediate and smaller properties; but the landlords moreover, occupying a comparatively elevated and free position, supplied the community with its natural leaders and rulers, while the agricultural and unpropertied tenants-on-sufferance furnished the genuine material for the Roman policy of colonization, without which it never would have succeeded; for while the state may furnish land to him who has none, it cannot impart to one who knows nothing of agriculture the spirit and the energy to wield the plough.
This will show what an incomprehensible, unheard-of, uncharacterisable quid pro quo the public prosecutor has attempted to impute to me in charging me with instigating the unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes.
And after having in this way, quietly and by subreption, introduced this its definition of the term "bourgeoisie," the indictment goes on to formulate its final charge as follows: "It is accordingly charged that the above named citizen, F.L., , by his lecture etc., and by publishing the pamphlet containing this same lecture, has publicly instigated the unpropertied classes of the State's subjects to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes."
It would be well with states, if the unpropertied masses threatened them with no other danger than that with which they are menaced by bears and wolves; only the timid and those who trade upon the silly fears of the multitude prophesy the destruction of civil order through servile revolts or insurrections of the proletariate.
If there is any one fact which has hitherto been accepted, in scientific and in popular opinion alike, and more particularly among the unpropertied classes, with, the fondest remembrance, as a national movement iniquitously put down by the strong hand of violence, it is the peasant wars.
II. This incitement must be directed to the detriment of given classes of the subjects of the State, and I am accordingly accused by the public prosecutor of having incited the class of the unpropertied against the class of the propertied; III. This incitement must be of such a nature as to endanger the public peace.
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."
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