The Sun.
London, England, 1849-01-10 00:00:00

PRUSSIA.

M. Temme, the Director of the Chief Court in
Munster, who was arrested there by the order of
that Court itself on a charge of treason, for the part
he took in the vote refusing the payment of taxes,
has published a formal protest against his arrest.
He denies that the local court has any jurisdiction in
a matter which, if it involve any criminality, comes
under the cognizance of the Court of Berlin alone,
and impugns the step it has taken on account of its
previously expressed animosity to him, which
prevents its deciding any question by which he is
affected with impartiality. He denies also that a
deputy can be proceeded against for anything he
may have (lone in his legislative capacity. He claims
a speedy hearing and legal decision in his case, which,
however, must be removed .from the Court of Mun-
ster, on every legal ground, of incompetence, and
because as it has commenced the prosecution, it can-
not also pronounce the decision. By his own account
of his arrest, and the first steps of the inquiry, the
proceedings against him appear to have been some-
what informal :

" By order of the Court of Justice of this city I was
suddenly arrested on the 28th inst. and confined in the
city prison. In the warrant of arrest it was stated that
the Chief Court of Justice had commenced a prosecu-
tion against me for having aided in carrying into effect
the well-known refusal of taxes resolution, passed on the
15th of November. The examination and imprisonment
had been decreed without any preliminary inquiry
having taken place. On my being examined I was in-
formed that the prosecution had been commenced on the
ground of a proclamation issued by the deputies of the
National Assembly to the Prussian people, which had
been published on the sth of December by he Deutsche
Reform, a journal appearing at Berlin, and in which my
name was mentioned among others. A copy of the
paper was laid before me. No other charge was made
against me. Only on the ground of a statement con-
tained in that journal, as the decree of the Court ex-
pressly mentioned, a prosecution for high treason had
been commenced against me, and my imprisonment had
been ordered. I, of course, refused to give any expla-
nations at the examination. To be imprisoned and pro-
secuted for high treason merely on the ground of a
statement made by a journal is a case entirely unprece-
dented in the administration of justice in Prussia."
The letter is dated from the criminal prison, where,
he says, the President of the Supreme Court may
have been sent by his colleagues to a cell prepared for
his reception by removing the robbers or murderers
who were its former tenants ! It has been before
stated that if the prosecution is conducted wholly
at the discretion of the judges of the different courts,
the judicial officers compromised will be treated
with the utmost severity, so fierce is party feeling.
M. Temme was for several years second director of
the Criminal ;Court of Berlin, but afterwards was
removed to Tilsit—it is said, on account of his con-
tributions to the Lcipziger Zeitung. He was then
called to fill the post he recently held in the superior
Court of Munster. As a writer on criminal law his
reputation is great ; but though he has a large circle
of friends in Berlin, in Munster he was not much
liked; his nomination to the Court there violated the
old principle of promotion by seniority, and this
prejudiced his colleagues against him. He is himself
a Catholic, but having married a Protestant, allows
his children to be educated in the Evangelical
Church—another cause of offence to the Catholic
population of Munster. No doubt now remains that
the prosecution of the Deputies of the Opposition has
the full approval of the Ministry. In addition to M.
Temme and the other judicial Deputies who have
been arrested, the same step has been taken against
those Deputies who held any administrative office
under the Government in the provinces. It is under-
stood that the warrants are prepared for the appre-
hension of the whole 180 Members who signed the
resolution. The process will be one of the most
gigantic political prosecutions ever recorded.

ITALY.
The Pope published the following proclamation on
Christmas-day :
Having been by Divine disposition, and in a man-
ner nearly wonderful, raised, although ourselves un-
worthy, to the high Pontificate, one of our first cares
was to promote union among the subjects of the tempo-
ral state of the Church, to consolidate the peace of fatui-
ties, and to contribute in every possible manuer to their
benefit, and, as far as in us lay, to render the state
flourishing and tranquil. But the benefits we endea-
voured to impart to our subjects, and the liberal insti-
tutions with which we deigned to accede to their desires,
instead of procuring us that gratitude and devotion
which we had every right to expect, have, too frankly,
we must acknowledge it, brought only repeated bitter-
ness and displeasure to our heart, from the part of those
ungrateful people, who, whatever may be their number,
our paternal eye would always wish to see restrained.
It is now known to the world in what manner wo have
been deceived, and what an abuse has been made
of our concessions, subverting the spirit, and per-
verting 'the sense of our words, in order to deceive
the multitude; and also how those same benefits and in-
stitutions have been used by some as a shield to the
most violent excesses against our sovereign authority,
and against the temporal rights of the Holy See. Our
mind shrinks from the duty of particularly lamenting
' the late events from the commencement of the 15th day
of last November, when a confidential Minister was
barbarously murdered in full day, by the hand of an
assassin, and the act was still more barbarously ap-
plauded by a class of madmen, enemies equally of
God and men, as of the Church and every honest
political institution. This: first crime opened a series
of others, which, with sacrilegious boldness, were com-
mitted during the following day; and seeing that these
have already met with the execration of all virtuous
minds, in our own state, in Italy, and in Europe, and
will further encounter the same in all parts of the world,
we spare our heart the immense grief of repeating them.
We were constrained to withdraw ourselves from the
place where they were committed, from the place when)
violence prevented us from applying the remedy, reduced
only to weep with the good, and to deplore with them
these sad events, to which is added the still more grievous
fact, that justice is utterly inactive against the authors
of such abominable crimes. Providence has conducted
us to this city of Gaeta, where, finding ourselves in
full liberty, we again solemnly repeated our pro-
tests against the above-mentioned violences, which
we had from the beginning made in Rome itself before
the representatives accredited to us from the dif-
ferent Courts of Europe and other distant na-
tions. We did not at the same time omit in this
act to give temporarily to our States a legitimate Repre-
sentative Government, without derogating from our ac-
corded institutions, in order that the capital and the State
might still remain provided with the regular and ordi-
nary administration of public affairs, and to insure
the security of the persons and property of our
subjects. We further prorogued the session of the
High Council, and the Council of Deputies, who
had been recently called to resume their inter-
rupted sittings ; but these our determinations, far
from persuading those persons, the perturbators
of the peace, and the authors of such sacrilegious
violences, to re-enter the path of duty, have but
incited them to greater crimes, arrogating to themselves
those sovereign rights which alone belong to us, by
having convoked iu the capital, by means of the two
Councils, an illegitimate Representative Government,
under the title of Provisional and Supreme Junta of the
State, and published in the act of the 22d day of this
month. These obligations are inseparable from our
sovereignty, and the solemn oaths by which, in the pre-
sence of the Lord, we have 'promis(d to preserve the
patrimony of the Holy See, and to transmit it in its in-
tegrity to our successors.

-r. ii constrains us to raise our voice aloft, and to pro.

test before God and the whole world against this so grave
and so sacrilegious attempt. We, therefore, in conse-
quence declare null, and of no effect, and altogether
illegal, every act which has been the conse-
quence of the violences which have been men-
tioned to us, repeating further, that this Junta
of State which has been established in Rome, is
nothing else but an usurpation of our sovereign
powers, and that the said Junta neither has nor
could have the remotest authority in any degree
whatever. Thence let all our subjects of every grade
and condition be informed, that in Rome and in every
part of the Pontifical dominions there does not exist nor
can arise any legitimate authority which is not derived
from us. We have, from our aforesaid will and plea-
sure, of the 27th of November, instituted a temporary
Government Commission, to whom alone exclusively
belongs the regulation of all public matters during our
absence, and until another disposition is made by our
will and pleasure.
" Datum in Csjeta, di 25 Dec., 1848."1
us PAPA IX.