Star.
London, England, 1819-10-14 00:00:00

- izb!, •

THURSDAY, IX'

communications are the expression of our intern if
life, and our internal life is a sanctuary into which no
Officer of Government has a right to enter. I. can
answer as Corvus did before the Roman Senate—
" Verb° mea argauntur, adeo factotum innoceite
sum." 'When I perform an action, it may become the
subject of judgment.
There is found among your papers a Petition with
many sirriatures—a Petition to the Diet at Frank-
fort. Did yoU put that Petition into circulation, and
did you recruit for people to join in it and support
it ?—Yes ; I traversed a great part of Germany to
procure supporters for its (in my opinion) laudable
object.
In what parts did you travel fir that purpose ?--
Through Swabia, Franconia, Jena, Halle, Berlin,
and my orm country of Mecklenburgh.
Did you likewise collect subscribers in Cologne ?
Here I found no support.
But you have communicated it to Members of the
Tribunal of Justice ?—No ; I requested Baron Sandt
(Procureur-General of the Court of Appeal) to co-
operate, but in vain.
Did not M. Sandt observe to you, that the object
you had in view did not accord with your duty as an
Officer of Government ?—I doubt that he did • but
Dr. Steengasse, who was with me at the house of M.
Sandt, will be able to remove all doubt. However
this may be, the remarks of M. Sandt would never
have influenced me in pursuing an object which I
thought in itself laudable, and which WAS forbidden
by no law.
Be so good as to mention to me the people in the
other pal is of Germany to whom You have addressed
yourself on this subject ?—Then I must make out a
numerous list.
Then mention sclme.—ln Heidelberg, the Privy-
Counsellor of the Church, Dr. Paulus, the merchant
Fries, the bookseller Waiter ; in Stutgard, President
Weishnar, Dr. Scholt, &c.
What was the result of the whole undertaking?—
Alas ! not according to our wishes. There were
more than three thousand signatures, but the Petition
was not presented, for which the deputies have to
account to their constituents. But it excites my
astonishment, that this undertaking should make a
part of a criminal inquisition, as the Diet was made
acquainted with the existence of the Petition, and
most of the public journals made mention of it with-
out disapprobation.
There have been found in Giessen and Freiburg a
list of members of a Secret Association, wherein
your name appears; do you know such a list ?—No.
How do you account to yourself for the existence
of your name in this list ?—As the paper is passive
in bearing my name, so must I in allowing it to re-
main there, if any one chooses there to place it.
Thus far the whole of the proceedings from the
14th of July downwards, had either at first been vo.
luntary, formal, and regular, or had been forced to
be so, by the determined spirit and legal knowledge
of the accused. He had submitted to the arrest, he
had answered interrogatories, and he was prepared
for trial before the proper tribunal. His surprise
may therefore be more easily conceived than ex-
pressed, when, after the examinations contained
above, it uas communicated to him on the 7th of
August, that, according to a rescript of the Minister
of Police at Berlin, the concurrence of the Procureur-
•Gencral in the inquisition against him should hence-
forward cease, and that the inquiry should hencefor-
ward be prosecuted in the way of Police. The ac-
cused, always willing to submit to lawful authority,
but equally determined to oppose any violation of
justice or of law in his person, protested instantly
against this informal and unjustifiable change in the
mode of proceeding; and as he found that the Pre-
sident of the Supreme Court had lent himself in this
instance to be the tool of the Police, refused to an-
swer questions put to him by that officer in his new
capacity, which he regarded as so inconsistent with
the independence (this conduct, and so degrading
to the dignity of the judicial office which he held.
At the same time he denounced the Minister of Police
as guilty of the offence of arbitrary imprisonment,
founding the charge on the following facts:-
1. According to the 46th Article of the Constitu-
tion of the French empire, (which, relative to justice,
is still in force in the Prussian provinces on the Rhine),
the Minister of Police being informed of a conspi-
racy against the State, is empowered to arrest and
imprison any person suspected of being an accomplice
in its guilt ; but after a lapse of ten days, he is re
quired either to liberate the accused, on the discovery
of his innocence, or to communicate the precise na-
' Lure of the shame ou which he is confined, that his
case may be tried- before the competent tribunals.
By a neglect of this law, the Minister of arbitrary
comes ipso
.facto guilty of the crime of
imprisonment.
2. M. Muhlenfels, after he had been imprisoned
twenty-one days, inquired if the imputations against
him were to be prosecuted in the way of Police,
when the President of use Court of Appeal acknow-
ledo,ed the rescript of the Minister of Police from
Berlin, and thus shewed, that, instead of having
acted as a Judge of the Supreme Court, he had only
been all along fulfilling the duties of a Commissary
of Police. On this, M. Muhlenfels complained to
the Procureur-General, who found his reclamation
according to law, and supported it in a letter to the
Minister of Justice, in which he begged for a speedy
decision of the case. The Judge of the Supreme
Court of Appeal, and the highest law.officer of the
Crown (Pi ocureur-General) before that tribunal, were
thus at variance on the course of proceeding ; the
one lending himself to execute the commands of a
distant Minister against law—and the other support-
' ing law against interest or corruption ; but the Mi-
nister of Police, who had in the first instance ordered
an imprisonment, which he had forcibly continued
against law, was the original offender. To the letter
or the Procureur-General no satisfactory answer was
returned, and no decision in the case was c9nse-

. I