nerations
and coming centuries, with the silent demand, when the
required series of events shall be fulfilled, then to
pronounce the final sentence, whether this law, and its
purport as now explained, be just or not. This is the
philosophical character, and these the contents of my
book--no more than was indispensably necessary to make this
calculation. And now comes the charge, and pronounces that
in the character of a pamphleteer, I have endeavored to
excite a revolution in the Grand Duchy of Baden, or in the
German Confederation."

On the 8th of March--it should have been the _fifth_--the thing came
to a close. On account of "his hostility to constitutional monarchy,
and his declaration of its weakness, his denial of its good-will
[towards the people], and his representing that the American Democracy
was a universal necessity and a desirable fact," sentence was
pronounced against him, condemning him to an imprisonment of four
months, and ordering his book to be destroyed. There was no Jury of
the People to try him! Here our own Court has an admirable precedent
for punishing me for a word.[164]

[Footnote 164: See Preface to English Translation of Gervinus (London,
1853); and Allg. Lit. Zeitung fuer 1853, pp. 867, 883, 931, 946, 994,
1131.]

But even in Massachusetts, within twenty years, an attempt was made to
punish a man for his opinions on a matter of history which had no
connection with politics, or even with American Slavery. In July,
1834, Rev. George R. Noyes, a Unitarian Minister at Petersham, a
retired scholar, a blameless man of fine abilities and very large
attainments in theological learning, wrote an elaborate article in the
Christian Examiner, the organ of the "Liberal Christians" in America,
in which he maintained that Jesus of Nazareth is not the Messiah
predicted in the Old Testament. "It is difficult," said this
accomplished Theologian, "to point out any predictions which have been
properly fulfilled in Jesus." Peter and Paul found the death and
resurrection of Jesus in the 16th Psalm, but they "were in an error,"
which should not surprise us, for "the Evangelists and Apostles never
claimed to be _inspired reasoners and interpreters_;" "they partook of
the errors and prejudices of their age in things in which Christ had
not instructed them." "The commonly received doctrine of the
inspiration of all the writings included in the Bible, is a millst