ndividually, lend an active hand to a
revolutionary movement against the present _status quo_ in its turn;
but the preparation of such a movement, otherwise than by spreading of
Communist opinions by the masses, could not be an object of the
Association. So well was this foundation of the Society understood by
the majority of its members, that when the place-hunting ambition of
some tried to turn it into a conspiracy for making an extempore
revolution they were speedily turned out.

Now, according to no law upon the face of the earth, could such an
Association be called a plot, a conspiracy for purposes of high
treason. If it was a conspiracy, it was one against, not the existing
Government, but its probable successor. And the Prussian Government
was aware of it. That was the cause why the eleven defendants were
kept in solitary confinement during eighteen months, spent, on the
part of the authorities, in the strangest judicial feats. Imagine,
that after eight months' detention, the prisoners were remanded for
some months more, "there being no evidence of any crime against them!"
And when at last they were brought before a jury, there was not a
single overt act of a treasonable nature proved against them. And yet
they were convicted, and you will speedily see how.

One of the emissaries of the society was arrested in May, 1851, and
from documents found upon him, other arrests followed. A Prussian
police officer, a certain Stieber, was immediately ordered to trace
the ramifications, in London, of the pretended plot. He succeeded in
obtaining some papers connected with the above-mentioned seceders from
the society, who had, after being turned out, formed an actual
conspiracy in Paris and London. These papers were obtained by a double
crime. A man named Reuter was bribed to break open the writing-desk of
the secretary of the Society, and steal the papers therefrom. But that
was nothing yet. This theft led to the discovery and conviction of the
so-called Franco-German plot, in Paris, but it gave no clue as to the
great Communist Association. The Paris plot, we may as well here
observe, was under the direction of a few ambitious imbeciles and
political _chevaliers d'industrie_ in London, and of a formerly
convicted forger, then acting as a police spy in Paris; their dupes
made up, by rabid declamations and blood-thirsty rantings, for the
utter insignificance of their political existence.

The Prussian police, then, had to