y words which stir no friendly
response whether in his own or in another's breast. To be unintelligible
to such an unfortunate is a credit and an honor before God and man."

So says Schelling, the father.

Gentlemen, I have now reached the close of my argument. It were
bootless to ask whether this charge could possibly have any weight
with you, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court. But there was
probably another design at the root of the prosecution. The political
struggle between the bourgeoisie and the government has lately shown
some slight signs of life. It has, not improbably, been thought that
under these circumstances a prosecution for incitement of the
unpropertied classes to hatred and contempt of the propertied classes
would create an effective diversion; it was probably hoped that even
if such an accusation were dismissed by you, still--you remember the
ancient adage: _calumniare audacter, semper aliquit haeret_[60]--it
would serve as a wet towel to bind about the slightly-inflamed
countenance of our bourgeoisie,--and so, with this in view, Gentlemen,
I was selected as the scapegoat to be driven out into the wilderness.
But even this design, Gentlemen, will fail.

It will fail shamefully through the mere reading of my pamphlet, which
I most particularly commend to the bourgeoisie. It will fail before
the force of my own voice; and precisely with this in view I felt
called on to go so extensively into the facts of the case in my
defense. We are all, bourgeoisie and laborers, members of one people,
and we stand firmly together against our oppressors.

Let me now close. Upon a man who, as I have presented the matter to
you, has devoted his life under the motto, "Science and the
Workingmen," even a sentence which may meet him on the way will make
no other impression beyond that made upon a chemist by the breaking of
a retort used by him in his scientific experiments. With a momentary
knitting of the brow and a reflection on the physical properties of
matter, as soon as the accident is remedied he goes on with his
experiments and his investigation as before.

But I appeal to you that for the sake of the nation and its honor, for
the sake of science and its dignity, for the sake of the country and
its liberty under the law, for the sake of your own memory as history
shall preserve it, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court, acquit
me.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 49: The criteria which are here appea