Page:Friedrich Engels - The Revolutionary Act - tr. Henry Kuhn (1922).pdf/39

 dominions? And these destroyers of the German Bund and of three crowns bestowed by the Grace of God complain about revolution?! Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes?—Who could permit the worshippers of Bismarck to revile the revolution?

Let them force through their anti-revolutionary legislation, make it even worse and transform the entire penal code into caoutchouc, they will accomplish naught but a new demonstration of their impotence. Seriously to assail the Social Democracy, they will have to have recourse to entirely different measures. The Social-Democratic revolution, which is getting on first rate while abiding by the law, they can only get at by means of a revolution made by the law and order party, which cannot live without breaking the law. Herr Rossler, the Prussian bureaucrat, and Herr von Boguslawski, the Prussian general, have shown them the only way to get at the workers, who refuse to be lured into a street battle,—violation of the constitution, dictatorship, back to absolutism, regis voluntas, suprema lex! Take heart, gentlemen, here no pursing of the lips will do, here you must whistle!

But do not forget that the German Reich, like all smaller German States, and, indeed, like all modern States, is the product of a covenant; first, of a covenant among the rulers themselves, and, second, of a covenant of the ruler with the people. If one party breaks the agreement, the whole of it falls, the other party being no longer bound by it.