Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/539

 Councillor Johannes Schultze, formerly Director of the Ministry of Public Worship, Professor Adolf Trendelenburg, Privy Councillor and Chief Librarian Dr. Pertz, Professor Leopold Ranke, Professor Theodor Mommsen, Privy Councillor Professor Hanssen, all members of the Royal Academy of Science, and as specialists capable of judging in the matter, be constituted a subsidiary tribunal to pass on the question whether the address in question is not in the strict sense a scientific production.

But, if such is found to be the case, then, as I have already explained, it has nothing to do with the penal code.

I have permitted myself to go exhaustively into an exposition of this, my first ground of defense, because, for the sake of the country itself and the dignity and liberty of science, and for the sake of establishing once for all a precedent which shall bar out all similar endeavors of the public prosecutor in the future, it is incumbent on me to adjure you to acquit me under Article 20 of the Constitution.

But it is not that recourse to this article is necessary to protect my person from the penalty of the law.

For, even were it held that the present case comes within the competence of the penal code, the law appealed to has in no wise been violated, and the paragraph cited by the public prosecutor has no application.

Even this one exception alone would suffice to set the indictment aside; viz., that no objection is taken to any given passage in which the specified offense is alleged to occur; so that the prosecution proceeds wholely on an allegation of bias, and in the baldest manner. The indictment runs against a bias; that is all. But a bias is not actionable.

But I am not to be permitted to dispose of my defense in so easy a manner. The accusation of having endeavored to incite the poor to hatred of the rich is an accusation of such a kind that, apart from all question of punishment, it is likely to injure any citizen's name and fame. This