A Denunciation (Neue Rheinische Zeitung, February 1849)

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Cologne, February 22. In the Oberpostamts-Zeitung, the former editor of which was a paid agent of Guizot (cf. Taschereau’s Revue rétrospective) and an unpaid agent of Metternich, as is notoriously also the entire Thurn und Taxis postal service — that crab-sidling system of national carriers which is a burden to German industry and is in conflict with the railways; whose continued existence after the March revolution is almost incomprehensible and whose immediate abolition will be one of the first acts of the German Constituent Assembly shortly to be opened (the assembly in St. Paul’s Church was notoriously never a Constituent Assembly) for since Joseph II it has never been anything but a refuge for Austrian spies — in this imperial organ for denunciation belonging to the ex-Prince of Thurn und Taxis, the responsible editor H. Malten (already recognisably described by the old Rheinische Zeitung) states the following, asserting that it is a reprint of a Paris report from a newspaper which we do not read:

“To the shame of the German name, we have to admit that there are Germans who engage in agitation among us on the most extensive, not to say most shameless scale. There exists here a special Bureau of Reds, by which all inflammatory articles that in any way incite against order in human society are dispatched to the provinces as speedily as possible. It is not enough that Germans participate in this unseemly business on behalf of France; we owe it to them also that a nefarious propaganda is continually spreading its network throughout Germany. From the witches’ cauldron of this same revolutionary kitchen the German part of the Rhine valley throughout its entire length is inundated with revolutionary literature about which the Neue Rheinische Zeitung could have a lot to say, if it did not find it fitting to maintain a careful silence on this subject. In Upper Baden, for several months already the lower strata of the people have been subjected to agitation from Paris. That there are connections between the democrats here and the refugees in Switzerland is also a fact.”

In reply to this foul denunciation we declare: 1) that we have never concealed our connections with the French, English, Italian, Swiss, Belgian, Polish, American and other democrats, and 2) that we ourselves produce here in Cologne the “revolutionary literature” with which we actually do “inundate the German part of the Rhine valley” (and not it alone!). For that we need no assistance from Paris; for several years we have been accustomed to our Parisian friends receiving more from us than we get from them.