The Democratic Pioneer

We send among our foreign flees the following interesting account of the trial of Ferdinand Freiligrath—a trial, which from all the circumstances connected with it, will hereafter become a marked event in the political history of Germany. On the 3d of this month Ferdinand Freiligrath, was brought to trial at Dusseldorf on the charge of endeavoring to stir up the people to sedition, and to the overthrowing of the present government, by his poem of the Dead to the Living. The occasion was rendered peculiarly interesting and striking by its being the opening trial of the opening Assizes under the new constitution. The first exercise of the public trial and trial by jury in Prussia was thus to be that of a bold attack on the Conduct of the king, by a popular poet whom the said king had ordered to be arrested under the old regime for similar freedoms in his writings, with his political conduct, and who had been compelled to seek voluntary exile, in order to escape the vengeance of the irritated monarch. Scarcely returned to his native country under the promises of liberty and security of the revolutionary Government, the bile of the monarch again overflowing, he stretches out his hand, and imprisons the poet on a charge of high treason, the penalty of which is death or perpetual exile. What has been the result? An acquittal amid the thundering acclamations of the people, and the opening of the new system of public trial by jury, thus made glorious and memorable by the united triumph of liberty and literature under the working of the popular constitution.

The chief magistrate had demanded thirty of the Burger Guard to protect his proceedings in the court house; but above two hundred of the Burgher Guard were found to have posted themselves on the different sentinel stations of the court; and a numerous body of them had taken up their position round the court house. The accused was conducted into the hall of Assizes from the prison, and took his place, put in the regular dock of the prisoner, but at the table, between his two advocates, Herr Meyer from Cologne, and Counsellor Weller of Dusseldorf. The doors of the Court were not thrown open till the accused was seated, when there was a tremendous rush of the people, who flung showers of bouquets on the poet, but with the utmost solemnity, and without any outcries. Printer, publisher and Freiligrath himself testified unhesitatingly to his commission of the alleged crime by his writing and publishing 9,000 copies of the offending poem. Counsellor Meyer made an eloquent defence; and on being followed by Herr Weller, the feelings of the people were no longer to be restrained, but burst forth in a stormy and thrice repeated hurrah. The jury came to a speedy verdict of not guilty, and again the Burghers with torches and the acclamations of the crowds within and without the court. The poet and his friends were borne along by the outrushing throng into the open air, where it was one mass of agitated people, all hurrahing, and out of every window ladies waving handkerchiefs and flinging flowers. The Burgher Guard marched along in the midst of the vast procession, towards the poet's dwelling, and a triumphal wreath being flung to the poet, one of the guards caught it on his bayonet, and thus bore it along. From his chamber Freiligrath addressed the crowd, and ended by saying: 'Not to me but to the German democracy is this triumph owing!' In the evening a torch fete, attended by a band of music, marched to the poet's house; and thus ended, after six months imprisonment, a trial and a day which have given a stamp of peculiar splendor to the opening of the trial by jury in Prussia.

The crime which this ardent republican had committed, and for which he was tried, was writing a bold and spirit stirring lyric, entitled the 'Dead to the Living,' referring to the recent events in Berlin, and the republican movements throughout Germany, the fierce strife between freedom and feudal oppression. A translation of this poem, made by J. Bazard Taylor, gives the concluding verse in the following language:

It does remain, and it awakes—it shall and must awake!
The Revolution, half complete, yet wholly forth will break.
It waits the hour to rise in power, like an up rolling storm.
With hurtled arm and streaming hair—a wild and mighty form!
It grasps the rusted gun once more, it swings the battered blade,
While the red banners flap the air from every barricade;
Those banners lead the German guards; the Armies of the Free
fill princes fly their blazing touch and hasten toward the sea!
The boding eagle leaves the land—the lion's claws are torn—
The sovereign People, roused and bold, await the future's morn!
Now, till the wakening hour strikes we keep our moan and wrath
For you, ye living! we have dared to falter on your path!
Up, and prepare—keep watch in arms! make the German sod
Above our stiffened forms, all free, and blest by freedom's God;
That this one bitter thought no more disturb us in our grave;
They once were free—they fell—and now forever they are slaves!