responsibility for it could not have been put upon them, hatred and contempt of them could not have been aroused by the fact of such an ambition.  It therefore appears again that this passage is quite devoid of grammatical and logical content.  But upon what ground has the public prosecutor read into my address an exhortation urging to the pursuit of “mastery on the part of the workingmen over the other classes of society?”

All that I have to say in my pamphlet bearing on this head is that it is the destiny of the historical epoch beginning with February, 1848, to install the ethical principle of the working classes as the dominant principle of society, to make it the guiding principle of the State; the nature of this principle is expounded in my pamphlet, and I have already restated it in outline in the introductory part of my speech.

I repeatedly and explicitly express myself to the same effect.  So I say (page 31) that, as in 1789 the revolution was a revolution of the third estate, so in this later case it was a revolution of the fourth estate, “which now seeks to erect its principle into the dominant principle of society and to permeate all institutions with it.”  Or again

(page 32):  “Whoever, therefore, appeals to the principle of the working class as the dominant principle of society;” and, further, on the same page:  “We have now to examine, in three several hearings, this principle of the working class as the dominant principle of society.”  And (page 33):  “Perhaps the idea of making the principle of the lowest class of society the dominant principle of the State and of society may seem to be a dangerous idea.”  I, then, proceed to develop, from page 39 onward, the difference between the ethical and political principle of the bourgeoisie and the ethical and political principle of the working class, and conclude on page 42 with the words:  “This, then, is it, Gentlemen, that is to be characterized as the political principle of the working class,” etc.

And because I present an exalted ethical principle, the noblest ethical principle which my intelligence is capable of grasping, the noblest ethical principle yet achieved by political philosophy, because I proclaim this as destined to become the guiding principle of the present period of history; because of this and because I bring evidence to show that this principle, as being the expression of the natural instinct due to the economic situation of the working classes, is properly to be designated as the principle of the working classes,—­this is what the public prosecutor has construed into an atrocious crime, and has accused me of urging the working classes to aim at making their own class the masters of the other classes of society.

The public prosecutor appears to believe that I aspire to see the propertied classes reduced to servitude under the working classes, that I would invert history and make the landed gentry and the manufacturers the servants of the workingmen.