But rightly to measure the hypocrisy of these promises, the practice of the bourgeoisie must be taken into account.  We have seen in the course of our report how the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat in every conceivable way for its own benefit!  We have, however, hitherto seen only how the single bourgeois maltreats the proletariat upon his own account.  Let us turn now to the manner in which the bourgeoisie as a party, as the power of the State, conducts itself towards the proletariat.  Laws are necessary only because there are persons in existence who own nothing; and although this is directly expressed in but few laws, as, for instance, those against vagabonds and tramps, in which the proletariat as such is outlawed, yet enmity to the proletariat is so emphatically the basis of the law that the judges, and especially the Justices of the Peace, who are bourgeois themselves, and with whom the proletariat comes most in contact, find this meaning in the laws without further consideration.  If a rich man is brought up, or rather summoned, to appear before the court, the judge regrets that he is obliged to impose so much trouble, treats the matter as favourably as possible, and, if he is forced to condemn the accused, does so with extreme regret, etc. etc., and the end of it all is a miserable fine, which the bourgeois throws upon the table with contempt and then departs.  But if a poor devil gets into such a position as involves appearing before the Justice of the Peace—­he has almost always spent the night in the station-house with a crowd of his peers—­he is regarded from the beginning as guilty; his defence is set aside with a contemptuous “Oh! we know the excuse,” and a fine imposed which he cannot pay and must work out with several months on the treadmill.  And if nothing can be proved against him, he is sent to the treadmill, none the less, “as a rogue and a vagabond.”  The partisanship of the Justices of the Peace, especially in the country, surpasses all description, and it is so much the order of the day that all cases which are not too utterly flagrant are quietly reported by the newspapers, without comment.  Nor is anything else to be expected.  For on the one hand, these Dogberries do merely construe the law according to the intent of the farmers, and, on the other, they are themselves bourgeois, who see the foundation of all true order in the interests of their class.  And the conduct of the police corresponds to that of the Justices of the Peace.  The bourgeois may do what he will and the police remain ever polite, adhering strictly to the law, but the proletarian is roughly, brutally treated; his poverty both casts the suspicion of every sort of crime upon him and cuts him off from legal redress against any caprice of the administrators of the law; for him, therefore, the protecting forms of the law do not exist, the police force their way into his house without further ceremony, arrest and abuse him; and only when a working-men’s association, such as the miners, engages a Roberts, does it become evident how little the protective side of the law exists for the working-men, how frequently he has to bear all the burdens of the law without enjoying its benefits.