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Provisional Decree relative to the Measures to be taken concerning the Universities.

Sect. 1. The Sovereign shall make choice for each university of an extraordinary commissioner, furnished with suitable instructions and powers, residing in the place where the university is established; he may be either the actual curator, or any other person whom the government may think fit to appoint.

The duty of this commissioner shall be to watch over the most rigorous observation of the laws and disciplinary regulations; to observe carefully the spirit with which the professors and tutors are guided in their public and private lectures; to endeavour, without interfering directly in the scientific courses, or in the method of instruction, to give the instruction a salutary direction, suited to the future destiny of the students, and to devote a constant attention to every thing which may tend to the maintenance of morality, good order and decency among the youths.

Sect. 2. The governments of the states, members of the confederation, reciprocally engage to remove from their universities and other establishments of instruction, the professors and other public teachers, against whom it may be proved, that in departing from their duty, in overstepping the bounds of their duty, in abusing their legitimate influence over the minds of youth, by the propagation of pernicious dogmas, hostile to order and public tranquillity, or in sapping the foundation of existing establish

ments, they have shown themselves incapable of executing the important functions entrusted to them, without any obstacle whatever being allowed to impede the measure taken against them, so long as the present decree shall remain in force, and until definitive arrangements on this point be adopted.

A professor or tutor thus excluded, cannot be admitted in any other state of the confederation to any other establishment of public instruction.

Sect. 3. The laws long since made against secret or unauthorized associations at the universities, shall be maintained in all their force and rigour, and shall be particularly extended with so much the more severity against the well-known society formed some years ago under the name of the General Burgenschaft, as it has for its basis an idea, absolutely inadmissible, of community and continued correspondence between the different universities.

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The governments shall mutually engage to admit to no public employment any individuals who may continue or enter into any of those associations after the publication of the present decree.

Sect. 4. No student who, by a decree of the Academic Senate confirmed by the government commissioner, or adopted on his application, shall be dismissed from a university, or who, in order to escape from such a sentence, shall withdraw himself, shall be received in any other university; and in general, no student shall be received at another

university without a sufficient

attestation

attestation of his good conduct at secution and punishment of the the university he has left.

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Sect. 1. As long as the present decree shall be in force, no writing appearing in the form of a daily paper or periodical pamphlet, which does not contain more than 20 printed leaves, shall be issued from the press without the previous consent of the public authority.

The works not comprehended under this regulation shall continue to be regulated by the laws now existing, or which may be hereafter enacted; and if any work of the above-mentioned description shall give rise to a complaint on the part of any state of the confederation, the government to which the complaint may be addressed shall cause proceedings to be instituted in its name against the authors or editors of the said work.

Sect. 2. Each government is at liberty to adopt, for the maintenance and execution of the present decree, those measures which may appear the most suitable; it being well understood that these measures must be recognized proper to fulfil the object of the principal regulation of Art. 1.

Sect. 3. The present decree being called for by the necessity generally acknowledged of adopting some preventive measures against the abuse of the press in Germany, as long as this decree shall remain in force, the laws attributing to the tribunals the pro

abuses and offences committed by the press, inasmuch as they apply to the writings specified in Art. 1, cannot be considered as sufficient in any state of the confederation.

Sect. 4. Each government of the confederation is accountable for the writings published under its jurisdiction, and consequently for all those comprehended in the principal regulation of Art. I; and when these writings wound the dignity or safety of another state of the confederation, or make attacks upon its constitution or its administration, the government which tolerates them is responsible, not only to the state which suffers directly therefrom, but to the whole confederation.

Sect. 5. In order that this responsibility, founded in the nature of the Germanic Union and inseparable from its preservation, may not give rise to disagreements which might compromise the amicable relations subsisting between the confederated states, all the members of the confederation must enter into a solemn engagement to devote their most serious attention to the superintendence which the present decree prescribes, and to exercise it in such a manner as to prevent as much as possible all reciprocal complaints and discussions.

Sect. 6. In order, however, to assure better the guarantee of the moral and political inviolability of the states of the confederation, which is the object of the present decree, it is to be understood, that in case a government believe itself injured by writings published under another government,

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and cannot obtain complete satisfaction by amicable and diplomatic representations, that go vernment will be at liberty to prefer its complaint to the Diet, which, in such a case, will hold itself bound to appoint a commission to examine the writing which shall have been thus denounced, and if the report of the commission state it to be necessary, to command the suppression of the said writing, and also to prohibit its continuance if it be of the number of periodical publications.

The Diet will proceed also, without a previous denunciation, and of its own authority, against every publication comprised in the principal regulation of Art. I. in whatever state of Germany it may be published, if in the opinion of a commission appointed to consider thereof, it may have compromised the dignity of the Germanic body, the safety of any of its members, or the internal peace of Germany, without any recourse being afforded against the judgment given in such a case, which shall be carried into execution by the government that is responsible for the condemned publication.

Sect. 7. The editor of a journal, or other periodical publication, that may be suppressed by command of the Diet, shall not be allowed, during the space of five years, to conduct any similar publication in any states of the confederation.

The authors, editors and publishers of newspapers or periodical writings and others, mentioned in the first paragraph of Article 1, VOL. LXI.

shall be, in other respects, upon submitting to the regulation of that article, free from all responsibility; and the judgments of the Diet, mentioned in the preceding article, will be directed only against the publications, without affecting individuals.

Sect. 8. The confederated states engage within six months to acquaint the Diet with the measures which each shall have adopted to carry into execution the first article of this decree.

Sect. 9. Every work printed in Germany, whether comprehended in the regulations of this decree or not, must bear the name of the printer or the editor; and if it be of the number of periodical publications, of the principal editor. Every work in circulation in any of the states of the confederation, with respect to which these conditions have not been complied with, will be seized and confiscated, and the person or persons who may have published and sold it condemned, according to the circumstances of the case, to the payment of fine, or some other punishment proportionate to the offence.

Sect, 10. The present decree shall remain in force during five years from the date of its publication. Before the term of its expiration the Diet will take in to mature consideration in what manner the 18th article of the federal act relative to the uniformity of laws on the conduct of the press in the confederated states, can be carried into execution, by definitively fixing the legal limits of the press in Germany.

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Decree relative to the formation of a Central Commission, for the purpose of Ulterior Inquiry respecting Kevolutionary Plots, discovered in some of the States of the Confederation.

Art. 1. In 15 days from the date of this decree, an extraordinary commission of inquiry, appointed by the Diet and composed of 7 members, including the President, shall assemble in the city of Mentz, a fortress of the confederation.

2. The object of this commission is, to make careful and detailed inquiries respecting the facts, the origin and the multiplied ramifications of the secret revolutionary and demagogic associations, directed against the political constitution and internal repose, as well of the confederation in general, as of the individual members thereof; of which indications more or less conclusive have been already discovered, or may result from ulterior researches.

3. The Diet elects by the plurality of suffrages the seven members of the confederation who are to appoint the members of the central commission.

4. None can be elected members of the central commission but civil officers, who in the state which appoints them are fulfilling, or have fulfilled, judicial functions, or have been engaged in preparing processes in important investigations.

5. In order to attain the end proposed, the central commission shall undertake the general direction of the local investigations

which have already been commenced, or may hereafter be instituted.

6. All the members of the confederation, in the territories in which investigations of this nature have been already commenced, engaged to point out to the central commission, immediately after it shall be constituted, the local authorities to whom the investigations shall have been previously confided.

7. The central commission is authorized to examine every individual whom it may judge necessary. To secure his appearance, it will apply to the superior authority of the members of the confederation, or to the authorities who, in virtue of Art. 6, may be pointed out for this purpose.

Ārticles 8, 9, and 10, which conclude this decree, and the proposition of the Imperial Minister, consist merely of directions for regulating the routine proceedings of the central commis

sion.

Circular of the Cabinet of Berlin, to its Ambassadors, Ministers and Diplomatic Agents at Foreign Courts.

You have already seen the presidial message which, in consequence of the conferences at Carlsbad, Austria presented to the Germanic Diet. You know likewise that all the propositions which it contained have been converted into decrees by that assembly, and that these decrees passed unanimously. But, as it is of great consequence that all the powers of Europe should see

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and judge these resolutions under their true point of view, I think it my duty to enable you to present them in the most favourable light, and to make them known in their causes, their nature and effects. It is long since the political and moral state of Germany was calculated to cause legitimate alarms to all the friends of social order and public tranquillity. However sound in general was the mass of the people, and however attached to its sovereigns in the different states of the confederation, it could not be disguised that there prevailed a secret inquietude and a concealed fermentation, supported and aggravated by the unbridled licence of speech and writings. This fermentation of mind was in part natural, and could be explained by the extraordinary events which, during the war of the deliverance, had drawn men of all classes from the beaten track of habit; by the sacrifices which the liberation of Germany had cost to the states, and which they felt more in peace than they had felt during the storm; by the exaggerated hopes of enthusiastic minds, which had dreamed of a golden age, and flattered themselves with seeing it spring from the bosom of the iron age which had scarcely expired; in fine, by the violent crisis of industry and commerce, which, springing from an order of things forced and contrary to nature, could not be brought all at once to the level of new circumstances, and which suffered at once from the past and the future. The natural discontent resulting from these united causes was more sad

than dangerous, and must have yielded to the slow operation of time, or to the benevolent and enlightened activity of governments, which, too long withdrawn from their internal condition, began to occupy themselves with it with as much love as zeal.

But, along with this natural discontent, there existed an artificial and factitious discontent, which, taking its source in erroneous principles, in ambitious and chimerical theories, in secret and culpable views, in base and interested passions, created and propagated by revolutionary writings and speeches, could form with the other a dangerous alliance, and artfully nourish it, in order to mislead the public mind, and produce the most fatal excesses. Those who had observed with an impartial and attentive eye the situation of the public mind in Germany, had for a long time suspected the existence of a party spread over all the surface of that vast country, deriving its origin from elective affinities of opinions and sentiments, and fortified by formal associations, which worked to overthrow Germany, and to substitute for its actual state a republic, one and indivisible, or some other chimera, which could not even be attempted but by violent revolutions, and the prelude to which must have been the overthrow of all the reigning dynasties.

An atrocious crime (that of Sandt) affords a measure of the audacity and madness of the revolutionary party. This atrocity, committed by the arm of a

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