80 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
the assault on property rights since the days of Babeuf; analyzed
Weitling's theories as revealed in the Garantieen, the Hülferuf
and the Junge Generation; quoted from the writings of associates,
such as Becker; read into the record the correspondence which the
prisoner had carried on with confreres in France, Germany, and
Switzerland; traced the history of workers' societies and co-oper
atives in Switzerland and elsewhere and the role of the accused in
their establishment and development; and tried to prove that the
movement had many international ramifications and a special tech
nique for infecting all literature with the poison of communism.
Julius Fröbel, a political foe of Bluntschli, was portrayed as a
communist sympathizer, although he had strongly advised Weit
ling against coming to Zurich; and the prosecution tried also to
implicate Herwegh, Follen, Gustav Siegfried of Zofingen, and
Swiss newspapers which occasionally carried radical articles. The
books found in Weitling's room when he was arrested hardly
proved very incriminating. Besides his own Garantieen, they in
cluded an English dictionary (Karl Fröbel had been giving him
English lessons), a copy of Strauss's Life of Jesus, a work by Adam
Smith on economics, and a commentary on Plato.
Bluntschli's report undertook to convince the court that Weit
ling's brand of communism meant revolution, guerrilla warfare,
and social chaos. The learned Swiss doctor made the most of the
prisoner's unfortunate earlier references to the "thieving prole
tariat" and quoted a damaging letter from Seiler, in which he ex
pressed a desire to "set all Europe in flames." The letter contained
the lines, "Up to now you have shot only with vapor, we want to
load with bullets."^8 The commission of experts closed their re
view with the recommendations that Weitling be expelled from
the country; that new arrivals be scrutinized more carefully there-
(^8) As evidence of the intensity of feeling, see also a poem included in a letter to
Weitling, referring to a beggar who has just been run down in the streets:
Der Peter will sich fliehend schützen,
Er stürzt—sein letzter Ruf ist Brod!
Ich seh sein Hirn aufs Pflaster sprützen,
Gott Lob—der Vagabund ist tod!