The German Government has introduced a Bill into the Reichstag
for renewing the law against the Socialists for five
more years, and greatly aggravating its provisions. The Government urge that the Socialists, though compelled to abstain from violence, spread their doctrines in all directions, and when banished from the cities into the interior, use their forced exile to make converts in the villages. They propose, therefore, to raise the penalty for circulating Soc.:dist publications from six months' imprisonment to twelve months', and to punish "certain offences," not specified in the telegrams, with banish- ment from the Empire. The latter clause will, it is stated, be resisted, and there is no probability of .ts passing. Its justice, of course, depends entirely on the charEcter of the offences to be punished, and if they include only incitements to crime, it is not in itself too severe. It is, however, an obsolete and ineffective kind of punishment. Banishmen... was once a useful penalty for treason, for it made traitors very uncomfortable without exciting sympathy, and, moreover, reduce, them to comparative powerlessness ; but at present, a banishea. German seeks the millennium in America, whence he remits finds for the propagation of his ideas. The Social Democrats i.i Berlin are almost as much assisted with money from Americv as the Leaguers of Ireland.
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