One learned to be cautious and suspicious.

One grew accustomed to see an enemy in every stranger, and to be upon one's guard before a neighbor as before some lurking traitor.

Hypocrisy became an instinct of self-preservation; every one carefully avoided speaking of those things of which the heart was full, and Berlin afforded an insight into the mental condition of the people of Spain during the most flourishing period of the Inquisition, or of Venice in the days when anonymous denunciations poured into the yawning jaws of the Lions of St.Mark's square.
The Reichstag was dissolved, the people of Germany must choose new representatives, and the chief, if not the sole question to be decided by the election was, Are the Socialists to be dealt with under a special act, or to come under the common law?
Schrotter now felt it justifiable, nay, that it was his duty, to throw off the reserve he had maintained since his return to the Fatherland, and come forward as a candidate for the Reichstag, though for a suburban district, as the city district to whose poor he had been an untiring benefactor as physician and friend, with help, counsel, and money, was not available.
At a meeting of his constituents he laid down his confession of faith.
A special act, he explained, was in no way justified, would indeed be ineffectual, and lead away from the object they had in view.

The government would be guilty of libel if it made the Socialists answerable for a crime committed by two half or wholly insane persons; it was the duty of the government to prove that these attacks were the work of the Socialists: that proof, however, it had been unable to discover.

Moreover, no special act in the world could hinder people of unsound mind from committing insane deeds--the crimes of a Hodel or a Nobiling could not be predicted, but neither could they be prevented by any kind of precautionary measure.