About Engels' Speech at a Meeting of Fraternal Democrats on April 5, 1850, Commemorating Robespierre's Birthday Anniversary

Author(s)	Friedrich Engels
Written	5 April 1850

First published in Die Hornisse No. 89, April 17, 1850
Printed according to the newspaper
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 10

Collection(s): Die Hornisse

Note from MECW :

The report on the meeting, published in Die Hornisse, stated that "Karl Marx, editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, was also present among the guests". The Democratic Review for May 1850 carried the report but only the following was said concerning Engels' speech: "A German exile responded and concluded an excellent speech with giving 'The Proletarians of England'".

The Fraternal Democrats—an international democratic society founded in London on September 22, 1845. The society embraced representatives of the Left Chartists, German workers and craftsmen—members of the League of the Just—and revolutionary emigrants of other nationalities. Marx and Engels helped in founding this society, and later kept in constant touch with the Fraternal Democrats trying to influence the proletarian core of the society, which joined the Communist League in 1847, and through it the Chartist movement, in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. The society ceased its activities in 1853

Frederick Engels did justice to the revolutionary spirit of the English. He pointed out that a party of Levellers^[1] had already existed at the time of the English Revolution, and ended with the health of the English workers.

↑ Levellers—representatives of a radical-democratic trend during the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. In 1647 they became an independent group on the national scale. The Levellers wanted to transform England into a republic with a one-House Parliament elected by universal suffrage, to remove all inequalities and implement other democratic reforms.

[1] Levellers—representatives of a radical-democratic trend during the English revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. In 1647 they became an independent group on the national scale. The Levellers wanted to transform England into a republic with a one-House Parliament elected by universal suffrage, to remove all inequalities and implement other democratic reforms.

[1]