Letter to Karl Marx, about May 6, 1851

TO MARX IN LONDON

[Manchester, about 6 May 1851]

Dear Marx,

You will get the POST OFFICE ORDER tomorrow or the day after. Today our bookkeeper is again without CASH.

Since when have you been using the enclosed beautiful seal on your letters—or has there been a mishap?

Il paraît donc^[1] that the whole of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung will foregather in London this summer, minus, perhaps, Freiligrath^[2] and the honorarius^[3] Bürgers. I am delighted to hear that Lupus is definitely coming; incidentally, I know for certain that the ALIEN-OFFICES here are far less strict than before and hence all that to-do about the ban on sending refugees here is sheer humbug.

The mandrake's signature to the Geneva address is strange indeed—une bévue inconcevable^[4] —further proof that one must maintain A SHARP LOOKOUT AFTER THESE YOUNG MEN and that they must be kept on a tight rein. It can only be a bévue; the little chap's letters were over-zealous and he may have believed that what he was doing was a wonderful stroke of genius. He must be rigorously questioned, upbraided and told, surtout pas de zèle!^[5]

I shall shortly tell you of an economic treatise written by Wellington in 1811 on FREE TRADE and monopoly in colonial trade. It's a curious thing and, since it relates to the Spanish and not the English colonies, he can play at being a FREETRADER although right at the outset he rails at merchants like the dyed-in-the-wool soldier and aristocrat he is. It never occurred to him that he would later have to help apply these principles in the English colonies. But that's the irony of it. In return for his undeserved victory over Napoleon, the old Irishman subsequently had to yield to Cobden and, en économie politique,^[6] to pass under the Caudine yoke of FREE-TRADE. World history does indeed give occasion for a great many pleasing reflections!

The dissolution of the Democratic Provisional Government for Germany in London^[7] fills me with sorrow. Such a fine opportunity for the jackasses to hold themselves up to public ridicule will not readily recur. On the other hand the great Franz Raveaux has reopened his cliquish polemic in the Kölnische Zeitung with Mr Paul Franck and other jackasses. He is again ripe for election to some national mad-house in which to declare: 'Gentlemen, this is a very great day for the city of Cologne!' The oaf is now in Brussels. Our friend Engels, the Commandant, has become General and First Commandant, and the philistines gave a dinner for him at which 'our Stupp' proposed his health. So you see, you can still get somewhere, even if your name is Engels. And, in returning thanks, that fat old swine, once a lieutenant under Napoleon, expressed his pleasure at the specifically Prussian spirit both of the celebration and of the city of Cologne.^{[8] [9]}

I am, by the way, morally convinced that Willich and Co. are hatching an ambitious plan for the revolutionisation of England during the Exhibition, although it's equally certain that they won't raise a finger. It won't be the first or last time.

The 2nd STAMP on my letters is for late posting. The STAMP enables me to get the letter off by the same train 1½ hours after the ordinary post office has closed. In any case it's the firm that pays.

Your

F. E.