Letter to Karl Marx, May 8, 1851

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 8 May 1851


First published in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, 1929
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38

TO MARX IN LONDON

[Manchester,] Thursday, 8 May[1] [1851]

10 o'clock at night


Dear Marx,

I sent you today by the first post a POST OFFICE ORDER for £5, which I hope you have received.

Something's décidément[2] amiss with the English mails. First, the letter that arrived at your place open. Then your letter to me of the day before yesterday, with the defaced seal, which I returned to you. Now, today, Thursday the 8th, at 7 in the evening, I get your letter of the 5th, i.e. Monday, the one about the electricity business. This letter has three London postmarks dated the 6th (Tuesday), two of which prove that it was posted on Tuesday morning before 10 o'clock. Also a Manchester postmark dated the 7th (yesterday) and, finally, two others of today's date. In addition a defaced, badly patched up, unfamiliar seal which I return herewith for your inspection. I am sending the envelope straight off to the postmaster here, demanding an explanation as to why the letter was only delivered this evening instead of yesterday morning. Let me know by return exactly when it was posted and whether the seal is in order. We'll raise such a shindy as will give the scoundrels something to think about. That these fellows are capable of dirty tricks is apparent from today's Daily News, which declares outright that Palmerston has asked Vienna and Berlin for spies to keep watch on the refugees, and duly goes on to give the English public a description of Messrs Stieber and Goldheim of Berlin[3] . It would be splendid if we could catch Grey in the act, just as Mazzini once caught Graham.[4]

The fact that something untoward befell the letter is also evident from a mark they have made on it. In the address there is a cross before and after the word Manchester, thus:

x Manchester x

only with thicker strokes than mine.

Keep any seals I return to you; we may perhaps need them.

Tomorrow I'll write to you about the other points you raised; now I shall go straight out and post this letter and the one to the postmaster. My kindest regards to your wife.

Your

F. E.


The letter has been so clumsily opened that the outline of the original, larger seal is still plainly visible. Sealing-wax is of little avail if, underneath, there's no wafer to secure all four sides of the envelope. As it happens I have none here and, since I want this letter to reach you unopened, I have no alternative but to send it to Schramm,[5] who lives closer to you than Pieper, and through whom you at least have a chance of getting it quickly.

Le tout considéré[6] it would, perhaps, be better to send it to Pieper, which I shall do.

  1. ↑ The original has: June
  2. ↑ decidedly
  3. ↑ 'The Debate in the First Chamber...; Germany. Prussia. Berlin, 4 May', The Daily News, 8 May 1851.
  4. ↑ An allusion to Mazzini's exposure of Sir James Graham, the British Home Secretary, on whose order letters of Italian revolutionary emigrants, including the Bandiera brothers and Mazzini, were opened. The letters of the Bandiera brothers contained the plan of their expedition to Calabria to spark off an insurrection in Italy against the Bourbons of Naples and Austrian rule. In June 1844 the participants in the expedition were arrested. The Bandiera brothers were shot.
  5. ↑ Conrad Schramm
  6. ↑ All things considered