| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 15 October 1851 |
To Marx in London
[Manchester,] Wednesday, 15 October 1851
Dear Marx,
Herewith POST OFFICE ORDER for two pounds. PARTICULARS as before. The business with Gohringer is a great nuisance. You'll have to pay; the GENTLEMEN of the COUNTY COURT make short work of it, and the handwriting is there. If I were you, I'd raise the money along with the cost of the SUMMONS as soon as possible, and send it to the fellow. Il n'y a rien à faire;[1] and to go to court and be sentenced only increases the costs and isn't exactly pleasant. What is the total amount, and how much can you raise? Let me have as exact a figure as possible and I shall certainly do everything in my power to keep the BROKERS away from your door, short though I myself am just now.
The business with Schramm is not very pleasant[2] and it would have been better had we been kept out of this beastly mess altogether. That the minutes concerning those edifying squabbles over Bauer's and Pfänder's trust funds[3] should be in the hands of these gentlemen is far from pleasant, and Schramm deserves to have his backside kicked for carting such things around with him. At any rate, it serves him right if, as a result, he's locked up for a time and gets six months for using a false passport.
As for Haupt, I shall not regard him as a spy until I have the actual proof before my eyes. The fellow may have done some stupid things while in clink and there's admittedly something fishy about the business with Daniels, who is said to have been arrested on the strength of his denunciation. But all this journeymen's club chatter from Windmill Street[4] is the more fatuous for coinciding with the story of the forcing of Dietz's desk. Doubtless it was actually from Hamburg that Haupt broke into the cockroach's desk! And then, why doesn't the precious Dietz complain to the English police? It would, by the way, be a very good idea if Haupt could be induced to make a statement about the matter. If you send Weerth a letter for him, I would imagine that Weerth would be bound to find some opportunity of handing it to him personally within the fortnight and, if needs be, could even call on him at the office. A merchant can always be found. The affair of Blind and spouse[5] is truly inimitable. To shed tears and push off because Monsieur Pieper maligned Feuerbach, c'est fort.[6]
When you use the word married of red Wolff[7] is it in the English, respectably bourgeois sense? I'm inclined to believe this, since you underline it. That would really beat everything hollow.
M. Wolff bon époux, peut-être même bon père de famille![8]
I think you'd be well-advised to fob Ewerbeck off with a few meagre notes and keep him in tolerably good humour; no purpose would be served by the fellow's spreading something altogether too idiotic about us in France. By the way, the tenacity this fellow evinces in his endeavours to become a great man is unbelievable considering that it actually gets the better of his avarice; for this new piece of 'immortality'[9] is undoubtedly again being paid for out of his own pocket, with a sale of 50 copies in prospect.
I'd like to hear more about Sasonow should you hear from him. This episode is piquant and Mr Sasonow is becoming extremely suspect.
I am at present engaged in making what summaries I need from the Proudhon. Wait until the end of this week, and it'll be returned to you, with my comments.[10] Once again the fellow's calculations are capital. Wherever there's a figure there's a howler. What course the crisis will take here cannot be foreseen. Nothing was done last week because of the Queen.[11] Not much this week either. But the market has a DOWNWARD TENDENCY, with raw material prices still firm. Both will fall considerably within a few weeks and probably, to go by current prospects, the industrial product relatively further than the raw material; hence the spinners, weavers and printers will have to work on lower margins. That in itself is suspect enough. But the American market threatens to expire, the reports from Germany are not too favourable and, if markets continue moribund, we might see the beginning of the end in a few weeks' time. In America it's hard to say whether PRESSURE and bankruptcies (debts of 16 million dollars in all) really are the beginning, or are merely straws in the wind. Here, at all events, there are already some very significant straws.
The IRON TRADE is totally paralysed, and 2 of the main banks which supply it with money—those in Newport—have gone broke; now, besides the recent FAILURES in London and Liverpool, a tallow speculator in Glasgow and, on the London STOCK EXCHANGE, Mr Thomas Allsop, a friend of O'Connor's and Harney's. I haven't seen today's reports from the woollen, silk and hardware districts, cela ne sera pas trop brillant non plus.[12] At any rate there will no longer be any question of mistaking present indications, and there is the prospect, if not actually the certainty, of next spring's convulsions on the Continent coinciding with quite a nice little crisis. Even Australia seems incapable of doing very much; since California, the discovery of gold has become an old story and the world has grown blasé about it; it's beginning to be a REGULAR TRADE and the surrounding markets are themselves so overstocked that, without making very much impression on their own GLUT, they are capable of bringing about an EXTRA GLUT among the 150,000 inhabitants of New South Wales.
So Mr Louis Napoleon has enfin[13] decided to give Mr Faucher the boot. It was only to be expected that, this time, he would not allow the prorogation to go by without repeating the previous year's coup with Changarnier—whether with equal success, we shall see. He has, to use an expression from the hunting field, at last been BROUGHT TO BAY by the royalists, has turned on them and is threatening them with his antlers. It remains to be seen, however, when he will tuck his tail between his legs again. At all events, the miserable adventurer is fallen so low that, do what he will, il est foutu;[14] but the affair is now beginning to become interesting. In one respect it's a pity that the splendid Faucher-Carlier repression, the progressive state of siege, the gendarmerie's tyranny, etc., is so soon threatened with interruption and, should the cowardly Napoleon really be brave enough to launch a serious attack on the electoral law,[15] he could even now bring about its repeal, which would also be a pity as it would again provide a lawful basis for these jackasses, the legal progressives of 13 June[16] —but who knows what is good and what is bad where these Frenchmen are concerned? What do you make of the dirty business? You see more newspapers there.
Your
F. E.
I have had a circular from Jones; he must either get 600 more subscribers or go broke[17] mais que puis-je faire?[18]