Letter to Karl Marx, January 6, 1852

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 6 January 1852


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39, pp. 4-5

To Marx in London

[Manchester,] 6 January 1852

Dear Marx,

BY THIS TIME, you will, I trust, have completely recovered from your afflictions; I also hope that your wife will no longer be angry with me about the coup d'état which plunged you for two days into such depths of melancholy.[1] At any rate, please give her and your children my kindest regards.

I shall get an article done for Weydemeyer in time for next Friday's steamer and hope you will let me have something topical for the Tribune, which I shall at once translate. It's really not a paper that calls for any serious exertion. Barnum stalks its columns large as life, and the English is ghastly—but this apart, it has some good qualities which, however, have nothing at all to do with our UNE. If you can see that it reaches me by Thursday—even by the 2nd post—you shall have the translation back in London in time for Saturday's steamer, i.e. by the 2nd post arriving there on Friday. Then, next week, I shall set to work on the articles on Germany and shall soon be done with them.[2]

The lack of originality with which the Austrians have aped Louis Napoleon and promptly abolished their constitution is certainly deplorable. Now there'll be a fine how-d'ye-do in Prussia—there's no doubt that Prussia has been betrayed and sold by Austria and, if it does not likewise abolish its constitution,[3] may very well be crushed by a Russian-Austrian-French alliance.

In 1851 the English cotton industry consumed 32,000 bales a week as against 29,000 bales in 1850[4] . The entire surplus, and a good deal more, went to the East Indies and China; at present Manchester is almost wholly dependent on deliveries to these two markets and to the HOME TRADE, since very little is going to the Continent. This cannot last much longer. They are sailing very near the wind here, and the fact that, e.g., cotton prices are soaring, despite an exceptionally heavy crop, merely in the expectation of even heavier demand, is of itself significant enough.

Weerth dropped me a few lines today from Bradford inquiring about the insufferable Lüders who has written to him. If you can tell me whether and to what extent this old jackass has been involved in the intrigues there, I should be grateful and it might come in handy. Otherwise, nothing else to report, BUSINESS WITH US SLACK, fog and smoke in abundance.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Engels alludes to his stay at the Marxes' in London from about 20 December 1851 to 3 January 1852 (see also this volume, p. 567).
  2. ↑ This presumably refers to Article VII of Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany.
  3. ↑ The reference is to the special imperial patent of 31 December 1851, which abolished the constitution introduced by the Austrian Government on 4 March 1849. When speaking about the Prussian Constitution, Engels has in mind the one promulgated on 31 January 1850, which abolished all the democratic gains of the 1848-49 revolution and was based on high property qualification and unequal representation.
  4. ↑ 'State of Trade. Manchester, Jan. 3', The Times, No. 21003, 5 January 1852.