| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 2 March 1852 |
ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
Manchester, 2 March 1852
Dear Marx,
By now you will have received the £5 I sent off yesterday, half of it direct to you and half under cover to Lupus. My congratulations on the news of the illness of the old Brunswick inheritance-thwarter[1] ; I trust the catastrophe will at last come to pass.
According to the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, Stirner's Geschichte der Reaktion is a wretched compilation, or rather a patchwork of gleanings from what he has read and from his own published and unpublished newspaper articles—'rejected leaves and blossoms' on everything in the world and somewhat more—2 volumes which conclude with the threat that the third will contain 'the ground- work and the system'.[2] Far from aspiring to sacrosanctity, his own glosses seem rather to be destined for higher schools for young ladies.
Little Simon von Trier must inevitably make an absolute ass of himself in Dana's eyes by attributing such ludicrous nonsense to us, when Dana can see for himself that our articles contain ANYTHING BUT THAT.[3] It is preposterous of Dana not to send us the Tribune or you the money; I think the best plan would be to set Weydemeyer onto him, he at least would be able to send us the Tribune and at the same time settle the money question by word of mouth. Whether he advises you of a business house in London or sends a bill of exchange is immaterial. My article, which was to have gone by the Southampton STEAMER, missed it since I had miscalculated its departure by one day. Now you will be getting it on Friday, along with another which will bring the thing up to the end of 1848.[4] These will be followed by the Prussian Chambers, the campaign for the Imperial Constitution[5] and, finally, the Prusso-Austrian squabbles of 1850/51, lastly the conclusion— altogether the whole may, perhaps, run to another six-8 articles, summa summarum 17-20 articles.
Charles[6] will be back here in a fortnight, when I shall have more time. Until then Jones will have to be patient.
So Mr Derby declares outright that, à la Sir James Graham, he will again help the Austrians and Co. to lay their hands on any likely bandieras.[7] Hence once again letters will be broken open en masse. The main sufferers will be Mazzini and the Hungarians. We ourselves will be little inconvenienced.
But what effrontery on Derby's part! 'I hereby declare that given a suitable opportunity, I shall impose a tax on corn. Just when that will be is for me alone to decide. But if you, the majority in the House of Commons, do not wish to be des factieux,[8] you must leave me in peace until I have so far consolidated my position and so far toryfied the land that I can undo unperturbed all that has been accomplished during the past twenty years.'[9]
Poor HOUSE OF COMMONS! In place of a ministry that found itself in a relative minority, they now have one that is in absolute and permanent minority; and they are not even permitted to oppose it. But those milksops, the FREE TRADERS, have got no more than their deserts. The fellows won a battle, captured a new strategic line, and failed to occupy and fortify it, failed, indeed, to profit by their victory and even merely to pursue the enemy. Now they must again join battle on the same ground. The Tory avènement,[10] however, has suddenly made these questions abundantly plain to the fellows. Parliamentary reform, taken to the point at which Tories and Whigs, at least in their unadulterated form, are for ever precluded from power and a majority of industrialists in the Cabinet and in Parliament is assured, has now become a vital question to the manufacturers. Here these GENTLEMEN are again very active. At this moment the Anti-Corn Law League[11] is meeting and discussing whether to reorganise itself. Cobden, Bright, Milner Gibson, etc., are here. No doubt they will at least piece together again the bare bones of the organisation. But not until the dissolution will the real fun begin. The dissolution, however, cannot be long in coming for, despite Derby's honied words and his pacific and conciliatory intentions, clashes are unavoidable.
Unfortunately there is little prospect of the commercial crisis coinciding with the dissolution. Business here continues splendid. The news from America is exceedingly favourable. What is staving off the crisis, and may continue to stave it off for a little while longer, is 1. California, both the TRADE it provides and the masses of gold coming into circulation, as well as emigration thither, in short, all the stimulus that California exerts upon the whole of the United States; 2. the curb imposed by the high cotton prices of 1849 and 1850 upon the cotton industry which did not expe- rience brisk progress until the spring of 1851; 3. the enormous fall in cotton prices—almost 50%—during the past eighteen months. In New Orleans the price of cotton (MIDDLING—the average kind) on 1 Sept. 1850 was 13 ½ cents=7[12] ¼d in Liverpool; today the price of MIDDLING in New Orleans is 7 ⅝ cents=4 ⅞d in Liverpool, and for a time it stood at.7 cents. Obviously this is bound to bring about a considerable increase in consumption. Last year — Jan. and Feb.—here in the cotton district, 29,000 bales were consumed weekly, this year 33,000 and that solely American; in addition there is Surat, Egyptian, etc.—If things continue thus, England will consume 800-850 million pounds of cotton this year; 4. the general timidity to speculate and to launch.with any persistent enthusiasm even into gold mines and steamships. From everything I see I should say that another 6 months of such intensive production as at présent would suffice to inundate the whole world; if another 4 months or so be allowed for the goods to reach their destination and positive news of over-supply to come back, as also for an interim period of reflection before people are seized by panic,—then the most likely time for the onset of the crisis will be somewhere between Nov. 1852 and Feb. 1853. But all this is GUESS-WORK and we could just as well have it in September. It should, though, be a fine how-d'ye-do, for never before has such a mass of goods of all descriptions been pushed onto the market, nor have there ever been such colossal means of production. The foolish ENGINEERS' strike will hold it up for at least a month; virtually no machines are being made now and they are very much in demand. Hibbert, Piatt and Sons have hundreds of orders from both here and abroad, not one of which they can, of course, execute. And when this commercial thunderstorm moreover breaks over Mr Derby's head, it will be bad for him!
The last balance sheet made my old man really hopping mad for it shows him as having lost money, despite the general prosperity, and he is likely to give notice of termination (i.e. of his corporate contract with the Ermens). In which case this business will probably shut down as early as next year. The chaos arising out of all these goings-on has now reached a peak, and is partly why I have such a mass of things to do.
Don't bother to send me Ewerbeck's book. It's not worth the 6d the postage would cost.
My warm regards to your wife and children.
Your
F. E.