| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 25 April 1852 |
ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
Manchester, 25 April 1852
Dear Marx,
Yesterday evening I received a note from Hain which I sent you together with my reply to it. After this, I think, Mr Hain will pay.
Herewith the STAMPS, more to follow shortly. Also returning the other stuff. Ewerbeck's letter is a worthy pendant to his book.[1] [2]
Pray help me oppose Ribbentrop! I shall denounce him to Democracy as a hypocrite and débaucheur.[3] The man must be in his dotage.
Nor has friend Bruno increased in wisdom or divine knowledge. Il valait bien la peine[4] to set the American press in motion from Berlin thus, by this most roundabout route, proclaiming to an astonished world that the continental armies are there to maintain internal peace. Mr Bruno still represents the Hegelian dialectic in its deepest stagnation. At this stage of development, his concept of history goes no deeper than providing circumstantial proof of the most banal platitudes by an ample display of solemnity and pseudo-logical development, and then dishing them up as the brand-new findings of zealous research. All this is tolerable in the case of the distant past, but to be thus bamboozled about the immediate present is really too much and any fool should be able to see that there's nothing at all at the bottom of it. And as for the profound truth that governments are right vis-à-vis revolutions because the latter are still immature, but revolutions are also right vis-à-vis governments because they represent the ideas of the future, admittedly in embryonic and immature form, but nevertheless [...] to a substantial degree—that is an old Hegelian joke whose novelty has certainly worn off even in America! And then the eternal 'ill-temper', 'peevishness', 'fundamental indifference' of the 'bourgeois'. 'In some countries, classes war against classes, in others nations against nations.' Strictly speaking, this prodigiously clever sentence is all that Bruno has learnt from the revolution.
Mr Teilering has apparently been chased out of France as being a homeless, vagrant member of the lumpenproletariat and of no use even to the Société du 10 Décembre.
Unless you know positively that Dronke went to Germany of his own free will, I would think it more probable that, having been already once expelled from France, he was this time transported not to any frontier but to the German frontier. But once safely in Nassau, why did the silly fool go to Coblenz when he'd have done far better to go to Hamburg, where no one knows him and he would have found Weerth and Strohn, hence also cash, and from there to England! But Coblenz being so close, he was obviously drawn there from Nassau by the prospect of money, and if he had managed to get through safely, would certainly have gone on to Cologne. At all events, it is fortunate for the Cologne people that they have already been dealt with by the Board of indicting magistrates, otherwise Dronke's arrest would have provided occasion for another six months' examination. But very soon they'll take him to Cologne and maybe attempt to produce him as a witness before the Court of Assizes. This time it serves him perfectly right. He could certainly have found such money as he needed in Frankfurt, or have got Lassalle to send it to him somewhere, but no, the little chap must needs go to Coblenz where he's known to every gendarme and every dog in town. En attendant il est sûrement logé.[5]
Your
F. E.