ENGELS TO MARX IN LONDON
Manchester, 27 April 1852
Dear Marx,
Herewith Weydemeyer's latest, which sounds rather more hopeful. For the time being I am keeping your article[1] here 1. so as to read it, and 2. so as to translate it into English at some later date, which will be easily done, omitting such figures of speech as are comprehensible only to Germans.
Voilà donc[2] Moses Hess, in the Kölnische Zeitung,[3] with a warrant out against him for high treason. I'll be hanged if this hasn't happened because Father Dronke was found carrying those idiotic papers concerning their important business in Geneva. Cela valait bien la peine![4] In the meantime Moses again becomes a martyr, which will greatly enhance his otium cum dignitate[5] ; maybe he will shortly be dispatched to London—est-ce que nous n'échapperons jamais à cet imbécile?[6] At any rate, all this can make things extremely awkward again for the poor devils in Cologne and provide new grounds for dragging out their trial; had they already been referred to the Court of Assizes, we should surely have heard about it.
Freiligrath has written asking for an introduction to my brother-in-law[7] —I am sending it to him today; evidently he is determined to look round for a post.
Warm greetings to your wife and children.
Your
F. E.
Splendid division on the Militia Bill last night.[8] If the Almighty vouchsafes a few more like it, the new election will be postponed until September or October. SERVES THE WHIGS RIGHT AND THE FINANCIALS[9] TOO! I see that Jones intends after all to bring out his PAPER straight away—it was a mean trick Harney played him over the Star, but it was lucky that Jones did not acquire that doomed, discredited, wretched old paper.[10] Let Harney dig its grave and his own at the same time.
- ↑ The reference here is presumably to the five chapters from Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte dispatched by Marx to Weydemeyer in New York between January and March 1852 and, after the manuscript had been copied, returned enclosed in Weydemeyer's letter of 6 April 1852
- ↑ Here we have
- ↑ 'Amtliche Bekanntmachungen', Kölnische Zeitung, No. 99, 24 April 1852.
- ↑ It was well worth while!
- ↑ dignified leisure (Cicero, Oratio pro Sextio, 45)
- ↑ shall we never escape this imbecile?
- ↑ Emil Blank
- ↑ Militia Bill (see Note 62) in the House of Commons
- ↑ In January 1852 The Northern Star was sold by O'Connor to A. G. Flemming and D. MacGowan. In 1849 a radical political trend among the Free Traders founded the National Parliamentary and Financial Reform Association to campaign for an electoral reform (the so-called Little Charter) and a taxation reform. By opposing their programme to that of the Chartists and at the same time borrowing some of their demands though in an extremely curtailed form, the bourgeois radicals expected to split the Chartist movement and to influence the workers. The bourgeois radicals, supported in their campaign by Cobden, Bright and the reformist elements among the Chartists under O'Connor, failed and the Association ceased to exist in 1855. In writing about a Chartist faction connected with the supporters of the financial and parliamentary reform, Marx has Harney's group in mind (see Note 20)
- ↑ In the spring of 1852 negotiations were carried on to set up a new editorial board of The Northern Star, a Chartist newspaper published by O'Connor from 1837 onwards. Harney turned down Jones' proposal to publish the Chartist newspaper jointly, would not let Jones buy The Northern Star, acquired it himself and continued the publication first under the title The Star and from 24 April 1852 The Star of Freedom. This revealed the disagreement in principle existing between Jones and Harney, the latter seeking to turn the newspaper into the mouthpiece of the Right-wing Chartists and bourgeois radicals. In May 1852, Jones started a new Chartist weekly, The People's Paper