Letter to Friedrich Engels, July 13, 1852

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 13 July 1852


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 13 July 1852

Dear Engels,

There being no letter from you, I conclude that the worthy Weydemeyer must, for all that, be still persevering with his 'system'. The thing's becoming really incomprehensible and, quite aside from the pecuniary loss, which is just now very perceptible, is turning me for good measure into the laughing stock of the émigré vermin and of the booksellers whom I had approached about this unfortunate affair.

I have not written an article on the elections because I feel it would be better to await the full results.[1] From what I have seen so far, it seems to me that, apart from 5-6 more votes for the Whigs, the old Parliament will rise again unchanged. The fellows are in a cercle vicieux[2] from which they cannot break out. The only ones to have suffered any significant losses so far are the Peelites.[3] Meanwhile, in an apologia for Graham, The Morning Chronicle declares that only one alternative remains, that Whigs are as incompetent as Tories, and that the only capable people, apart from Graham and his supporters, are Cobden, Bright and Co. And these should govern together. Curiously enough, the following day—as you may perhaps have seen,—The Times carried an article which likewise contained an apologia for Graham.[4]

The great Techow is emigrating to Australia next week, together with Madame Schmidt-Stirner. But—and this will wound you more deeply—even Damm is no less eager to turn his hand to AUSTRALIAN GOLD-DIGGING. Another few months of peace, and all our 'world underminers'[5] will be busily mining for dirt in the dirt of Australia. Only Willich, firmly chained to the coffre-fort,[6] remains faithful to his motto: to live but BY NO MEANS work.

Bangya is now on very close terms with the Orleanist intriguer, 'de Rémusat'. Some Hungarian quelconque[7] warned him against the man who is said to have 'betrayed' the Germans during the complot allemand-français.[8] Rémusat has agents right in the Paris Prefecture. So, sans mot dire à M. Bangya[9] he writes asking for a report on this gentleman. The reply, which was communicated to me, stated that Bangya was in no way suspect, that he had got out in time, otherwise he too would have been arrested. The traitor was un certain Cherval, nommé Frank, mais dont le véritable nom est Cramer.[10]

From the outset this Cherval is said to have been hand in glove with the police. What is more, Rémusat is receiving original letters written by Cherval to the Prussian Embassy, stating that, in accordance with promises made to him in the Mazas, and now that he had professed the principe of ordre, it was leur devoir[11] to provide him with the necessary moyens.[12] The Prussian Embassy, however, declared that since he was being paid as a spy by the French, and double emploi[13] was out of the question, he could have no claims on the Prussians. He was therefore sent to London to observe the German refugees and, in addition, to 'keep an eye on Claremont'.[14] In the latter capacity he called on Rémusat and offered him his services as an agent. Rémusat, on instructions from Paris, pretended to agree and assigned to him a go-between in the person of a valet at Claremont; this man was now entrusted with the task of misinforming the Paris police through Cherval.

So well organised is the Orleanist agitation that the fellows possess what amounts to a regular clandestine postal service by which one can send letters, parcels, and pamphlets to France as safely as innocuous matter by ordinary mail.

My main concern in all this was to procure an original letter of Cherval's relating to his connections with the Prussian Embassy. Such a pièce could topple the whole fabric of the bill of indictment.[15]

I have arranged with Bangya that, as soon as another copy has been made, you will receive Szemere's pamphlet in manuscript.[16] It is a document that is indispensable to your work[17] since it contains letters from Görgey, Kossuth, etc., which have not been published anywhere.

My wife is very poorly, she has a cough and is losing weight. However, the doctor says it is nothing dangerous and has, in addition to medicine, prescribed plenty of porter.

If you can manage to send me another article[18] by Friday, I will try to discount with Johnson the £5 that will then become due from Dana.

Apropos. The Domenichi Orlando Innamorato riformato is an adaptation. The original is very rare and only to be had in large libraries, as here. Even the Domenichi edition is rare. More readily available is the Orlando, rifatto[19] by Berni.[20]

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Marx may have made up his mind to write on this subject when he was staying with Engels in Manchester from the end of May to second half of June 1852, but he did not carry out his plan until August, when he devoted a few articles for the New-York Daily Tribune to analysing political parties in England and exposing the anti-popular essence of the English electoral system. These articles were 'The Elections in England.—Tories and Whigs', 'The Chartists', 'Corruption at Elections' and 'Result of the Elections' (see present edition, Vol. 11)
  2. ↑ vicious circle
  3. ↑ Palmerston, Foreign Secretary in the Whig Ministry of Russell, was dismissed because in a conversation with the French ambassador in London he had expressed his approval of the Bonapartist coup d'état of 2 December 1851, without consulting other members of the Ministry. The dismissal occurred on 19 December 1851, though in principle the British Government did not disagree with Palmerston's point of view and was the first in Europe to recognise the Bonapartist regime in France
  4. ↑ The Times, No. 21164, 10 July 1852, leader.
  5. ↑ The original has Weltumwühler by analogy with Wühler (agitators), the name the bourgeois constitutionalists in Germany in 1848-49 applied to republican democrats.
  6. ↑ safe
  7. ↑ or other
  8. ↑ In September 1851 arrests were made in France among members of local communities who belonged to the Willich-Schapper group (see Note 15). The conspiratorial tactics of this group enabled the French and Prussian police, with the help of the agent-provocateur Cherval, who headed one of the Paris communities and at the same time was in the pay of the Prussian and French police, to fabricate the case of the so-called Franco-German plot. In February 1852 the accused were sentenced on a charge of plotting a coup d'état. Cherval was allowed to escape from prison. Attempts of the Prussian police to incriminate the Communist League led by Marx and Engels failed. Marx publicly exposed these provocations in his Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne and Herr Vogt (see present edition, vols. 11 and 17)
  9. ↑ without a word to Mr Bangya
  10. ↑ a certain Cherval, known as Frank, but whose real name is Cramer
  11. ↑ principle of order, it was their duty
  12. ↑ means
  13. ↑ double employ
  14. ↑ Claremont—a house near London, residence of Louis Philippe after his flight from France in 1848; a centre of Orleanist intrigues to restore the Orleans dynasty in France
  15. ↑ Members of the Communist League (see Note 15) were arrested by the Prussian police in May 1851 and accused of 'treasonable conspiracy'. The accused remained in detention for about eighteen months. Eleven Communist League members (Heinrich Bürgers, Peter Nothjung, Peter Röser, Hermann Heinrich Becker, Karl Otto, Wilhelm Reiff, Friedrich Lessner, Roland Daniels, Johann Jacob Klein, Johann Erhardt and Abraham Jacobi) were brought to trial which began in Cologne on 4 October and lasted till 12 November 1852. It was rigged by the Prussian police on the basis of fabricated documents and forged evidence which included the so-called Original Minute-book of the Communist League Central Authority meetings and documents stolen by the police from the Willich-Schapper group. The trial was accompanied by an anti-communist hue and cry in the official press of Germany and other countries. On the basis of forged documents and perjury seven of the accused were sentenced to imprisonment for terms of three to six years. Marx, Engels and their friends and associates in England, Germany and America supported the Cologne prisoners in the press and supplied counsel for the defence with documents and material exposing police fabrications. The provocative actions of the prosecution and the contemptible methods of the Prussian police state were exposed by Marx in his pamphlet Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne and by Engels in the article 'The Late Trial at Cologne' (see present edition, Vol. 11)
  16. ↑ B. Szemere, Graf Ludwig Batthyány, Arthur Görgei, Ludwig Kossuth. Politische Charakterskizzen. The reference is to the German translation, which Marx helped to edit.
  17. ↑ See previous letter.
  18. ↑ Next article from the series Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany.
  19. ↑ redone
  20. ↑ Orlando innamorato—a chivalrous poem by Boiardo, an Italian Renaissance poet, published in Italy in 1495. In the sixteenth century, adaptations of this poem were made by Lodovico Domenichi and Francesco Berni; most popular was that of Berni which appeared in 1541 and was repeatedly republished. Boiardo's poem was republished in London in the 1830s