Letter to Moritz Elsner, November 8, 1855

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 8 November 1855


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXV, Moscow, 1934
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO MORITZ ELSNER

IN BRESLAU

Manchester, 8 November 1855 34 Butler Street, Green Keys

Dear Eisner,

I have received both your letters,[1] the first somewhat belatedly because my wife accidentally delayed sending it on to Manchester. After receiving your first letter I thought you had resigned from the Neue Oder-Zeitung and for that reason at once ceased to send any articles. When your second letter arrived I was suffering from such a FIT of toothache—which persisted until a few days ago—that I could no more write than I could hear or see.

I passed on your letter of 7 October not only to friends but also to adversaries, and the latter seemed thoroughly taken aback. That I and my friends are in no way affected by the dogmas of Messrs Temme and Simon of Breslau you will readily believe without any further assurance from me.

I do not see Hoyoll, but Lupus does—from time to time. Patriotism has led this Hoyoll to introduce the Breslauer Zeitung into the Athenaeum[2] here, a circumstance which threatens to drive our little Wolff[3] out of what is virtually the only home of the Muses in Manchester.

I have conveyed your greetings to Borchardt, whom I know well. Borchardt maintains a regular and intimate correspondence with Citizen Simon of Breslau. Upon his first asking me whether I knew that the N. O.-Z. lived in sin with the constitutionals, I replied: Qu'est ce que ça me fait?[4] Don't you know that, in my view, constitutionals and democrats, at least of the Prussian variety, are all much of a muchness? And is a distinction now to be drawn between democrats who have accepted one royal imposition while rejecting another and those who, having submitted to the one, also submit to the other?[5] The N. O.-Z. expresses the most extreme views possible in the present condition of the Press. What more do you ask?'

I have had letters from particularly well-informed people in Paris. According to them, the Empire's stock is sinking lower and lower. In the faubourgs the slogan, Celui-ci s'en ira[6] is said to be on everyone's lips. Indeed, the gravity of the situation may be deduced from two PUBLIC FACTS: the speech made by Rouland, the procurateur-général[7] and Granier de Cassagnac's article in the Constitutionnel, Sur les terreurs de la Révolution future.[8] The probability of the latter is beyond doubt even to Mr Granier.

As for the scandal here over the 'refugee question' (Jersey, etc.), there's more smoke to it than fire.[9] PUBLIC OPINION has definitely turned against the GOVERNMENT and, in fact, I believe that this was allowed for in the latter's calculations. So crassly, with such tragi-comical mouthings, did they accede to Bonaparte's first demands, as virtually to demonstrate that further concessions were not within the power of an English government. Had they been in earnest, they would have shown themselves more adroit and not have carried out the grotesque coup so long before the opening of Parliament. Palmerston, OF COURSE, has no love for the refugees, but regards them as wind-bags to be kept to hand so that he may occasionally threaten the Continent with a Quos ego'![10] His ministerial position, by the by, is exceedingly precarious. But it will still be difficult to unseat the old fox.

When you next write, kindly send your letter to my old address, 28 Dean Street, Soho, London, since I don't know how long I shall be remaining here, and letters sent to the above address will in any case come into the hands of my wife. Ronge is running kindergartens in London along with his wife; Kinkel, no less than Johanna,[11] hopes that the revolution will not be unduly precipitate; in Brighton, Ruge gives an occasional lecture, leading the English to believe that the German language is the most debased of all; Tausenau, Meyen et tutti quanti[12] abuse the French emigre 'riff-raff (not excluding Victor Hugo) for imperilling the 'right of asylum' of these 'officially authorised conspirators'.

Engels and Lupus send you their warmest regards. I haven't seen Borchardt for a fortnight.

Yours

K. M.

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 8 November 1855


First published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


MARX TO FERDINAND LASSALLE

IN DÜSSELDORF

Manchester, 8th November 1855 34 Butler Street, Green Keys

Dear Lassalle,

Herewith a very belated answer. In the first place, I did not get your letters[13] until later because I was in Manchester whereas the letters were in London and my wife did not know for certain whether I hadn't already left Manchester. For another thing, I was plagued by the most atrocious toothache, so much so that I experienced what Hegel demands of sensual consciousness at the stage at which it is said to override consciousness of self—viz. the inability to hear, see, and therefore also to write.

As regards your query about the book entitled: Les mystères de la Bourse by Coffinières, I believe that this miserable concoction is still among the books I left behind in the fatherland. During my first stay in Paris[14] the title misled me first into buying the thing and then into reading it. Mr Coffinières is a lawyer who, au fond,[15] knows nothing about the Bourse and merely warns against the 'legal' swindles perpetrated by the agents de change'.[16] So there's nothing to be got out of the book—neither FACTS, nor theory, nor yet even entertaining anecdotes. Moreover, it is now completely out-of-date. 'Sweet Donna, let him go'—i.e. Coffinières. 'He is not worthy of thy wrath'.[17]

Weerth is now back in Manchester after a lengthy journey via the Continent (he returned from the West Indies at the end of July). In a week's time he will be off to the tropics again. It's very amusing to hear him talk. He has seen, experienced and observed much. Ranged over the better part of South, West and Central America. Crossed the Pampas on horseback. Climbed Chimborazo. Likewise stayed in California. If he no longer writes feuilletons,[18] he makes up for it by recounting them, and his audience has the benefit of vivacious gesture, mime and waggish laughter. He is, by the by, full of enthusiasm for life in the West Indies and hasn't a good

  1. ↑ Eisner's letters of 3 and 7 October 1855 to Marx
  2. ↑ The Athenaeum —the name of the clubs which existed in a number of cities in England, including London and Manchester, and frequented by men of letters and scientists
  3. ↑ Wilhelm Wolff
  4. ↑ What's that to me?
  5. ↑ The reference is to two Prussian Constitutions. The first was imposed by King Frederick William IV simultaneously with the dissolution of the Prussian National Assembly on 5 December 1848. It introduced a two-chamber system. The King retained the right not only to rescind the Chambers' decisions but also to revise certain articles of the Constitution. The further strengthening of the reaction led in April 1849 to the dissolution of the Second Chamber elected on the basis of the 1848 Constitution, to the replacement of universal suffrage with a three-class electoral system based on a high property qualification and to the introduction of a new, still more reactionary Constitution which came into force on 31 January 1850
  6. ↑ 'This fellow will go' (paraphrase of the eighteenth-century French revolutionary song Ça ira).
  7. ↑ [G. Rouland,] Discours de M. le Procureur Général, Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 5 November 1855.
  8. ↑ 'On the terrors of the future revolution'.
  9. ↑ On 10 October 1855 L'Homme, the French refugee newspaper printed in Jersey, carried an open letter by a leader of petty-bourgeois democratic emigrants, Felix Pyat, to Queen Victoria in connection with her visit to France in August of that year. Anti-Bonapartist in content, this letter was provocative and adventuristic like all Pyat's utterances. It caused a polemic in the English and emigrant press, and serious fears that the so-called Aliens Bill might again come into force (see Note 75). To curry favour with Napoleon III the Governor of Jersey expelled several French refugees from the island, Victor Hugo among them
  10. ↑ 'Those whom...' (cf. Virgil, Aeneid, I, 135).
  11. ↑ Kinkel's wife
  12. ↑ and all the rest
  13. ↑ Lassalle's letters to Marx of 7 and 17 October 1855
  14. ↑ Marx lived in Paris from the end of October 1843 to 3 February 1845 when, on the demand of the Prussian Government, he was expelled from France and compelled to move to Brussels
  15. ↑ at bottom
  16. ↑ stockbrokers
  17. ↑ Words of Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Act I (libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte).
  18. ↑ An allusion to Georg Weerth's former activity as a journalist. During the 1848-49 revolution he wrote essays and feuilletons (in verse and prose) for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung