Letter to Friedrich Engels, April 26, 1856

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 26 April 1856


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

London, 26 April 1856

28 Dean Street, Soho

DEAR Frederic,

Enclosed you will find

1. 2 Kars PAPERS, third and final instalments.[1]

2. An article on the Duke of York[2] which I gave Jones, and in which I imitate OLD Cobbett's manner tant bien que mal.[3] Sent especially for Lupus' information.

3. The SPEECH made by Frost, the old Chartist, in New York.[4]

4. A letter from Miquel. This last to be returned. For I have not yet replied, as I should like to have your detailed 'OPINION' before doing so. It's a somewhat ticklish matter. 'Questions, sometimes insidious',[5] and when replying it is difficult to know how far one can properly go.[6]

Que dites-vous du discours de M. de Walewski?[7] Everyone in London is furious with the GOVERNMENT and even the SHOPKEEPERS are mouthing revolutionary slogans.

If you can, send Pieper something. It is now possible that he will get a job as CORRECTOR on The People's Paper. All. I can do now is keep him in commons. I have taken him seriously to task for his silly antics, which have landed him on the streets again. I could tell you a thing or two about politics down here, but to do so by post might be risky.

The news from Paris in today's Advertiser contains a brief but interesting report on an action brought against some members of Marianne[8] ; they're conducting themselves splendidly.

In the Presse (Paris) some edifying aspersions on Bonaparte's

législateur poète—Belmontet—by Pelletan, in which the latter has so insulted the 'empereur'[9] that he will probably be expelled.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ K. Marx, The Fall of Kars, Articles III and IV
  2. ↑ K. Marx, 'The House of Lords and the Duke of York's Monument'.
  3. ↑ after a fashion
  4. ↑ The People's Paper, No. 208, 26 April 1856
  5. ↑ H. Heine, Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, Chapter 20.
  6. ↑ In his letter of 6 April 1856 Johannes von Miquel, a former member of the Communist League, asked Marx to state his views on the attitude the proletariat should take to bourgeois parties in the event of a revolution in Germany. Miquel's own statements on this question testified to a retreat from the consistendy revolutionary standpoint. He limited the tasks of the revolution to establishing a united centralised state and ignored the need for social change. He maintained that the proletariat should ally itself not only with the petty-bourgeois democrats but also with the bourgeois liberals and refrain from such revolutionary measures as might frighten the bourgeoisie away from the revolution. No answer by Marx to Miquel is extant.—42, 44
  7. ↑ What do you say to M. de Walewski's speech? (The speech was reported in The Times, No. 22352, 26 April 1856.)
  8. ↑ Marianne, founded in 1850, was a secret republican society which opposed Napoleon III during the Second Empire.—37, 42
  9. ↑ Napoleon III