Letter to Karl Marx, July 18, 1859

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 18 July 1859


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


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 18 July 1859

Dear Moor,

I shall send you tomorrow or the day after the £5 still required to pay off the Volk's arrears. It was too late for me to do it today, and besides I have the company of the 'little man', scilicet[1]

Dronke, who sidled up to me at the Exchange; the little chap's business seems to be doing passably well. Apart from current day-to-day gossip, on which he holds forth like a pothouse politician, he seems reluctant to talk about politicis, particularly of the past, and this I encourage, for after all I treat him as an extraneus.[2] His knowledge, however, has not increased, and the profundity of his politics may be summed up in his remark that the Italians 'have got to hit out now, or they're not worth a thing'.

But to revert from the little man to the Volk; we must at once discuss what is to be done. If the £7 you took with you has vanished so quickly, and the louts' £3 15/- as well, the £3 I have in reserve will doubtless soon be gone too. Que faire?[3] I've heard nothing about Strohn's return. There's not much more to be done with Borchardt. As soon as Lupus returns—but heaven knows where he is—I shall at all events get him to carry out a reconnaissance. Before that I wouldn't care to approach him personally. Nor do I run across him any more, though I've several times kept half an eye open for him in Oxford Road.

At any rate you must let me know sometime exactly how matters stand financially under the new administration, so that I can have an answer ready to eventual queries. How many copies are now being sold? Have you cut down the newsboys, etc., to 1/2'd per copy? What do the total weekly expenses amount to and what is the income—hence what is the deficit?

Mr Thimm has been talked round very nicely. Das Volk is now displayed in his window IN A CONSPICUOUS POSITION, a much better one than the Hermann and the KOJIOKOJIK, which flank it. A few more 'Gatherings' and the last-named[4] will doubtless be done for altogether.[5] The way in which Kinkel has suddenly taken to his heels is very funny.[6]

Next week's LEADER on the peace ought to be done by you. It's important, I think, since we've been lucky enough to get hold of the secret articles,[7] that this point be fully exploited. As you are making a Tribune article[8] out of it anyway, that should be easy for you. This point may well give the Volk a significance of quite a tlifferent order, and exact for it a position in the press. Think this over.

Let me know also by return what you people would like me to write about this week; then I shall do it on Wednesday evening.

I have sent for the Portfolio and am studying these and other Russian documents and Palmerstoniana; shall also get hold of as many BACK NUMBERS of The Free Press as possible. It's really high time I went through the stuff, seeing what importance the thing is now assuming. Can you tell me where the Russian memorandum on Russian policy[9] originated and which Prussian ministerial crisis brought it to the light of day[10] ? So far as I am concerned the internal EVIDENCE and the classic phraseology are, of course, more than sufficient, but I need these FACTS for the debate with Philistia; anyway it is stupid of Urquhart to be so unnecessarily secretive.

Is there anything to be wormed out of Blind quoad[11] Vogt[12] ? The 'little man' doesn't believe the thing, of course, and asks 'why, then, didn't we see to it that the documents were printed'?

Generally speaking the documents in Vol. 1 of the Portfolio are not the most important, though there are some nice things among them, particularly those by Pozzo di Borgo and the memorandum to the German governments.[13] What idiots they are and how the Russians must laugh at them!

The memorandum in The Free Press is a true classic from start to finish, including the almost comical way in which the worthy diplomats make out that regicide is at once self-sacrifice and a republican virtue. Still, it seems to be going a bit far when Nicholas[14] gives his son[15] this kind of lesson with regard to the murder of his own father; I should say this passage has been altered.[16]

Is it not possible to get hold of the complete document? Dronke tells me that in Glasgow there is a STATIONER by the name of Love in St. Enoch Square who sells the Hermann and would be a very suitable man to sell Das Volk. It might be a good idea to send him a few copies and a letter.

Have you sent it to America? It's about time you did. T o Weydemeyer, Steffen and the chap in New York[17] who once wrote to you about communist matters.[18]

Warmest regards to your wife and the girls.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ to wit
  2. ↑ outsider
  3. ↑ What is to be done?
  4. ↑ Engels has 'den letzteren', probably a slip of the pen; 'den ersteren' ('the first named') would fit the context better, as the 'Gatherings' were directed against the Hermann, not against the KOJIOKOJIÎ>.
  5. ↑ TJK Free Press, No. 5, of 27 May 1859 carried Karl Blind's anonymous note 'The Grand Duke Constantine to Be King of Hungary' exposing the plans for giving the Hungarian throne to the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia. Marx mentioned this article in his Herr Vogt (see Vol. 17, pp. 122-24). Blind also hinted at the possibility of some refugee German democrats and liberals being bribed by the Bonapartists. The same issue of the journal carried an excerpt from a private letter comparing Kossuth's tendency to yield to Bonapartist demagogy in the nationalities question with Mazzini's critical attitude to it. Marx may have drawn on the two items for the facts he relates to Engels.—452, 504, 521
  6. ↑ G. Kinkel, 'An unsere Leser', Hermann, No. 26, 2 July 1859.
  7. ↑ See this volume, p. 464.
  8. ↑ K. Marx, 'The Treaty of Villafranca'.
  9. ↑ 'Memoir on Russia, for the Instruction of the Present Emperor', The Free Press, No. 7, 13 July 1859.
  10. ↑ In publishing the 'Memoir on Russia' on 13 July 1859 the editors of The Free Press wrote that the document had been discovered during the 'Prussian ministerial crisis'. This put Engels on his guard and made him, like Marx (see his letter to Engels of 19 July 1859, this volume, p. 470), doubt the authenticity of some of the passages. And indeed, from subsequent issues of The Free Press (of 27 and 31 July 1859) it appeared that the publication was based not on the original document but on material published in the German conservative newspaper Preussisches Wochenblatt zur Besprechung politischer Tagesfragen, Nos. 23, 24 and 25, June 9, 16 and 23, 1855. This publication quoted neither the source from which the document had been taken nor its title or the full text. Later Bismarck in his memoirs (Gedanken und Erinnerungen, Stuttgart, 1898, Bd. 1, S. 111-112) stated outright that the publication had been a forgery. Though Marx and Engels were sceptical about the document, they did not know that it was completely false. Therefore Marx had it reprinted, from The Free Press, in the New-York Daily Tribune (early August) and in Das Volk (late July-early August 1859) prefacing it with an 'Introductory Note' (see present edition, Vol. 16, p. 415).—468, 470, 476
  11. ↑ concerning
  12. ↑ On 9 May 1859 Marx, while attending a public meeting organised by Urquhart in connection with the Italian war, was told by the German democrat Karl Blind that Vogt was in receipt of subsidies from the French government for Bonapartist propaganda and had offered bribes to some writers to induce them to come out in support of Napoleon III (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 116-17).—434, 436, 460, 468, 533, 539, 543
  13. ↑ 'Copy of a Despatch from Count Pozzo di Borgo, Addressed to Count Nesselrode. Dated Paris, 10th (22nd) December, 1826'; 'Copy of a Very Secret Despatch from Count Pozzo di Borgo, dated Paris, the 28th November, 1828'; 'Memoir on the State and Prospects of Germany, Drawn up under the Direction of a Minister at St. Petersburgh, and Confidentially Communicated to Several of the German Governments'.
  14. ↑ Nicholas I
  15. ↑ future Emperor Alexander II
  16. ↑ The 'Memoir on Russia, for the Instruction of the Present Emperor', published in The Free Press, said that Russia's interests demanded the murder of Prince Alexei (son of Peter I) and Peter of Holstein, i. e., Peter III.—469
  17. ↑ Friedrich Kamm
  18. ↑ Marx refers to a letter he received from Friedrich Kamm dated 19 December 1857. Kamm, a German refugee in America, wrote that he and his friends had set up a Communist Club in New York and asked Marx to send him information about the communist movement in Europe, certain theoretical works and Communist League documents. He also asked for practical advice in organising the work of a newly founded club. Marx's reply has not been found, but his letter to Joseph Weydemeyer of 1 February 1859 shows that he corresponded with Albrecht Komp, another leader of the New York Communist Club (see this volume, p. 376).—282, 288, 293, 469