Letter to Friedrich Engels, February 4, 1860

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 4 February 1860


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 4 February 1860

Dear Engels,

Nothing from Berlin yet.[1] If Izzy weren't a knave, incidentally, he would have sent me the National-Zeitung of his own accord, if nothing else, as soon as it came out.

Now, as regards the extract from the N.-Z. for Lupus,[2] what I wrote, on the first occasion, was from memory and was not intended as a basis for a public statement. On the second occasion, I was copying, and to avoid misunderstanding, am doing so again. I can't send the original as I haven't a second one to spare.

Extract from No. 41 of the N.-Z., dated 25 January.[3] (It is the concluding passage in the LEADER):

'Only one further thing is worthy of note: The open letter to the National Association immediately fell into the hands of the Hanoverian reactionary party and was made known by this last; in 1850 another "circular" (as Vogt recollects, written by Parliamentary Wolff alias Casemate Wolff) was sent from London to the "proletarians" in Germany, and simultaneously allowed to fall into the hands of the Hanoverian police.'

No answer as yet from that bloody Urquhart.c

I have carefully gone through all the old letters and newspapers and put on one side what we may need 'in due course'. You must see to it that I find 'the whole lot' (letters, newspapers, etc.) at your place in Manchester, so that I can get together what is relevant. We really mustn't allow those blackguardly democrats— now, of course, gloating over our discomfiture—to make us accountable for their revolutionary travel plans, revolutionary paper money, revolutionary gossip, etc. And, starting with Gottfried Kinkel, Vogt's secret correspondent over here, they have got to be sh own up in the eyes of Germany.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Marx followed the movement for the emancipation of peasants in Russia using a variety of sources, among them the Prussian Allgemeine Zeitung. In the present case, he presumably drew on an article 'Rußland und Polen', reprinted in the Allgemeine Zeitung of 6 December 1859 (No. 340) from the Neue Hannoversche Zeitung, and the article by the Allgemeine Zeitung's St. Petersburg correspondent 'Zur russischen Leibeigenschaftsfrage und die Finanz- Verhältnisse des Staats', Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 3 (supplement) and No. 5 (supplement), 3 and 5 January, 1860.
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 12 and 22.
  3. ↑ This refers to the item 'Wie man radikale Flugblätter macht', National Zeitung, No. 41, 25 January 1860. See this volume, p. 21.