Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 27, 1860

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 27 August 1860


First published 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 41


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 27 August 1860

Dear Engels,

You can attribute my long silence to the persistently frightful state of my liver, as a result of which I have to devote every spare moment to work.

I wrote to Siebel re publishers ABOUT ten days ago[1] and await his reply. The long delay is due partly to my relative inability to work and partly to the fact that it was not till recently that I had all the available material. By the by, I believe that, with the exception of the Italian affair[2] (Austria's craving for intervention was a Bonapartist figment), nothing more is going to happen this year (write SOMETHING about Garibaldi. What do you think of Bangya's friend Türr?[3] ), so there'll be an interim period during which pamphlets of this kind will still be readable.

The enclosed letter from Schily will tickle you very much. Let me have it back. Today I sent Schily your Nice, Savoy, etc.

ABOUT a fortnight ago I sent Dr Zimmermann (formerly chairman of a Prussian Municipal Court) a letter, in which I put to. him questions relating to my case (questions of form).[4] However, he deemed it necessary to confer with other brethren of the same craft in Berlin. No doubt I shall get his written opinion in the course of this week. I shan't allow the Prussians to get off so lightly.

I'm in a great fix over money. Mr Weydemeyer's journal[5] is already at an end; i.e. he has resigned from the editorial board and intends to go to New York as a SURVEYOR. However, his colleague[6] is going to make the paper pay by selling it to a political party. Weydemeyer has at last come to realise that he's too honest for American journalism.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

How's business in Manchester? India? HOME MARKET?

  1. ↑ This letter by Marx has not been found.
  2. ↑ Marx means Garibaldi's successful operations, after his landing on the mainland on 19 August 1860 (see Note 198), to free Southern Italy from the rule of the Neapolitan Bourbons.
  3. ↑ On 1 September 1860 or thereabouts, Engels wrote the article 'Garibaldi's Progress' and a few days later the article 'Garibaldi in Calabria' (see present edition, Vol. 17). On Türr see Marx's article 'Affairs in Prussia.— Prussia, France and Italy' (ibid).
  4. ↑ This letter by Marx has not been found.
  5. ↑ Stimme des Volkes
  6. ↑ 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.