Letter to Karl Marx, November 17, 1865

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 17 November 1865


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 3, Berlin, 1930
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 17 November 1865

Dear Moor,

Your letter was only passed on to me yesterday evening, and I shall be making enquiries as to how it was left lying around for so long.

I hope little Jenny is ALL RIGHT again and at least has got over the acute stage of the illness and the danger therewith. I'm sending her a case of port, sherry and claret this evening, to restore her strength. It gave me a real fright when I read the word diphtheria; it is not something to be made light of.

The letter from the Berliners really took me aback.[1] It has obviously been written by someone with a lot more to him than Wilhelmchen[2] and his references to the latter do not appear to be without a certain irony. Now the letter has certainly not been written by a worker, the mere fact that Grimm's rules of orthography are impeccably observed shows that, and I am just a mite suspicious as to how genuine the thing is. At any rate, we ought to obtain more information about the 3 signatories, Wilhelmchen should know them at least, if the business is bona fide. It is rather the form of the document that makes me suspicious, the content most definitely implies the contrary. But as you won't in any case be going to Berlin to found a new organisation there, it will not signify if you write to these people. Letter returned encl.

What do you say to the NiccER-rebellion in Jamaica and the atrocities perpetrated by the English?[3] The Telegraph says today:

  • 'We should be very sorry if the right was taken away from any British officer to shoot or hang all and every British subject found in arms against the British Crown? *[4]

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ In his articles denouncing the diplomacy of the ruling classes Marx made use of the documents which the conservative writer David Urquhart, who was in opposition to the British government, published in his periodicals The Portfolio and The Free Press. While printing his separate articles in The Free Press, Marx criticised Urquhart and his followers for their anti-democratic views and always emphasised the fundamental difference between his position as a proletarian revolutionary and that of the Urquhartists.
  2. ↑ Wilhelm Liebknecht
  3. ↑ The mass Negro uprising in Jamaica, the British colony in the West Indies, took place in October 1865. It was caused by the severe exploitation of the Negroes by the colonists, though slavery had been abolished on the island in 1833. The uprising was brutally suppressed by the Governor of Jamaica, General Eyre. The atrocities perpetrated by Eyre caused public outrage in Britain, and the British government was compelled to dismiss him from his post.
  4. ↑ The Daily Telegraph, No. 3249, 17 November 1865.