Letter to Karl Marx, March 5, 1866

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 5 March 1866


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 3, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 42


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 5 March 1866

Dear Moor,[1]

Gumpert is décidément[2] of the opinion that, just as soon as your condition allows, you should go to the seaside for at least 4 weeks and in any case have a change of air. Now what do you think of that? Would you prefer to go to a seaside resort near here (Lytham, or Blackpool or New Brighton perhaps) or on the south coast? Make your MIND up about it, and if the former, then come up here. I shall raise the money for the purpose and, as I promised you, a bit more as well. These constantly recurring carbuncles have really just got to stop, or you will be unable either to work or to do anything else. So, you must reach a decision.

You yourself disrupted my contributions for The Commonwealth by asking for something on Prussia as well as on the Polish business.[3] As a result, the one was interrupted and the other not completed in time either. I was suddenly collared to CANVASS for the money for the Schiller Institute[4] which I told you about, and that kept me off it every evening last week, and I have to go out again now.[5] I expect to have got that behind me in a fortnight but, at all events, to dispatch an article on Poland this week.

Fine revelations from Jamaica. And what an embarrassment they are to The Times, as well as Russell's resignation. The paper is going DOWN very rapidly.[6]

If possible, you must read the statement by the Cologne-Minden directors about their shady deal. They say that insofar as they are party to it, it is in law just a private arrangement; as soon as the King[7] ratifies it, he will have to sort out the constitutional side. In other words, the bourgeoisie in Cologne themselves do not want to

Kind regards to the LADIES.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Eleanor Marx
  2. ↑ decidedly
  3. ↑ F. Engels, 'What Have the Working Classes to Do with Poland?'. See this volume, p. 228.
  4. ↑ The Schiller Institute, founded in Manchester in November 1859 in connection with the centenary of Friedrich Schiller's birth, strove to be a German emigre cultural and social centre. Engels was critical of the Institute, noted for its tendency to formalism and pedantry, and he initially kept aloof from it. But when certain changes were introduced into its Rules, he became a member of its Directorate in 1864. Later, as the President of the Institute, Engels devoted much time to it and exercised a considerable influence on its activities. In September 1868, while Engels was away from Manchester, the Institute invited Karl Vogt, who was connected with the Bonapartists and was slandering the proletarian revolutionaries, to deliver a lecture. Engels felt that his political reputation would be compromised if he remained President and so he left the Directorate. In April 1870 he was again elected a member of the Directorate of the Schiller Institute, but did not take an active part in it.
  5. ↑ See present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 402 04.
  6. ↑ A reference to the publication of the findings of the Parliamentary commission investigating the atrocities committed by the British army in suppressing the Negro rebellion in Jamaica (see Note 252). The commission condemned these actions. Initially supporting the colonialists, The Times later on had to heed public opinion: on 3 and 5 March 1866 (Nos. 25436 and 25437) it published editorials and reports in which the brutalities committed 'by persons wearing the English uniform' were denounced. The news of Russell's resignation turned to be premature. The Russell government resigned in June 1866, following the failure of Gladstone's Reform Bill (see Note 315).
  7. ↑ William I