Letter to Friedrich Engels, December 31, 1866

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 31 December 1866


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


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 31 December 1866

DEAR FRED,

Happy New Year! Ditto for Madame Lizzy[2] ! May the devil take Russians, Prussians[3] , Bonaparte and the BRITISH JURYMAN in the coming year!

Apropos. The French government had confiscated papers and documents intended for us which were being brought across the frontier by French MEMBERS after the Geneva Congress, and attached them for the police archives. We claimed the things back through Lord Stanley, FOREIGN MINISTER, as 'BRITISH PROPERTY'. And in fact POOR Bonaparte had to surrender everything to us via the FOREIGN OFFICE. IS that not priceless! He has been outwitted but himself does not know how.

I received some very sad news today — my uncle[4] has died, he was an excellent man. However, he made a good death, quick, surrounded by all his children, fully conscious and dispensing subtle Voltairean irony over the priest.

The whole family sends you New Year greetings.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Part of this letter was published in English for the first time in Karl Marx, On the First International. Arranged and edited, with an introduction and new translations by Saul K. Padover, New York, 1973.
  2. ↑ Lizzy Burns
  3. ↑ William I
  4. ↑ Lion Philips