Letter to Friedrich Engels, February 9, 1854

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 9 February 1854


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full 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 39


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 9 February 1854 28 Dean Street, Soho

DEAR Frederic,

I shall be sending you today, at the same time as this, a few copies of the 'Knight'[1] and three copies of the 2nd edition of the Polish rubbish,[2] which I have corrected. Give one copy of each to Lupus and Dronke. It was stupid of me not to have corrected the printing errors (Weydemeyer also contributes his fair share) in the Syrian Palmerston thing[3] before sending it to you.[4]

I had a meeting with Urquhart.[5] He surprised me with the compliment that the articles read as though written by a 'Turk', an opinion in which he was in no way confirmed when I told him that I was a 'REVOLUTIONIST'. He is an utter maniac. Is firmly convinced THAT HE WILL ONE DAY BE PREMIER of England. When everyone else is downtrodden, England will come to him and say: SAVE US, Urquhart! AND THEN HE WILL SAVE HER. While speaking, particularly if contradicted, he goes into FITS which I find all the more comical as I know by heart his every platitude and quotation. This made me regard his 'FITS' as EVEN somewhat SUSPECT and RATHER as a theatrical EXHIBITION. The fellow's most comical idea is this: Russia rules the world through having a specific superfluity of BRAIN. TO COPE WITH HER, a man must have the BRAIN of an Urquhart and, if one has the misfortune not to be Urquhart himself, one should at least be an Urquhartite, i.e. believe what Urquhart believes, his 'metaphysics', his 'POLITICAL ECONOMY' etc., etc. One should have been in the 'EAST', or at least have absorbed the Turkish 'spirit', etc.

If you can do something by Tuesday,[6] it would be very welcome, since I have to write to the Cape of Good Hope on the same day.[7]

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ K. Marx, 'The Knight of the Noble Consciousness'.
  2. ↑ The reference is to the second edition of the pamphlet Palmerston and Russia in Tucker's Political Fly-Sheets series (see Note 465). In subsequent editions of this series this work was entitled Palmerston and Poland
  3. ↑ K. Marx, 'Lord Palmerston', Fourth Article in The People's Paper. K. Marx, 'Lord Palmerston'.
  4. ↑ Marx has in mind the articles from his Lord Palmerston published in Die Reform in Cluss' translation. They corresponded to the second and third articles ('Palmerston and Russia' and 'A Chapter of Modern History') in the New-York Daily Tribune and the fourth in The People's Paper (see Note 436)
  5. ↑ Marx wrote about this meeting also in a letter to Ferdinand Lassalle of 1 June 1854 (see this volume, p. 455). Marx described Urquhart in his article 'David Urquhart' published in Die Reform on 19 December 1853 (see present edition, Vol. 12)
  6. ↑ 14 February. In compliance with Marx's request Engels sent him on 13 February the material which provided the basis for their joint article 'The War Question in Europe'.
  7. ↑ i.e. for the paper De Zuid-Afrikaan in Cape Town (see this volume, p. 405).