Letter to Karl Marx, February 24, 1858

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 24 February 1858


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 40


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 24 February 1858

Dear Moor,

Enclosed a fiver[1] —unfortunately I couldn't shell out yesterday, otherwise you would have had it 24 hours earlier—and the article 'Brescia'. Now there are only 'Burmah' (half-finished—it's long job searching out the reports on the latest war[2] ) and 'Bomarsund' to be done for B, and after that the two biographies. As to these I can soon get together what is needed on 'Beresford', but I'm in a quandary with 'Bülow' because I find it absolutely impossible to get hold of a good book on the wars of liberation.[3] His resolution at Grossbeeren (he beat the French against Bernadotte's wishes) is to be commended and the victory at Dennewitz was a most remarkable one: 40,000 Prussians beat 70,000 Frenchmen.[4]

However I shall have another look round. Once the stuff for B is finished I shall go on to 'Cavalry'.

I don't agree with the idea of dropping Appleton—unless that is, we have to go to the Continent. I find the encyclopaedic course most useful and, after all, the thing is going so slowly that it could be done entirely at one's leisure were financial circumstances not so pressing* Anyway you should threaten to resign as soon as the situation permits. I too believe that it would prove instantly beneficial.

In these circumstances the great Lassalle might be very useful. I trust he does what is necessary as regards the political economy, and likewise the Vienna Presse. He must have been very dilatory in the latter case, seeing that you had already written to him before about the financial article. I am keeping his letter here to show Lupus, since you've answered it anyway.

The historical irony whereby Mr Pam received his notice at the hands of Gibson and Bright is very pretty.[5] What the Guardian has to say about it you will be able to see from the 3 copies I am sending off at the same time as this letter. Pam, by the way, evidendy intends to eliminate any possibility of his return—the prosecution of the wretched little publisher[6] in London, the witch hunt that ended in the cellar in Birmingham (see day before yesterday's Sun, A CAPITAL HOAX) and other gestures of subservience to Bonaparte that crop up every day cannot fail in the long run to infuriate John Bull.

In Italy the oudook can't be so very bad after all. Admittedly there are complaints about the delay in recovering outstanding debts but on the whole it's no worse than here in the HOME TRADE. We don't have very many more overdue accounts than is usually the case in Italy. Indeed the fellows are starting to order more freely again. Admittedly our own article can't be regarded as an absolute criterion, but it nevertheless provides a few pointers. Business is still bad over there, of course, but not exceedingly so. But all that can still come.

The Bonapartists must have become tremendously nervous. At Fould's bal masqué 75 sergents de ville [7] were ON THE PREMISES dressed as dominos. See the Guardian.

Warmest regards to the whole FAMILY.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Crossed outin theoriginal:'R/J 56641, Manchester, 16 Jan. 1857' (see next letter).
  2. ↑ A reference to the second Anglo-Burmese war (1852) which resulted in the British capture of the Province of Pegu.—274
  3. ↑ the 1813 14 military campaigns against Napoleonic France
  4. ↑ At the battle of Grossbeeren on 23 August and of Dennewitz on 6 September 1813, the Prussian corps under Bülow defeated the French. Both battles took place during the war of the Sixth Coalition (Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain, Spain, Sweden and other countries) against Napoleonic France. In the 1813 campaign Bernadotte commanded the allied Northern Army, which included Bülow's corps.—164, 274
  5. ↑ After Orsini's attempt on the life of Napoleon III, Count Walewski, Foreign Minister of France, sent the British government a despatch on 20 January 1858 expressing his discontent at Britain's granting asylum to French political refugees. The despatch served as a pretext for Palmerston to introduce a new Aliens Bill, also called Conspiracy to Murder Bill (see Note 16), on 8 February 1858. According to this Bill, anyone living in the United Kingdom, an Englishman or a foreigner, who took part in a conspiracy to murder a person in Britain or any other country, was to be tried by an English court and severely punished. During the second reading of the new Aliens Bill the radicals Milner Gibson and John Bright, who had been defeated at the parliamentary elections in March 1857, when the Whigs, Palmerston's adherents, came to power, but were re-elected in the autumn of that year, moved an amendment censuring Palmerston's government for failing to give a fitting reply to Walewski's despatch. The House of Commons adopted the amendment by a majority vote, rejected the Bill and compelled Palmerston's government to resign.—273, 275
  6. ↑ Edward Truelove
  7. ↑ policemen