Letter to Friedrich Engels, April 9, 1859

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 9 April 1859


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
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 9 April 1859

Dear Frederick,

Have written to Dana telling him he can have the articles if he pays better.[2]

Pieper, finally cured and out of hospital (after a serious relapse), is off to Bremen. He has an ugly inflammation on his fore- head.

Have you been following the exposure of Palmerston over the Italian question (1848)?°

Anstey is back from Hong Kong and is threatening to have his revenge on Palmerston. As an opponent, the latter will find Anstey not a little dangerous—more so, at any rate, than Urquhart.[3]

The financial muddle in India must be seen as the real result of the Indian Mutiny.[4] A GENERAL financial BREAKDOWN seems inevitable unless those classes are taxed which to date have been England's most solid supporters. However, even that will be of no substantial help. T h e joke is that John Bull will now have to pay out annually between 4 and 5 million cash in India in order to keep the wheels turning, and will in this nice roundabout way restore his national debt to the proper progressive RATIO. It must certainly be admitted that the Indian market is being paid a damned high price for Manchester COTTONS. According to the report of the Military Commission 80,000 EUROPEANS as well as some 200,000 to 260,000 NATIVES will have to be maintained in India for years to come. This costs ABOUT £ 2 0 million and the total NET REVENUE amounts to no more than £ 2 5 million. Moreover, the mutiny has added a PERMANENT DEBT of £ 5 0 million or, according to Wilson's calculations, a permanent annual deficit of 3 million. In addition, there is the GUARANTEE of £ 2 million per a n n u m to the RAILWAYS until they are running and, indefinitely, a smaller sum if their NET REVENUE falls short of 5%. So far (apart from the short stretch of railway that has been completed) India has got nothing out of the thing save the privilege of paying English capitalists.">% for their capital. But John Bull has cheated himself, or rather has been cheated by his capitalists. India's payments are merely nominal, whereas those of John Bull are real. E.g. a substantial part of Stanley's LOAN[5] was simply to be used for paying 5% to English capitalists, even in respect of railways the building of which has not yet begun. Finally, the revenue from opium, amounting hitherto to £ 4 million per annum, is under serious threat as a result of the Chinese treaty.[6] Whatever happens the monopoly is bound to collapse and in China itself the cultivation of opium will soon be in full swing. Revenue was derived from opium precisely because it was an article of contraband. T o my mind the present financial catastrophe in India is a more serious affair than was the war in India.

What do you make of Duncker? Was there ever such a rascally slow coach?

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ The letter was first published in an abridged English translation in K. Marx, On Colonialism and Modernization, New York, 1969.
  2. ↑ This letter to Charles Dana has not been found.
  3. ↑ While a member of the House of Commons, Thomas Chisholm Anstey, together with David Urquhart, repeatedly criticised Palmerston's foreign policy. As Attorney-General of Hong Kong in 1854-58, he came out against corruption and abuses by the British colonial administration, for which he was virtually removed from office. Upon his return to England in 1859, The Times printed, on 9 April, a statement by M.P. Edwin James announcing his intention to publish documents bearing on Anstey's dismissal.
  4. ↑ Marx refers to the Indian uprising of 1857-59 against British rule. It flared up in May 1857 among the Sepoy units of the Bengal army and spread to large areas of Northern and Central India. (Sepoys were mercenary soldiers recruited from among the Indians and serving under British officers.) Its main strength was provided by the peasants and the poor artisans. Directed by local feudal lords, the uprising was put down owing to the country's disunity, religious and caste differences, and the military and technical superiority of the colonialists.
  5. ↑ Marx refers to the India Loan Bill introduced in the British House of Commons on 14 February 1859 by Secretary of State for the Affairs of India Stanley. The loan of £7,000,000 was required to cover the extra expenses of the British administration in India. Marx wrote about the Bill and India's financial position in general in his article 'Great Trouble in Indian Finances' (present edition, Vol. 16).
  6. ↑ Marx means the Shanghai Anglo-Chinese trade agreement of 8 November 1858, which supplemented the Tientsin Anglo-Chinese Treaty of 1858. It established general rules of trade and listed goods free from export and import duties (articles of consumption intended for foreigners) and those subject to duties. The import of opium into China was formally allowed only in the form of foreign medicine which, however, was tantamount to the legalisation of the opium trade, though on a restricted scale.