Letter to Karl Marx, September 15, 1860

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 15 September 1860


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 15 September 1860

Dear Moor,

I return herewith the legal stuff.[1] The letter from Jacob Weasel[2] will follow tomorrow, as will the Eichhoff[3] which Gumpert is still reading. I found the letter from our Weasel most cheering, or, rather, it brought a smile to my lips; it's a splendid tonic for your liver, if nothing else. The things about the Prussian government are quite interesting, but the best of it is that the chap imagines we should now concede that he is right over the Italian question!!! Now, when, in Italy itself, Cavour is actually being attacked and threatened by the revolutionary party! What naïveté. Now, with Garibaldi on the point of attacking Bonaparte in Rome, we are to admit that, in the spring of this year, we should have joined forces with Cavour and Bonap. and—qui sait?[4] —might yet join forces with them! True, Mr Weasel is very reticent about the present.

You must at all costs avoid having your pamphlet[5] printed in London. I immediately wrote to Siebel once again. Firstly, the thing would be confiscated at once, perhaps actually on the frontier or at Leipzig, and secondly, even if this didn't happen, distribution would again be so appallingly bad that no one would ever set eyes on the thing. The experience is one we have been through hundreds of times with émigré literature. Always the same ineffectuality, always money and labour gone down the drain—not to mention the irritation. And then, where's the money to come from? According to your letter, it will call for £50 to £60 or more, and Lassalle certainly won't get us £30. Come to that, the thing ought to be worded in such a way that it could be printed and distributed in Germany; of what use to us is a riposte to Vogt which no one ever sets eyes on? And I simply don't see why we need any confiscable content here. Even with the press regulations as they now are, you can still say enough to drive the Prussians mad, and that, after all, is preferable to satisfaction in partibus[6] of which the public remains unaware and which, as it were, you give yourself merely in private.

Some three weeks ago I sent an article on the RIFLE MOVEMENT[7] to the Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung in Darmstadt and, because in my dealings with those professional soldiers I couldn't risk sailing UNDER FALSE COLOURS, I told the fellows in an accompanying letter[8] that I had fought in the campaign in Baden on the side of the insurgents.[9] They did print the article all the same and it has now appeared in English over here as well.[10] If possible, I shall send it to you this evening; there is no need to return it to me, as I shall be getting a copy of my own in a week's time. This is a connection of great value to me as regards military affairs.[11]

The business of the Holy Alliance[12] is pretty disastrous and in France will be of enormous help to Bonap. Garibaldi, that's the only redeeming feature. Meanwhile, I'm anxious to know how the liberal philistines in Prussia will feel about her coming under Russia's aegis again. Nowhere else in the world, by the way, does the gutter-press equal that of Berlin; this time it even seems to have gone too far for the Weasel. I'll tell you this—it's impossible so much as to pick up the National- or the Volks-Zeitung; the stench of their boring balderdash and know-all fadaise[13] carries half a mile or more.

At the National Association,[14] too, Mr Miquel held forth with genuine National Association sagacity. As for Heinrich,[15] he has at long last discovered his standpoint.

Regards to your wife and children.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ See this volume, p. 184.
  2. ↑ Ferdinand Lassalle
  3. ↑ K. W. Eichhoff, Berliner Polizei Silhouetten, Berlin, 1860.
  4. ↑ who knows?
  5. ↑ Herr Vogt
  6. ↑ In partibus (infidelium) means, literally, in parts inhabited by unbelievers. The words are added to the title of Roman Catholic bishops appointed to purely nominal dioceses in non-Christian countries. Here they mean 'outside the sphere of reality'.
  7. ↑ F. Engels, 'Eine Musterung englischer freiwilliger Jäger'.
  8. ↑ F. Engels, 'To the Editor of the Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung.'
  9. ↑ This refers to the uprising in Rhenish Prussia, the Bavarian Palatinate and Baden in the spring and summer of 1849 in support of the Imperial Constitution adopted by the Frankfurt National Assembly. Despite its limitations, the Constitution was seen by the people as the only surviving gain of the revolution. The volunteer corps commanded by August Willich, was the staunchest unit in the insurgent army. Engels was Willich's adjutant.
  10. ↑ The translation was made by Engels himself, with minor alterations. It appeared under the title 'A German Account of the Newton Review' in The Volunteer Journal, for Lancashire and Cheshire, No. 2, 14 September 1860.
  11. ↑ Engels contributed to the Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung from 1860 to 1864. His articles for that newspaper have been included in vols. 18 and 19 of the present edition.
  12. ↑ See this volume, p. 189.
  13. ↑ inanity
  14. ↑ The German National Association (Deutscher National-Verein) was the party of the German liberal bourgeoisie favouring the unification of Germany (without Austria) under the aegis of the King of Prussia. The Association was set up in Frankfurt am Main in September 1859. Its supporters were nicknamed Little Germans.
  15. ↑ Bürgers (see this volume, p. 189).