Letter to Friedrich Engels, March 26, 1870

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 26 March 1870


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III., Bd. 4, Berlin, 1931
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 26 March 1870

Dear Fred,

Returned, enclosed, the letter from the 'wrong' Moll.[1] I have heard nothing from Menke yet. When you write to the lads, please tell them, also, 1. that Lessner has written repeatedly to them that the Central Council[2] can do nothing on this matter; 2. that they can work it out on their own 5 fingers that their cooperative society is of absolutely no interest to the English; and 3. that the Central Council is bombarded from all parts of Europe with demands for money, without receiving financial contributions from anybody on the continent.

I don't understand your lines of this morning. This is probably due to the fact that my head, as a result of physical infirmity, is not at its most lucid.

I would appreciate it if you could send me, tomorrow evening (if there is a post on Sunday, which is not the case here), £5 as an advance on the coming quarter. My wife informed me too late, i.e. at a moment of exhausted exchequer, that the gas bill has to be paid at 2 o'clock on Monday.

I think I left behind in Manchester the number of the Queen's Messenger containing the biography of Clanricarde. Since this brute is putting on great airs in connection with the Irish coercion bill,[3] it is high time for J. Williams to introduce to the French a counterpart for Pierre Bonaparte.

Have you ever seen such filthy weather as this winter and autumn? No wonder that one can't get back on one's feet.

Salut

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Friedrich Moll (see this volume, pp. 455-56).
  2. ↑ General Council
  3. ↑ The Coercion Bill was introduced in the House of Commons by Gladstone on 17 March 1870, and passed by it. Aimed against the national liberation movement, the Bill provided for the suspension of constitutional guarantees in Ireland and the introduction of extraordinary powers for the English authorities in the struggle against the Irish revolutionaries. Mentioning Clanricarde, Marx refers to his speech of 21 March 1870, during the discussion of the Bill in the House of Lords. Clanricarde accused Gladstone's government of leniency towards Ireland and demanded a harsher policy to restore 'social order' there.