Letter to Friedrich Engels, July 15, 1874

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 15 July 1874


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN RAMSGATE

Ryde, 15 July 1874
11 Nelson Street[2]

Dear FRED,

It is really shameful of me not to have written to you before, but, as is well known, it is very hard to find time when one is absolutely idle. This ISLAND is a little paradise, above all for the gentlemen who have everywhere turned the best-situated land into their own parkland. We have made a tour round the island by BOAT, have been in Ventnor, Sandown, Cowes, Newport and also on a number of walks. It is too hot to pursue the latter with any thoroughness, although compared to London, the temperature is doubtless very moderate.

Religion seems to thrive here among the NATIVES, but apart from that they are practical people. 'VOTE FOR STANLEY, THE RICH MAN', we found on posters all over the district. The Town Council of Ryde, on which various members of the Ryde Pier and Railway Company have seats and whose proceedings replace those of the House of Commons in the local press, is a true model of JOBBING.

Our LANDLORD is a SCRIPTURE READER FOR THE POOR, and his theological library, ABOUT TWO DOZEN VOLUMES, adorns our SITTING-ROOM. Although he is a member of the CHURCH OF ENGLAND, I found Spurgeon's sermons among them. In Sandown, where I took a hot bath, I found a similar LIBRARY in the bathhouse, and one can scarcely move an inch without seeing posters advertising pious MEETINGS. And in fact, the PLEBS here is very poor and seems to seek its chief distraction in the church. It would be quite interesting to investigate how what was originally a community of fishermen became reduced IN NO TIME to this state of religious self-abasement. It is certainly not the result of 'over-population', since all told there are not even 100,000 genuine inhabitants.

My health is improved, above all no pills required. But my head, despite everything, is still not completely right.

Laurachen gave us great pleasure with her visit last Saturday.[3] Unfortunately, she had to return again on Monday evening. When we went down to the pier to see her off, we witnessed the arrival from Brighton of a Temperance gang back from an excursion. Half of them were drunk. As an old Englishman next to me remarked, it was 'THE WORST LOT HE HAD EVER MET WITH IN HIS LIFE',
and neither have I ever actually experienced such a mob of stunted, loutish and smutty-minded idiots all at once, the women as ugly as sin, all of them 'young people'. For FOREIGNERS this SAMPLE of FREEBORN BRITONS would have been an amazing sight.

It is a matter of great regret that the Emperor of Russia[4] didn't break his neck in Saxony. You will have seen from the newspaper reports that if the Russians promised to give Bismarck a European sanction for his Articles of War at the Brussels Congress, what they really intended was to take up the issue of MARITIME RIGHTS 2S on the basis of their earlier preparatory work in Paris (1856).[5] If Gladstone had been Premier instead of Disraeli, the trick would have worked. As things stand, the congress can only be a FAILURE.

The abortive assassination attempt on Bismarck2 seems, for all that, to have momentarily turned his head. Would he otherwise have talked, despite the waters at Bad Kissingen, among other things, of 'the freedom' that he himself and those who fell in the war have fought to acquire for Germany? The handsome William[6] for his part must consider it against all etiquette that no one thinks it worth the trouble to take a shot at him any more.

In France it is the fear of DISSOLUTION that makes the fellows so coy. MacMahon is obviously by no means as resolute as he pretends to be, despite his Royal Prussian Order in Council. He is too well aware that a coup d'état would make him dependent on the Bonapartists and would put a speedy end to his septennium.[7]

On the other hand, he is afraid of a DISSOLUTION without previously regulating or 'organising' his authority as Marshal. If the Rurals[8] put their interests before their ideological fancies, they will make it 'possible for him to rule' despite his reluctance. But has anything as comic as this conflict and its heroes ever been seen in world history? If the Republic pisses its way to survival, certainly no one will have been more innocent of the deed than the professional republicans themselves.

With best regards to Mrs Lizzy and Pumps.

Your

Moor

  1. ↑ An excerpt from this letter was published in English for the first time in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1979.
  2. ↑ In the second half of July 1874, Marx took a rest cure in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Engels was in Ramsgate (Eastbourne) between mid-July and mid-August 1874.
  3. ↑ 11 July
  4. ↑ Alexander II
  5. ↑ See this volume, p. 18.
  6. ↑ William I
  7. ↑ On 20 November 1873, the French National Assembly passed a law on the septennium, which allowed Mac-Mahon to hold the post of president of the republic for seven years (up to 20 November 1880). This signified consolidation of the President's individual power and bolstered the monarchists' position.
    The monarchist parties' attempts to have the National Assembly dissolved and the monarchy restored made in the summer of 1874 provoked indignation in republican quarters. Fearing an outburst on the part of the republican-minded masses, on 9 July Mac-Mahon issued an address to the Assembly stating that he would use all available means to retain the power granted him for the term of seven years. At the same time, he demanded an early introduction of new laws that would, to all intents and purposes, secure his dictatorship. Specifically, he demanded that the President be given a right to dissolve the Assembly, announce new elections and form the majority in parliament.
  8. ↑ The Rurals (the Assembly of the Rurals, the French Rural Assembly)—a derogatory nickname of the French National Assembly convened in February 1871 in Bordeaux and made up mostly of provincial landowners, officials, rentiers and tradesmen elected in the rural constituencies. The majority of the deputies (430 out of 630) were monarchists.