Letter to Friedrich Engels, April 1, 1859

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 1 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
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40
Keywords : Letter, Friedrich Engels


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 1 April 1859

Dear Engels,

Herewith letter from Lassalle. Herewith letter from Dana, which you must return. I shall wait to hear from you before answering it.[1]

Have written articles on the Reform Bill, MINISTRY.[2] My article for next week: Indian Finances.[3] All the rest of the world is therefore at your disposal.

So Palmerston, as was decided at Compiègne[4] (but in effect at Petersburg), is to return to the MINISTRY whatever its denomination. Without him Russia could not allow a war. Now, as in 1852 and 1855, Bright and Russell have pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for him.

By the by, the debate in parliament was very funny. The Whigs and Radicals attacked the Tories largely on the grounds of their being REVOLUTIONISTS. Here, Bright's and Gibson's role most abject. (The latter even went so far as to declaim romantically against ELECTORAL DISTRICTS.[5]) On the other hand, the farce of Tories, in the name of the MIDDLE CLASS, advocating their own rubbish in opposition to Whigs and MIDDLE CLASS, who advocate theirs in the name of the WORKING CLASS. A sign of great progress in England.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ For the letter from Lassalle see Note 392.—In his letter of 15 March 1859 Charles Dana informed Marx that it was impossible to find a publisher in America for the English translation of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and offered his help in selling 50-100 copies of the German edition of the book in America. Dana also requested Marx to write articles on 'Fortification' and 'Infantry' for The New American Cyclopaedia. Both articles were written by Engels (see present edition, Vol. 18).—410
  2. ↑ Besides 'The New British Reform Bill' (see present edition, Vol. 16), Marx wrote two more articles on the 1859 Reform Bill, on 22 March and 1 April 1859, but they were not published in the New-York Daily Tribune and have not reached us.—406, 411
  3. ↑ K. Marx, 'Great Trouble in Indian Finances'.
  4. ↑ Hence these tears (Terence, Andria, I, i, 99).
  5. ↑ On 31 March 1859 the House of Commons rejected, after a second reading, the Reform Bill proposed by the Tory government of Derby-Disraeli, which led to the government's fall. In the preceding debate, on 24 March, Bright and Gibson spoke against the Bill. Gibson quoted Bright, who said in one of his earlier speeches that 'there was no Bill so revolutionary as a bad Bill'. While favouring the preservation of some elements of the obsolete system of 'rotten boroughs', Gibson opposed the new distribution of electoral districts proposed by the government. The ideas expressed in this letter were probably discussed in greater detail in Marx's article on the Reform Bill written on 1 April 1859, which was not published by the New-York Daily Tribune editors.—411
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