Letter to Friedrich Engels, April 16, 1860

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 16 April 1860


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


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 16 April 1860

Dear Engels,

Have had some most valuable material from Lommel today.[2] However, he volunteered to submit to a further CROSS-EXAMINATION, and one such has already gone off to him today.[3] It was also much needed. Moreover, in the letter in which I buttered him up, I suggested he should send 300 copies of his Hinter den Coulissen to Petsch (the booksellers) here. I would promote the sales (in working men's clubs, etc.). Now he wants an advance of 150 francs. I think that you in Manchester should CI.UB together forthwith and raise a few pounds, while I would find the rest down here. The man is invaluable to us. He has also written about this to Siebel. Hence I shall also drop the latter a couple of lines today. Siebel should do nothing without first consulting me.

I enclose Weydemeyer's letter.

Not a word yet from that confounded lawyer,[4] to whom I sent a reminder last Friday.[5] However, he's got the retaining fee, and I his acceptance of the brief. So, I cannot imagine that he will lay himself open to a lawsuit against himself.

A lot more sanctimonious preaching from Lassalle, together with a printed essay (on Fichte's political legacy[6]) for Walesrode's political pocket edition, not yet out.[7] It appears from L.'s letter that he has read your pamphlet,[8] which.means it has come out in Berlin. Presumably the publisher will only start advertising it now, along with the Easter eggs. L.'s letter is altogether fatuous. He's been ill again. He is again writing a 'major work'.[9] Aside from this major work, he has in his mind a clear outline of three other major works, including the 'political economy', and is, in addition, studying 6-7 unnamed sciences 'with productive intent'. The Countess,[10] he writes, has lost a great deal of money, for which reason he must go to Cologne. Probably misguided speculation in railways, etc.

Mont Sion does in fact exist, or so I see from the map included in the BLUE BOOK on Savoy[11] (in the Genevois, EX-NEUTRAL).

Apropos. Questions for Lupus:

1. In one of his letters from Zurich I find that he was acquainted with Brass. Could he supply any information about him?

2. Did the rump parliament in StuttgartI54 pass a resolution whereby the former imperial regents have the right to recall the German parliament on any particular occasion?

Do you or Lupus know anything about a request for annexation sent in 1849 by the then provisional government of the Palatinate to the French National Assembly?

When are you coming down here?

Your

Moor

Haven't seen Freiligrath yet. The idea of meeting the chap is 'awful',[12] and yet I've got to swallow the bitter pill. If only for diplomatic reasons, after our mutual assurances of friendship.

And then, he has written to me in an AMIABLE manner.

  1. ↑ An excerpt from this letter was first published in English 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. ↑ See this volume, pp. 118-19.
  3. ↑ This letter by Marx has not been found.
  4. ↑ J. M. Weber
  5. ↑ See previous letter.
  6. ↑ Lassalle, Fichte's politisches Vermächtniss und die neueste Gegenwart.
  7. ↑ Demokratische Studien
  8. ↑ Marx followed the movement for the emancipation of peasants in Russia using a variety of sources, among them the Prussian Allgemeine Zeitung. In the present case, he presumably drew on an article 'Rußland und Polen', reprinted in the Allgemeine Zeitung of 6 December 1859 (No. 340) from the Neue Hannoversche Zeitung, and the article by the Allgemeine Zeitung's St. Petersburg correspondent 'Zur russischen Leibeigenschaftsfrage und die Finanz- Verhältnisse des Staats', Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 3 (supplement) and No. 5 (supplement), 3 and 5 January, 1860.
  9. ↑ Das System der erworbenen Rechte
  10. ↑ Sophie von Hatzfeldt
  11. ↑ Savoy, Nice and the Rhine; Papers relating to proposed Annexation of Savoy and Nice to France and memorial on the relations between Switzerland and Savoy as a Neutral, London, 1860.
  12. ↑ Marx uses the dialectal form 'öklig' for 'eklig'.
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