Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 27, 1860

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MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 27 August 1860

Dear Engels,

You can attribute my long silence to the persistently frightful state of my liver, as a result of which I have to devote every spare moment to work.

I wrote to Siebel re publishers ABOUT ten days ago[1] and await his reply. The long delay is due partly to my relative inability to work and partly to the fact that it was not till recently that I had all the available material. By the by, I believe that, with the exception of the Italian affair[2] (Austria's craving for intervention was a Bonapartist figment), nothing more is going to happen this year (write SOMETHING about Garibaldi. What do you think of Bangya's friend Türr?[3]), so there'll be an interim period during which pamphlets of this kind will still be readable.

The enclosed letter from Schily will tickle you very much. Let me have it back. Today I sent Schily your Nice, Savoy, etc.

ABOUT a fortnight ago I sent Dr Zimmermann (formerly chairman of a Prussian Municipal Court) a letter, in which I put to. him questions relating to my case (questions of form).[4] However, he deemed it necessary to confer with other brethren of the same craft in Berlin. No doubt I shall get his written opinion in the course of this week. I shan't allow the Prussians to get off so lightly.

I'm in a great fix over money. Mr Weydemeyer's journal[5] is already at an end; i.e. he has resigned from the editorial board and intends to go to New York as a SURVEYOR. However, his colleague[6] is going to make the paper pay by selling it to a political party. Weydemeyer has at last come to realise that he's too honest for American journalism.

Salut.

Your

K. M.

How's business in Manchester? India? HOME MARKET?

  1. This letter by Marx has not been found.
  2. Marx means Garibaldi's successful operations, after his landing on the mainland on 19 August 1860 (see Note 198), to free Southern Italy from the rule of the Neapolitan Bourbons.
  3. On 1 September 1860 or thereabouts, Engels wrote the article 'Garibaldi's Progress' and a few days later the article 'Garibaldi in Calabria' (see present edition, Vol. 17). On Türr see Marx's article 'Affairs in Prussia.— Prussia, France and Italy' (ibid).
  4. This letter by Marx has not been found.
  5. Stimme des Volkes
  6. 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.