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Special pages :
Letter to Friedrich Engels, February 13, 1860
| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 13 February 1860 |
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
MARX TO ENGELS
IN MANCHESTER
[London,] 13 February 1860
DEAR FREDERICK,
The book[1] arrived today. Nothing but shit. Sheer tripe. Luckily, the worthy National-Zeitung has reprinted in its two leaders (No. 37 and No. 41) all the passages which are actionable and in which all the scurrilities are concentrated.
Today (on receiving a second letter from Fischel), I at once sent Legal Counsellor Weber (the leading lawyer in Berlin) an indictment together with a retaining fee of 15 talers (£2 10sh).[2]
The case would have cost me nothing if, instead of instituting a private action for libel, I had had recourse to the Royal Prussian Public Prosecutor, but as I wrote and told Fischel,[3] I could not expect the Royal Prussian Public Prosecutor to 'display especial zeal in upholding the honour of my name'. Moreover, the whole procedure costs very little.
Of the £5 you sent me, £2 10 has therefore gone to Weber, £1 today to the COUNTY-COURT, 5/—to Vögele and 2/—on the two AFFIDAVITS he made[4]; also a LOT on stamps for letters. Before going to the CITY today I had to borrow a further £1 from a baker, repayable on Wednesday.
Luckily, Urquhart has written Collet a rude letter in which he lashes out at him for sending me the PRINTER'S BILL.[5] This (i.e. my publication) was, he said, an expense chargeable to his agitational activities. So I don't have to pay him. Tomorrow I shall be faced with yet another expense and I don't know how I'm going to meet it. For I have got to call on that bastard Zimmermann (from Spandau, a Vogtian and, at the same time, an advocate to the Austrian Embassy) so that he can supply me with the wording for the power of attorney which must go off to Weber without delay. There's no time to be lost, you see, because actions of this kind become 'statute-barred' remarkably quickly in Prussia.
In addition to the Volks-Zeitung, the Berlin Publicist has published my statement,2 the latter having placed it alongside an extract from the English anti-Blind circular.[6] This last I have today sent to Louis Blanc and Félix Pyat, together with the AFFIDAVITS of Wiehe[7] and Vögele.
The Kölnische Zeitung and the N.-Z. did not publish my statement.[8]
Mr F. Freiligrath—whom (with seeming benevolence) I shall compromise in no mean fashion—did not even acknowledge receipt of the things I sent him.
You must surely have got my last important communication?[9]
After I've settled the matter of the power of attorney tomorrow, I shall leave on Wednesday[10] (having notified you beforehand) for Manchester where, in addition to our indispensable meeting, I have business connected with Roberts.
You will have gathered from the foregoing that I'm now stone-broke.
Your
K. M.
- ↑ C. Vogt, Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung, Geneva, 1859.
- ↑ See this volume, pp. 40-45.
- ↑ ibid., p. 40.
- ↑ ibid., p. 37.
- ↑ The bill for the printing, by the Free Press publishers, of Marx's statement 'Prosecution of the Augsburg Gazette' (see Note 55).
- ↑ K. Marx, 'Prosecution of the Augsburg Gazette'.
- ↑ See this volume, pp. 31-32 and 37.
- ↑ Obviously, Marx had not yet received Engels' letter of 12 February 1860 informing him that his statement, 'To the Editors of the Volks-Zeitung. Declaration', had been published in the supplement to the Kölnische Zeitung, No. 41, on 10 February.
- ↑ ibid., pp. 32-38.
- ↑ 15 February