Letter to Friedrich Engels, June 25, 1860

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Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 25 June 1860


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


MARX TO ENGELS

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 25 June 1860

DEAR Frederick,

I am still 'very poorly', as red Wolff[1] used to say, though for the past week or so I've no longer been dosing myself. However, I am making 'forced marches' every day on Allen's orders and shall doubtless be fit again before the week is out.

Lina[2] is with us on 'holiday'. Will be here for ABOUT a month. Still no news from Siebel.

I would be grateful if, by Friday or Saturday,[3] you could [write] an article for the Tribune either on the DEFENCES OF ENGLAND, or on Garibaldi or on Indian TRADE. Since Wilson became the INDIAN CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, the wretched Economist has said virtually nothing about India. Nor should you forget (although it won't yet be necessary this week) to let me have ABOUT a quarto page or so on the military significance of Bohemia to Germany or rather Russia, to whom Vogt proposes to cede her.[4]

Apropos: Have just received Pro domo und Pro patria gegen Karl Vogt by Jakob Venedey, Hanover 1860 (40 pages). Considering this fellow's point of view it is not altogether bad. Has some FACTS about Vogt's cowardice.

Jakob's passages relating to ourselves are as follows. A friend writes obligingly:

'It is disgraceful that in his triumph over the Augsburg Zeitung[5] and the "Brimstone Gang",[6] this man Vogt should also drag Venedey in his wake' (p. 4).

'No more than a word or two pro domo.[7] Could Karl Vogt have forgotten that all the stale, insipid morsels he dished up to his readers in his Erklärung against me—"noble Jakob", "blond soul", "imperial teardrop" and sundry other epithets—had been dished up ten years ago fresh, fragrant and seasoned with the spice of wit by Marx, Engels and company in the Rhenish newspaper.[8] Do I have to remind him that in the self-same article, 'Der Reichsregent',[9] which the Augsburger [Allgemeine Zeitung] used as the point of departure for its accusations against Vogt, this "dirty gang, a handful of malicious vagabonds in London", as Vogt describes it, gave battle along lines identical to those adopted by Vogt in his Erklärung against myself? Nevertheless, Karl Vogt did not feel that this prevented him from accusing me of having borrowed from Messrs Marx, Engels and company the "defamatory statements" I made about him. Vogt is well aware that, in jibing at me, he is simply repeating their words' (p. 7).

'This pamphlet of Vogt's'[10] about his lawsuit has all the air of a triumphal march and, indeed, Karl Vogt—not that he himself appears the more justified in consequence—has consigned to London in complete disarray the A. A. and likewise the "London Brimstone Gang'" (p. 6).

Voilà tout.[11] Salut.

Your

K. M.

  1. ↑ Ferdinand Wolff
  2. ↑ Lina Schöler
  3. ↑ 29 or 30 June
  4. ↑ in his Studien zur gegenwärtigen Lage Europas, Geneva and Berne, 1859
  5. ↑ The Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung
  6. ↑ in the Schweizer Handels-Courier, No. 162 (extraordinary supplement), 16 June 1859
  7. ↑ Pro domo (or de domo sua)—on behalf of myself, concerning my own affairs. The phrase derives from a speech by Cicero, 'De domo sua ad pontifices'.
  8. ↑ Presumably the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
  9. ↑ [E. Biscamp,] 'Der Reichsregent', Das Volk, No. 2, 14 May 1859.
  10. ↑ Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung, Geneva, 1859.
  11. ↑ That's all.
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