Letter to Friedrich Engels, September 23, 1852

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Engels in Manchester

[London,] 23 September 1852, 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Engels,

Received the £1 and the corrected translation. You went to too much trouble over the latter. If the thing is passable (success will depend on this No. 1), you must take it easier: I mean, forget about figures of speech or other inessentials, if difficult to translate.

Weerth has been here since Sunday. On Saturday he leaves for Manchester where he will spend 3 or 4 weeks before disappearing to the West Indies, etc.

Enclosed:

1. A letter in Schurz’s handwriting, found in the pocket of a waistcoat which Kinkel gave to a refugee of our acquaintance.

2. Letter from Cluss.

3. Two excerpts from the revelations about the émigrés, first published in the Karlsruher Zeitung and then reprinted by the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, etc., in case you haven’t seen the things yourself.

Dr Piali (in Paris) writes inter alia:

‘Kossuth intends to go into action in October. From here, Kiss has been giving Kossuth all manner of assurances which probably belong to the realm of fable yet could, given the fabulous nature of circumstances here, actually be possible. Kossuth is said to have received a note from Bonaparte in his own hand summoning him to Paris A word-for-word copy of this note is believed to be circulating throughout the counties of Hungary. Everything in Hungary is in readiness for an all-out blow by Kossuth. Even Royal and Imperial officials are involved in the great conspiracy ... .

‘Countess Kinski, née Zichy, has been arrested for infanticide. The child was fathered by Dr Chaises,’ (our well-known shit), ‘a Polish Jew, etc. Madame Beckmann (wife of the police spy and newspaper correspondent) will figure as dame de compagnie at the hearing before the Assizes.'

As for the Kossuth affair, it is quite possible that Bonaparte is setting snares for him in order to curry favour with Austria.

Piali has got Häfner to enter into correspondence with Ruge-Tausenau, so that now it is just as if we were corresponding with Mr Arnold direct. In this way we shall learn at first hand about the mystères des grands hommes.

The Volksverein, man strong, (out of which, according to W’s letter to you, Ruge, with well-known virtuosity, formed 3 committees) is now (Ronge and Dralle included) trailing round the City on the pretext of simultaneously founding a ‘free community’. What the devil has that German-Catholic, Ronge, to do with ‘free communities'? A few German-Catholic and, in particular, Jewish merchants have put their names on the list, if only in the form of initial letters, and contributed a few pounds, as was actually envisaged.

Willich, for his part, now makes a public collection every Saturday at the Great Windmill Street Society, ostensibly towards the cost of correspondence.

What do you say to the ovations accorded Bonaparte in the provinces? The French are indeed making ignominious fools of themselves.

The Customs Union seems to me to be on the brink of certain collapse. Austrian bankruptcy shows itself still capable of dealing with Prussian prosperity.

I see that Dana has accepted the article. The Staatszeitung (New York) has already published an excerpt in German.

Old Wellington’s death came at the right time. At a moment of crisis the old bull would still have commanded an authority grown legendary. With him and Peel the common sense of Old England has been duly buried.

So our ‘people’ are to appear on 4 October. Bürgers admits everything, at least so far as he himself is concerned. In keeping with his profession, he will defend himself ‘on principle’. During the examination he placed on record a 30-sheet memorandum on the ‘essence of communism’. Honi soit qui mal y pense. Daniels is said to be fairly well. The prosecutor will begin by reverting to the St.-Simonists; attorney Schneider will attempt to beat him by beginning with Babeuf. We can consider ourselves lucky if neither of them harks back as far as the Incas or Lycurgus.

Pindar, whose mystères I found most entertaining, did not come to see me. Your adventures with old Schily were exquisite.

Ad vocem Jones. Though I personally have little to say in his favour, I and the whole lot of us stood by him last week — he came pestering me again because il y avait crise. The other fellows had summoned two or three meetings for the purpose of tabling a motion, namely ‘That this meeting is of opinion, that no confidence can be placed in the success of the democratic movement while Mr Ernest Jones is connected therewith’. They have been beaten, and that right thoroughly. The jackasses first tried to throw financial dirt at him. In this they failed. Then they attacked him for the same reason that we support him, because he stirs up ‘unfriendly feelings amongst the different classes’. For Harney-Holyoake, Hunt of the Leader, Newton (Co-operative) et tutti quanti have united to found a National Party. This National Party wants general suffrage, but not Chartism. The same old story. But before they launched their campaign Jones was to be crushed. They have rather miscalculated. He has raised the price of his paper by a penny without losing a single subscriber.

Your
K. M.