Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, January 30, 1852 (Engels)

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To Joseph Weydemeyer in New York

[Manchester,] Friday, 30 January 1852

Dear Weydemeyer,

I sent you by last Saturday’s steamer (the Europa, I think) an article together with a letter. Herewith a few more lines. The issues of the Revolution you promised have not yet turned up, although your last letter of 5 Jan. gave good reason to believe that they would come by the next steamer, and since then 1 Southampton and 3 Liverpool steamers have arrived here with mails from New York dated up to 17 Jan. I hope no snags have arisen to prevent publication. At all events, I expect to hear from you by the next steamer, the Cambria (out of Boston 21 Jan.), which is due here on Monday 2 Feb.

My anticipations regarding the confiscation of Louis Philippe’s fortune and a Persigny Ministry have been confirmed sooner than I could have hoped; given a reasonably well-organised service, news of it must have arrived in New York by way of the Liverpool newspapers at the same time as my letter; hardly was my letter in the post when the telegraphic dispatch about it likewise arrived here. So much the better. The thing’s going splendidly and there’s better still to come.

Weerth is on his travels again, will be visiting Holland, France, Switzerland, etc., and must at this moment be in London. I have written and told Marx that he should again chivvy him a little about sending you a few things, although he will hardly have the peace and quiet to do so. When one has spent the whole day tramping round calling on Dutch Jews with samples of wool and linen yarn, one feels small inclination to spend the evening at the hotel in writing that sort of thing. However, if anything is to be extracted from him, Marx is the man to do it.

The sudden lull in the émigrés’ gossip brought about by the new turn of events in France is truly comical. Not a whisper do I hear about the whole caboodle.

The prisoners in Cologne are in a serious position. Since there is no charge whatever against them, the Board of indicting magistrates has neither released them nor brought them before the Court of Assizes but has referred the matter back to the first examining magistrate for a fresh investigation! In other words, they will remain provisionally in clink without books, without letters, without being able to communicate either with one another or with the outside world, until the new state tribunal is ready. Just now we are trying to denounce this outrage in the English bourgeois press.

Many regards.

Your
F. E.

[On the back of the letter]

Per Liverpool Steamer Mr. J. Weydemeyer, 7 Chambers Street, New York (City)