Letter to Karl Marx, May 1, 1866

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To Marx in London

Manchester, 1 May 1866

Dear Moor,

I hope you are happily over your rheumatism and faceache and are once more sitting diligently over the book [Capital]. How is it coming on, and when will the first volume be ready? By the by, you must go on with the arsenic, it should be taken for at least 3 months and is quite unconnected with the rheumatism, etc. The liver troubles may have been a factor contributing to the carbuncles, by disturbing the digestion or blood-formation, and, for that very reason, you will also have to go on taking several hours continuous exercise regularly each day and keep off working at night, so that everything can return to normal. Where the tendency to hyperaemia of the liver has established itself in such a classic and systematic form as in your case, it does not, of course, just vanish again all at once.

It’s good that you have no more worries about the congress and the International Association. Apropos, a shipload of 57 German tailors has been imported to Edinburgh to put down a strike and 2 more loads are expected. Probably from Hamburg. Can you not discover the details in Edinburgh and put a stop to this, too?

Bismarck wants war à tout prix, and after he failed in Bohemia, he seems likely to succeed in Italy. I hope that, if he pulls it off, the Berliners will hit out. If they proclaim a republic there, the whole of Europe can be overturned in 14 days. But, but, will they? How do our connections there stand?

Have you seen how little Louis Blanc, as a good démocrate impérial, is now declaring in the Temps that, if Prussia absorbs the smaller German states, France must have at least the left bank of the Rhine. There’s a real revolutionary for you.

In order to incite my ancient rage somewhat, in the last few days I have been reading the book by Rockel, the 49er imprisoned in Dresden, about his treatment in gaol. These infamies perpetrated by the Saxons exceed everything that I have ever come across. There will be a harsh reckoning to be had with a large number of villains. Such brutality was quite unknown in the old days before ‘48, and the Prussian fortresses of that time seem like paradise in comparison.

These Adullamites really are tremendous jackasses to put up such resistance to this pauvre Reform Bill, the most conservative thing that has ever been done here. However, quem deus vult perdere, etc. [whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad]

I already sent my third article on Poland [What Have the Working Classes to Do with Poland?] to The Commonwealth 3 weeks ago and asked for it to be returned if it should be too late for that week. I then received a reply from Fox a week later that it could not appear until the forthcoming issue, returning the article at the same time. Sent it off again on Wednesday, but too late. You were still in Margate at that time. I will send the following Nos. to you again if time does not make immediate, direct submission necessary.

Kind regards to your wife and the girls.

Your
F. E.