London, 4 November 1880 
41 Maitland Park Road, N.W. 

My dear Sir, 

I have sent you today a copy of the French edition of the Capi- 
tal. °° I have at the same time to thank you for your friendly article in 
The Sun. *% 

Apart Mr Gladstone’s ‘sensational’ failures abroad °* — political 
interest centres here at present on the Irish ‘Land Question’. And 
why? Mainly because it is the harbinger of the English ‘Land Ques- 
tion’. 

Not only that the great landlords of England are also the largest 
landholders of Ireland, but having once broken down in what is iro- 
nically called the ‘Sister’-island, the English landed system will no 
longer be tenable at home. There are arrayed against it the British 
farmers, wincing under high rents, and— thanks to the American 
competition-—low prices; the British agricultural labourers, at last 
impatient of their traditional position of ill-used beasts of burden, 
and — that British party which styles itself ‘Radical’. The latter con- 
sists of two sets of men; first the ideologues of the party, eager to over- 
throw the political power of the aristocracy by mining its material 
basis, the semi-feudal landed property. But behind these principle- 
spouters, and hunting them on, lurks another set of men— sharp, 
close-fisted, calculating capitalists, fully aware that the abolition of 
the old land laws, in the way proposed by the ideologues, cannot but 
convert land into a commercial article that must ultimately concen- 
trate in the hands of capital. 

On the other side, considered as a national entity, John Bull has ugly 
misgivings lest the aristocratic English landed garrison in Ireland 
once gone~—— England’s political sway over Ireland will go too! 

Liebknecht has to enter prison for 6 months.— The Anti-Socialist’ 
Law '* having failed to overthrow or even to weaken the German So- 
cial-Democratic organisation, Bismarck clings the more desperately 
to his panacea, and fancies that it must work, if only applied on a larg- 

er scale. Hence he has extended the state of siege to Hamburg, Al- 
tona, and 3 other Northern towns. Under these circumstances the 
German friends have written me a letter of which one passage runs 
thus: 

“The Socialist Law, though it could not break and never will break our organisa- 
tion, does impose pecuniary sacrifices almost impossible to bear. To support the fami- 
lies ruined by the police, to keep alive the few papers left to us, to keep up the necessary 
communications by secret messengers, to fight the battle on the whole line — all this re- 
quires money. We are nearly exhausted and forced to appeal to our friends and sym- 
pathisers in other countries.’ 

So far this extract. 

Now, we, here at London, Paris, etc., will do our best. At the same 
time, I believe that a man of your influence might organise a sub- 
scription in the United States. Even if the monetary result were not 
important, denunciations of Bismarck’s new coup @’état in public meet- 
ings held by you, reported in the American press, reproduced on the 
other side of the Atlantic —- would sorely hit the Pomeranian hodereau* 
and be welcomed by all the socialists of Europe. More information 
you might get from Mr Sorge (Hoboken). Any money forthcoming to 
be sent over to Mr Otto Freytag, Landtagsabgeordneter,” Amtmannshof, 
Leipzig. His address ought of course not to be made public; otherwise 
the German police would simply confiscate. 

A propos. My youngest daughter‘ — who was not with us at Rams- 
gate-—just tells me that she has cut my portrait from the copy of 
the Capital I sent you, on the pretext that it was a mere caricature. 
Well, I shall make up for it by a photogram to be taken on the first 
fine day. 

Mrs Marx and the whole family send you their best wishes. 

Yours most sincerely, 
Karl Marx