MARX TO ENGELS” 

[London,] 20 January 1857 
9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 

Dear Engels, 

I really have monumentally bad luck! For the past 3 weeks or so 
Mr Dana has been sending me the daily Tribune—obviously with 
the sole intention of showing me that they aren’t publishing any 
more of my stuff. Except for some 40 lines on the moves of the 
Banque de France,’ not a single line of mine has been included. 
Week after week I have put off drawing anything on the Tribune 
in the belief that the articles would sooner or later appear. But 
NOTHING OF THE sort. My articles on Prussia, Persia, Austria all 
regularly rejecrep.” Having for some 4 years printed all my things 
{and yours Too) under their own name, the curs have succeeded in 
eclipsing the name I was making for myself among the Yankees 
and which would have enabled me to find another paper, or to 
hold over their heads the threat of transferring to one. Que faire?< 
Good advice is valuable in These circumstances. As soon as I draw 
something they will make it a pretext to get rid of me once and 
for all; and writing two articles a week in the hope of having 
perhaps one in ten published and paid for is a procedure too 
ruinous to carry on. And how can I draw anything unless 
something is published? 

And then another piece of bad luck. I’ve had a look at the 
November, December and January numbers of Putnam’s. No sign 
of the article on‘ Bazancourt.© Either it has got lost (although I 
took it to the main postr orrice myself) or it will not be coming 
out until later. I can’t believe that the fellows had got the thing, 
don’t want to publish it and fail to notify me out of sheer bad 
manners! 

I have not yet succeeded in arranging any definite terms with 

a ‘The Crisis in Europe’ - > A reference to Marx's articles ‘The Right Divine of the 
Hohenzollerns’, ‘The Anglo-Persian War’ and “The Maritime Commerce of Austria’ 
(two articles) all of which were published in the Tribune later. - © What is to be 
done? - 4 In the original von (by) 

the Urquhartites,? and besides, theirs is a tiny little sheet which 
may bring out short fragments of an article over a month and 
often not finish it off for 5 to 6 weeks.”’ At best they can serve 
only as a small, secondary source of income. The Tribune, in 
exceedingly poor and insipid Leapers, is moreover adopting a view 
almost diametrically opposed to all that I write. Russian INFLUENCE is 
unmistakable.” 

So here I am, without any prospects and with growing domestic 
liabilities, completely stranded in a house into which I have put 
what little cash I possessed and where it is impossible to scrape 
along from day to day as we did in Dean Srreer. *” I am utterly at a 
loss what to do, being, indeed, in a more desperate situation than 
5 years ago. I thought I had tasted the bitterest dregs of life. Mais 
non! And the worst of it is that this is no mere passing crisis. I 
cannot see how I am to extricate myself. 

The miserable collapse of Switzerland’s braggadocio *! was only 
to be anticipated. In no way were the fellows driven To Eat pirt by 
force supérieure. For, as Cornelius saw with his own eyes in Paris, 
the discontent, not only among Parisians, but in the army as well, 
was so great that in no circumstances could Bonaparte have 
permitted the Prussians to carry out serious military operations— 
on the French frontier least of all. Hence his Errorts to settle the 
affair. The discredit of the Swiss is only matched by that of 
Bonaparte, who first offered to stand surety for Switzerland 
vis-a-vis the Prussians and vented his spleen in the Moniteur when 
Switzerland repudiated his authority; then offered to stand surety 
for Prussia vis-a-vis Switzerland, and now finds himself compelled 
to admit, in little semi-official articles, that Prussia refuses to enter 
into any obligation towards himself. He has virtually endorsed the 
démenti he received from the Neue Preussische Zeitung.'?? So low 
has the fellow sunk. In the meantime his half-brother, Morny, has 
had the foresight to secure for himself a post in the Russian 
service. 

I don’t know whether you’ve seen that Mr Ledru-Rollin has 
publicly invited the French ‘Republicans’ to take part in the 
elections of Boustrapa’s *° Corps législatif '°? So he has descended 
to the naiveté of legal opposition. While this shows on the one 
hand that he has relinquished the grandiloquent title of pretender, 
it shows beyond a doubt on the other that opposition is again 

1 

@ See this volume, p. 76. - > An allusion to A. Gurowski’s influence (see this volume, 
p- 81). 

considered feasible actually inside France, and that the bourgeois 
Republicans are hastening to resume, along with the Orleanists, '™* 
a position in parliament that will enable them to shuffle the next 
revolution under the carpet. 

I think I have already told you that the Brussels Nation has gone 
under, being now replaced by its rival the National, an inane, 
uninteresting Belgian gossip sheet. The noble L’Homme, too, has 
breathed its last. In its stead there appeared a Journal des Proscrits 
which proved incapable of surviving for more than a fortnight. In 
addition, diminutive pamphlets after the manner of Pyat’s Ave 
Maria are published from time to time by the French réfugiés— 
inflated, hollow verbiage— printed crinoline save that they cost less 
to produce and are harder to sell. 

The Tribune has discovered that, during the past 30 years (up 
till 1851), France has enriched herself far more than England and 
thus is now also her superior politically.* The proof: In France, the 
value (i.e. nominal) of landed property has increased twofold, in 
England not so much. True, the French estimate included houses 
while the English one did not; but since the English population 
increased by only 33 per cent in the area concerned, the same 
could be assumed of the number of houses (which the Tribune 
appears to equate with their value). 

Erich has achieved his purpose here without any need for 
further references. 

Your 
K. M. 

Your military exposé !?° was Beautiful. The Augsburger contained 
an article in which the passage at Constance is described as very 
difficult.” I have only skimmed over it.