Contents
Preface
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Documents
I. THE INCRIMINATED QUOTATIONS
1. The Inaugural Address (of the First International) 2. Capital, Vol. I
II. BRENTANO AND MARX
3. The Charge 4. Karl Marx replies 5. Retort by Anonymous 6. Marx's second reply 7. The rejoinder of Anonymous
III. SEDLEY TAYLOR AND ELEANOR MARX
8. Attack by S. Taylor
9. Eleanor Marx's reply 10. Sedley Taylor's retort 11. Eleanor Marx's second reply
IV. ENGELS AND BRENTANO
12. From Engels' preface to the fourth German edition of Marx's Capital,
Vol. I 13. Brentano's reply 14. From the Appendices to Brentano's reply 15. From the Parliamentary Reports of the London Press or April 17, 1863 16. Gladstone to Brentano 17. Engels' reply to No. 17

Preface
In my Preface to the fourth edition of the first volume of Marx's Capital
found myself obliged to return to a polemic against Marx, initiated by
Anonymous in the Berlin Concordia in 1872, and taken up again by Mr.
Sedley Taylor of Cambridge in The Times in 1883. Anonymous, revealed by
Mr. Taylor as Mr. Lujo Brentano, had accused Marx of falsifying a
quotation. The short report on the affair which I gave in my Preface (it is
printed amongst the attached Documents, No.12), certainly was not
intended to be pleasant to Mr. Brentano; nothing was more natural than that
he should answer me. And this took place in a pamphlet: Meine Polemik mit
Karl Marx. Zugleich em Beitrag zur Frage des Fortschritts der
Arbeiterkiasse und seiner Ursachen. Von Lujo Brentano, Berlin, Walther &
Apolant, 1890.
This pamphlet gives us too much and too little. Too much, because it "also"
gives us at length Mr. Brentano's views on "the advance of the working
class and its causes". These views have absolutely nothing to do with the
point at issue. I remark only this: Mr. Brentano's constantly repeated
declaration that labour protection legislation and trade association
organisations are fitted to improve the condition of the working class is by
no means his own discovery. From the Condition of the Working Class in
England and The Poverty of Philosophy to Capital and down to my most
recent writings, Marx and I have said this a hundred times, though with
very sharp reservations. Firstly, the favourable effects of the resisting trade
associations are confined to periods of average and brisk business; in
periods of stagnation and crisis they regularly fail; Mr. Brentano's claim that
they "are capable of paralysing the fateful effects of the reserve army" is
ridiculous boasting. And secondly — ignoring other less important
reservations -- neither the protection legislation nor the resistance of the
trade associations removes the main thing which needs abolishing:
Capitalist relations, which constantly reproduce the contradiction between
the Capitalist class and the class of wage labourers. The mass of wage
labourers remain condemned to life-long wage labour; the gap between
them and the Capitalists becomes ever deeper and wider the more modern
large-scale industry takes over all branches of production. But since Mr.

Brentano would gladly convert wage-slaves into contented wage-slaves, he
must hugely exaggerate the advantageous effects of labour protection, the
resistance of trade associations, social piecemeal legislation, etc.; and as we
are able to confront these exaggerations with the simple facts -- hence his
fury.
The pamphlet in question gives too little, since it gives, of the documents in
the polemic, only the items exchanged between Mr. Brentano and Marx,
and not those which have appeared since with regard to this question. So in
order to place the reader in a position to form an overall judgement, I give,
in the appendix: 1. the incriminated passages from the Inaugural Address of
the General Council of the International and from Capital; 2. the polemic
between Mr. Brentano and Marx; 3. that between Mr. Sedley Taylor and
Eleanor Marx; 4. my Preface to the 4th edition of Capital and Mr.
Brentano's reply to it; and 5. passages relevant to Gladstone's letters to Mr.
Brentano. It goes without saying that I thereby omit all those passages of
Brentano's argument which do not touch upon the question of falsification
of quotation, but only constitute his "contribution to the advance", etc.

I
In No. 10 of the Berlin Concordia, March 7, 1872, there was a fierce
anonymous attack upon Marx as the author of the Inaugural Address of the
General Council of the International in 1864. In this Address, it was stated,
Marx had falsified a quotation from the budget speech made by Gladstone,
at that time English Chancellor of the Exchequer, on April 16, 1863.
The passage from the Inaugural Address is printed in the appendix,
Documents, No. 1. The article from the Concordia also there, document No.
3. In the latter, the charge is formulated as follows:
"What is the relationship between this speech and the quotation by
Marx? Gladstone first makes the point that there has undoubtedly
been a colossal increase in the income of the country. This is
proved for him by the income tax. But income tax takes notice
only of incomes of 150 pounds sterling and over. Persons with
lower incomes pay no income tax in England. The fact that
Gladstone mentions this so that his yardstick can be properly
appreciated is utilited by Marx to have Gladstone say: 'This
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely
confined to classes of property.' Yet this sentence is nowhere to be
found in Gladstone's speech. It says quite the opposite. Marx has
added the sentence lyingly. both in form and in content!"
This is the charge and, let it be noted, the only charge, that Anonymous,
who has now admitted he is called Lujo Brentano, makes against Marx.
No. 10 of the Concordia was sent to Marx from Germany in May 1872. The
copy still in my possession today bears the inscription "Organ of the
German Manufacturers' Association". Marx, who had never heard of this
sheet, assumed the author to be a scribbling manufacturer, and dealt with
him accordingly.
Marx demonstrated in his reply in the Volksstaat (Documents, No.4) that the
sentence had not only been quoted in the Same way by Professor Beesly in
1870 in The Fortnightly Review, but also before the publication of the
Inaugural Address in [H. Roy,] The Theory of the Exchanges, London,

1864; and finally that the report in The Times on April 17, 1863 also
contained the sentence, in form and in content, as he had quoted it:
"The augmentation I have described" (namely as "this intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power") "is an augmentation entirely
confined to classes of property."
If this passage, a passage which is certainly compromising in the mouth of
an English Chancellor of the Exchequer, is not to be found in Hansard, this
is simply because Mr. Gladstone was clever enough to get rid of it, in
accordance with traditional English parliamentary practice.
In any case, proof was given here that the sentence allegedly lyingly added
is to be found verbatim in The Times of April 17, 1863 in its report of the
speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone the evening before. And The Times was
a Gladstonian organ at that time.
And what is the reply now from Mr. "Modesty" Brentano? (Concordia, July
4, 1872, Documents, No. 5.)
With an impertinence he would never have dared under his own name, he
repeats the charge that Marx lyingly added the sentence: this charge, he
adds, is
"serious, and combined with the convincing evidence provided,
absolutely devastating".
The evidence was nothing but the passage in Hansard in which the sentence
is missing. It could thus at the most be "devastating" for this selfsame ill-
fated sentence, which appeared in The Times and not in Hansard.
But this victorious crowing was only intended to help negotiate this same
unpleasant fact that the "lyingly added" sentence had been confirmed as
authentic by the Times report. And with the feeling that this evidence for the
prosecution was pretty "convincing", and that it would become "absolutely
devastating" in time, our anonymous would-be professor now zealously
attacks the quotation in Beesly and in The Theory of the Exchanges, causes
a big stir, claims that Beesly quoted from the Inaugural Address and Marx
from The Theory of the Exchanges, etc. All these are minor points. Even if
they are true, they prove nothing on the question as to whether Gladstone

spoke the sentence or Marx invented it. But by their very nature they could
not be settled with absolute finality, either by Mr. Brentano at that time, or
by me today. On the other hand, they serve to divert attention from the main
point, namely from the fatal Times report.
Before venturing to deal with this, Anonymous flexes his muscles by using
various items of strong language, such as "frivolity bordering upon the
criminal", "this lying quotation", etc.; and then he lays in with gusto as
follows:
"But here we come, to he sure, to Marx's third line of defence, and
this far exceeds, in its impudent mendacity, anything which came
before. Marx actually does not shrink from citing The Times of
April 17, 1863 as proof of the correctness of his quotation. The
Times of April 17, 1863, p.7, page" (should be column) "5, line 17
et seq., reports, however, the speech as follows:
And here follows the Times report, which runs:
"The augmentation I have described" (namely as "this intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power") "and the figures of which are
founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is entirely confined to
classes of property."
And now we can only stare wide-eyed at the "impudent mendacity" of
Marx, who still dares to claim that the Times report contained the sentence:
This intoxicating augmentation, etc., is entirely confined to classes of
property!
The Inaugural Address states:
"THIS INTOXICATING AUGMENTATION OF WEALTH AND
POWER IS ENTIRELY CONFINED TO CLASSES OF
PROPERTY."
The Times states:
"THE AUGMENTATION THERE DESCRIBED" (which not
even Mr. Brentano, anonymous or not, has so far argued is not the
"AUGMENTATION" in the phrase "THIS INTOXICATING
AUGMENTATION OF WEALTH AND POWER") "AND

WHICH IS FOUNDED, I THINK, UPON ACCURATE
RETURNS, IS AN AUGMENTATION ENTIRELY CONFINED TO
CLASSES OF PROPERTY."
And now that Mr. Brentano has pointed out in The Times, with his own
index finger, the sentence which Marx allegedly lyingly added because it
was missing in Hansard, and has thus taken upon himself Marx's alleged
impudent mendacity, he declares triumphantly that
"both reports" (Times and Hansard) "fully coincide materially. The
report in The Times just gives, formally more contracted, what the
shorthand report by Hansard gives verbatim. Yet despite the fact
that the Times report contains the direct opposite of that notorious
passage in the Inaugural Address, and the fact that according to
the Times report, too, Mr. Gladstone said he believed this
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power not to be confined
to classes in easy circumstances Marx has the impudence to write
in the Volksstaat of June 1: 'So, on April 16, 1863, Mr. Gladstone
declared both in form and in content in the House of Commons, as
reported in his own organ, The Times, on April 17, 1863, that this
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely
confined to the classes possessed of property.'"
Si duo faciunt idem, non est idem. When two do the same, it is not the same.
When Marx has Gladstone say: This intoxicating augmentation of wealth
and power is entirely confined to classes of property, this is "lyingly added",
a notorious passage", "completely forged". When the Times report has
Gladstone say:
"This augmentation I have described as an intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes
of property,"
then this is only "formally more contracted" than the Hansard report, in
which this sentence is missing, and the "direct opposite of that" (exactly the
Same) "notorious passage in the Inaugural Address". And when Marx then
quotes the Times report in confirmation of this passage, Mr. Brentano states:

"...and finally he has the impudence to base himself on newspaper
reports which directly contradict him".
This really does demand great "impudence". However, Marx has his on his
face, and nowhere else. [Play on words: "Stirn" means forehead and
impudence.-- MECW Ed.]
With the aid of "impudence" which may easily be distinguished from that of
Marx, Anonymous, alias Lujo Brentano, then manages to have Gladstone
say that
he "believes this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power
not to be confined to classes in easy circumstances".
Actually, according to The Times and Hansard, Gladstone says he would
look with pain and apprehension upon this intoxicating augmentation of
wealth and power if he believed it was confined to the classes in easy
circumstances, and he adds, according to The Times, that it is, however,
"confined to classes of property".
"Indeed," the righteously indignant Anonymous finally exclaims, "to
describe these practices we know only one word, a word with which Marx
is very familiar (see Capital, p. 257): they are simply 'nefarious'."
Whose practices, Mr. Lujo Brentano?

II
Marx's reply (Der Volksstaat, August 7, 1872, Documents, No. 6) is good-
natured enough to deal with all the stir created by Mr. Brentano about
Professor Beesly, The Theory of the Exchanges, etc.; we leave this aside as
being of secondary importance. In conclusion, however, it produces another
two facts which are absolutely decisive for the main issue. The "lyingly
added" passage is to be found, besides in the Times report, in the reports of
two other London morning papers of April 17, 1863. According to The
Morning Star, Gladstone stated:
"This augmentation" -- which had just been described as an
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power -- "is an
augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed of
property."
According to The Morning Advertiser:
"The augmentation stated" -- an intoxicating augmentation of
wealth and power -- "is an augmentation entirely confined to the
classes possessed of property."
For any other opponent, these proofs would be "absolutely devastating".
Not, however, for the anonymous Brentano. His reply (Concordia, August
22, 1872, Documents, No. 7), which betrays undiminished impudence, was
never seen by Marx, since numbers of Concordia later than that dated July
11 were not sent to him. I myself first read this reply in Brentano's reprint
(Meine Polemik, etc., 1890), and must therefore take note of it here, for
better or for worse.
"The dogged mendacity with which he" (Marx) "clings to the
distorted quotation ... is astonishing even for someone for whom
no means are too base for his subversive plans."
The quotation remains "forged", and the Times report "shows the exact
opposite, since The Times and Hansard fully coincide". The confidence of
this declaration is, however, simply child's play compared to the

"impudence" with which Mr. Brentano suddenly gives us the following
information:
"Marx's second method of obscuring the Times report was simply
to suppress, in his German translation, the relative clause which
showed that Gladstone had only said that the augmentation of
wealth, which was shown by the income tax returns, was confined
to the classes of property, since the working classes were not
subject to income tax, and that thus nothing about the increase in
the prosperity of the working classes could be learned from the
income tax returns; not, however, that the working classes in
reality had been excluded from the extraordinary augmentation of
national wealth."
Thus when The Times says that the oft-mentioned augmentation is confined
to the classes of property, then it says the opposite of the "lyingly added"
sentence, which says the same. As regards the "simply suppressed relative
clause", we shall not allow Mr. Brentano to get away with that, if he will
bear with us for a moment. And now he has happily survived the first great
leap, it is easier for him to assert that black is white, and white black. Now
that he has managed to deal with The Times, The Morning Star and The
Morning Advertiser will give him little trouble.
"For these papers, even as he" (Marx) "quotes them, speak for us.
After Gladstone has said, according to both papers, that he does
not believe" (which, as we know, Mr. Brentano claims) "this
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is confined to the
classes which find themselves in pleasant circumstances, he
continued: 'This great increase of wealth takes no cognizance at
all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation
which I have described is an augmentation entirely confined to the
classes possessed of property.' The context and the use of the
expression 'take cognizance' show clearly that this increase and
the augmentation of the increase cited, and the citing," (sic!) "are
intended to indicate those discernible in the income tax returns."
The Jesuit who originated the saying Si duo faciunt idem, non est idem was
a bungler compared to the anonymous Brentano. When The Times, The

Morning Star and The Morning Advertiser declare unanimously that the
sentence which Brentano claims Marx had "lyingly added" was actually
uttered by Gladstone, then these papers speak unanimously "for" Mr.
Brentano. And when Marx quotes this sentence verbatim, this is a "lying
quotation", "impudent mendacity , complete forgery", "a lie", etc. And if
Marx cannot appreciate this, that passes the understanding of our
Anonymous, alias Lujo Brentano, and he finds it "simply nefarious".
But let us deal with the alleged "lying addition" once and for all by quoting
the reports on our passage in all London morning papers on April 17, 1863.
We have already had The Times, The Morning Star and The Morning
Advertiser.
Daily Telegraph:
"I may say for one, that I should look almost with apprehension
and alarm on this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power
if it were my belief that it was confined to the masses who are in
easy circumstances. This question to wealth takes no cognizance
at all of the condition of the labouring population. The
augmentation stated is an augmentation entirely confined to the
classes possessed of property."
Morning Herald:
"I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension at
this intoxicating increase of wealth if I were of opinion that it is
confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This great increase
of wealth which I have described, and which is founded on
accurate returns is confined entirely to the augmentation of
Capital, and takes no account of the poorer classes."
Morning Post:
"I may say, I for One, would look with fear and apprehension
when I consider this great increase of wealth if I believed that its
benefits were confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This
augmentation of wealth which I have described, and which is
founded on accurate returns is confined entirely to the

augmentation of Capital, and takes no account of the
augmentation of wealth of the poorer classes."
Daily News:
"I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension
when I consider this great increase of wealth if I believed that its
benefits were confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This
augmentation of wealth which I have described, and which is
founded upon accurate returns, is confined entirely to the
augmentation of Capital, and takes no account of the
augmentation of wealth of the poorer classes."
Standard:
"I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension at
this intoxicating increase of wealth if I were of the opinion that it
was confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This great
increase of wealth which I have described, and which is founded
on the accurate returns is confined entirely to the augmentation of
Capital, and takes no account of the poorer classes."
The eight newspapers cited here were, as far as I know, the only morning
papers published in London at that time. Their testimony is "convincing".
Four of them -- The Times, The Morning Star, The Morning Advertiser,
Daily Telegraph -- give the sentence in exactly the form which Marx had
"lyingly added". The augmentation described earlier as an intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power "is entirely confined to classes of
property". The four others -- Morning Herald, Morning Post, Daily News
and Standard -- give it in an "only formally more contracted" version, by
which it is further reinforced; this augmentation "is confined entirely to the
augmentation of Capital".
The eight newspapers cited all have their separate complete staff of
parliamentary reporters. They are thus the same number of witnesses, fully
independent of one another. In addition they are in their totality impartial,
since they adhere to the most diverse party tendencies. And both of the two
versions of the irrepressible sentence are vouched for by Tories and Whigs
and radicals. According to four of them, Gladstone said: entirely confined

to classes of property. According to four others he said: entirely confined to
the augmentation of Capital. Eight irreproachable witnesses thus testify that
Gladstone really uttered the sentence. The only question is whether this was
in the milder version used by Marx, or in the stronger version given in four
of the reports.
Against them all, in isolated grandeur stands -- Hansard. But Hansard is not
irreproachable like the morning papers. Hansard's reports are subject to
censorship, the censorship of the speakers themselves. And precisely for
this reason "it is the custom to quote according to Hansard.
Eight non-suspect witnesses against one suspect witness! But what does
that worry our victory-confident Anonymous? Precisely because the reports
of the eight morning papers put "that notorious passage" in Gladstone's
mouth, precisely because of this, they "speak for" our Anonymous,
precisely by this they prove even more that Marx "lyingly added" it.
Indeed, nothing actually exceeds the "impudence" of the anonymous
Brentano.

III
In reality, however, the ostentatious impudence we had to admire in Mr.
Brentano, is nothing but a tactical manoeuvre. He has discovered that the
attack on the "lyingly added" sentence has failed, and that he must seek a
defensive position. He has found it; all that has to be done now is to retreat
to this new position.
Already in his first reply to Marx (Documents, No. 5) Mr. Brentano hints at
his intention, though bashfully as yet. The fatal Times report compels him to
do so. This report, it is true, contains the "notorious", the "lyingly added"
passage, but that is actually beside the point. For since it "fully coincides
materially" with Hansard, it says "the direct opposite of that notorious
passage", although it contains it word for word. Thus it is no longer a
question of the wording of the "notorious passage", but of its meaning. It is
no longer a question of denying the passage's existence, but of claiming that
it means the opposite of what it says.
And Marx having declared in his second reply that lack of time forces him
to end, once and for all, his pleasurable exchange of opinions with his
anonymous opponent, the latter can venture to deal with even greater
confidence with this subject, which is not exactly proper at that. This he
does in his rejoinder, reproduced here as No. 7 of the documents.
Here he claims that Marx attempts to obscure the Times report, which
materially fully coincides with Hansard, and this is in three ways. Firstly by
an incorrect translation of CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY
CIRCUMSTANCES. I leave aside this point as absolutely irrelevant. It is
generally known that Marx had a command of the English language quite
different from that of Mr. Brentano. But exactly what Mr. Gladstone
thought when he used this expression-and whether he thought anything-it is
quite impossible to say today, 27 years later, even for himself.
The second point is that Marx "simply suppressed" a certain "relative
clause" in the Times report. The passage in question is previously cited at
length in section II, p. 7. By suppressing this relative clause, Marx is
supposed to have suppressed for his readers the fact that the augmentation
of wealth, as shown by the income tax returns, is confined to classes which

possess property, since the labouring classes do not fall under the income
tax, and thus nothing may be learned from the returns about the increase in
prosperity amongst the workers; this does not mean, however, that in reality
the labouring classes remain excluded from the extraordinary augmentation
of national wealth.
The sentence in the Times report runs, in Mr. Brentano's own translation:
"The augmentation I have described, and the figures of which are
based, I think, upon accurate returns, is entirely confined to
classes of property."
The relative clause which Marx so maliciously "suppressed" consists of the
words: "and the figures of which are based, I think, upon accurate returns".
By the persistent, since twice repeated, suppression of these highly
important words, so the story goes, Marx wished to conceal from his
readers that the said augmentation was an augmentation solely of the
income subject to income tax, in other words the income of the "classes
which possess property".
Does his moral indignation at the fact that he had run aground with
"mendacity" make Mr. Brentano blind? Or does he think that he can make
all sorts of allegations, since Marx will no longer reply in any case? The
fact is that the incriminated sentence begins, according to Marx, both in the
Inaugural Address and in Capitol, with the words: "From 1842 to 1852
THE TAXABLE INCOME of the country increased by 6 per cent... In the
eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has ..." etc.
Does Mr. Brentano know another "taxable income" in England apart from
that subject to income tax? And has the highly important "relative clause"
anything at all to add to this clear declaration that only income subject to
income tax is under discussion? Or does he believe, as it almost appears,
that people "forge" Gladstone's budget speeches, make "lying additions" or
"suppress" something in them if they quote them without, à la Brentano,
also providing the reader with an essay on English income tax in which they
"falsify" income tax into the bargain, as Marx proved (Documents, No. 6),b
and as Mr. Brentano was forced to admit (Documents, No. 7). And when
the "lyingly added" sentence simply says that the augmentation just

mentioned by Mr. Gladstone was confined to classes of property, does it not
say essentially the same, since only classes of property pay income tax? But
of course, whilst Mr. Brentano creates a deafening hullabaloo at the front
door about this sentence as a Marxian falsification and insolent mendacity,
he himself allows it to slip in quietly through the back door.
Mr. Brentano knew very well that Marx quoted Mr. Gladstone as speaking
about "taxable income" and no other. For in his first attack (Documents,
No.3), he quotes the passage from the Inaugural Address, and even
translated TAXABLE as "liable to tax"
If he now "suppresses" this in his rejoinder, and if from now on until his
pamphlet of 1890 he protests again and again that Marx concealed,
intentionally and maliciously, the fact that Gladstone was speaking here
solely of those incomes liable to income tax -- should we now sling his own
expressions back at him: "lying", "forgery", "impudent mendacity", "simply
nefarious"?
To continue with the text:
"Thirdly and finally, Marx attempted to conceal the agreement
between the Times report and the Hansard report by failing to
quote those sentences in which, according to The Times too,
Gladstone directly and explicitly testified to the elevation of the
British working class."
In his second reply to the anonymous Brentano, Marx had to prove that he
had not "lyingly added" the "notorious" sentence, and in addition had to
reject the insolent claim made by Anonymous: in relation to this point, the
only point in question, the Times report and the Hansard report "fully
coincided materially", although the former included the sentence in
question verbatim, and the latter excluded it verbatim. For this, the only
point at issue, it was absolutely irrelevant what Mr. Gladstone had to say
about the elevation of the British working class.
On the other hand the Inaugural Address -- and this is the document which
Brentano accuses of falsifying a quotation -- states explicitly on p. 4, only a
few lines before the "notorious" sentence, that the Chancellor of the

Exchequer (Gladstone), during the millennium of free trade, told the House
of Commons:
"The average condition of the British labourer has improved in a
degree we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the
history of any country or any age."
And these are precisely the words which, according to Brentano, Marx
maliciously suppressed.
In the whole polemic, from his first retort to Marx in 1872 (Documents,
No.5) down to his introduction and appendix to Meine Polemik, etc., 1890,
Mr. Brentano suppresses, with a sleight of hand which we must on no
account describe as "insolent mendacity", the fact that Marx directly quoted
in the Inaugural Address these Gladstonian declarations about the
unparalleled improvement in the situation of the workers. And in this
rejoinder, which, as already mentioned, remained unknown to Marx up to
his death, and to me until the publication of the pamphlet Meine Polemik,
etc., in 1890, in which the accusation about the lyingly added sentence was
only apparently maintained, though in reality dropped, and the lyingly
added sentence not only shamefacedly admitted as genuine Gladstonian
property, but also as "speaking for us", i.e. for Brentano -- in this rejoinder a
retreat is beaten to the new line of defence: Marx has distorted and twisted
Gladstone's speech; Marx has Gladstone say that, it goes, the riches of the
rich have grown enormously, but that the poor, the working population,
have at the most become less poor. But in fact Gladstone said, in plain
words, that the condition of the workers had improved to an unexampled
degree.
This second line of defence was pierced by the irresistible fact that
precisely in the incriminated document, in the Inaugural Address, these
same Gladstonian words were quoted explicitly. And Mr. Brentano knew
this. "But what does it matter? The readers" of the Concordia "cannot check
up on him!"
Incidentally, regarding what Gladstone really said, on this we shall have a
few short words to say in a little while.

In conclusion, Mr. Brentano, in the security, first of his anonymity, and
second of Marx's declaration that he has no wish to bother with him further,
indulges in the following private jollity:
"When Mr. Marx finally ends his article by breaking into abuse,
we can assure him that his opponent could desire nothing more
than the confession of his weakness which lies herein. Abuse is
the weapon of those whose other means of defence have run out."
The reader can check for himself the extent to which Marx "breaks into
abuse" in his rejoinder. As far as Mr. Brentano is concerned, we have
already presented some choice bouquets from his attestations of politeness.
The "lies", "impudent mendacity", "lying quotation", "simply nefarious",
etc., heaped upon Marx's head by all means constitute an edifying
"confession of weakness", and an unmistakeable sign that Mr. Brentano's
"other means of defence have run out".

IV
Here ends the first act of our song and dance. Mr. Brentano, mysterious
though not yet a privy councillor, [Play on words: "geheimnisvoll" --
mysterious, "Geheimrat" -- privy councillor.-- Trans] had achieved what he
could scarcely have hoped to achieve. Admittedly, things had gone badly
enough for him regarding the sentence allegedly "lyingly added"; and in
fact he had dropped this original charge. But he had sought out a new line
of defence, and on this line -- he had had the last word, and with that you
can, in the world of German professordom, claim you have stood your
ground. And with this he could brag, at least amongst his own, that he had
victoriously repelled Marx's onslaught, and slain Marx himself in the
literary world. The luckless Marx, however, never heard a dying word about
his slaughter in the Concordia; on the contrary, he had the "impudence" to
live on for another eleven years, eleven years of mounting success for him,
eleven years of uninterrupted growth in the numerical strength of his
supporters in all countries, eleven years of constantly growing recognition
of his merits.
Mr. Brentano and consorts wisely refrained from freeing the blinded Marx
of his self-deception, or making it clear to him that he had actually been
dead for a long time. But after he really did die in 1883, they could no
longer contain themselves, their fingers itched too much. And now Mr.
Sedley Taylor appeared on the scene, with a letter to The Times
(Documents, No. 8).
He provoked things himself, if he or his friend Brentano, as it almost
appears, had not actually concocted it with M. Émile de Laveleye [see É. de
Laveleye, "To the Editor of The Times, Liège, November 16". The Times,
No. 30987, November 26, 1883. -- MECW Ed]. In that stilted style which
betrays a certain recognition of his dubious cause, he states that it appears
to him
"extremely singular that it was reserved for Professor Brentano to
expose, eight years later, the mala fides" of Marx.

And then begin the vainglorious phrases about the masterly conduct of the
attack by the godlike Brentano, and the speedily ensuring deadly shifts of
the notorious Marx, etc. What things were like in reality our readers have
already seen. All that fell into deadly shifts was only Brentano's claim about
the lying addition of the sentence in question.
And finally in conclusion:
"On Brentano's showing, by a detailed comparison of texts, that
the reports of The Times and of "Hansard" agreed in utterly
excluding the meaning which craftily isolated quotation had put
upon Mr. Gladstone's words, Marx withdrew from further
controversy under the plea of want of time!"
The "detailed comparison of texts" is simply farcical. Anonymous Brentano
quotes only Hansard. Marx supplies him with the Times report, which
includes verbatim the controversial sentence missing in Hansard. Mr.
Brentano now also quoted the Times report, and this three lines further than
Marx quoted it. These three lines are supposed to show that The Times and
Hansard fully agree, and thus that the sentence allegedly "lyingly added" by
Marx is not in the Times report, although it stands there word for word; or at
the very least, if it should stand there, that it then means the opposite of
what it says in plain words. Mr. Taylor calls this daredevil operation a
"detailed comparison of texts".
Further. It is simply not true that Marx then withdrew under the plea of
want of time. And Mr. Sedley Taylor knew this, or it was his business to
know it. We have seen that before this Marx delivered proof to the
anonymous godlike Brentano that the reports in The Morning Star and The
Morning Advertiser also contained the "lyingly added" sentence. Only after
this did he declare that he could waste no more time on Anonymous.
The further polemic between Mr. Sedley Taylor and Eleanor Marx
(Documents, Nos 9, 10 and 11) showed in the first place that he did not try
for a moment to maintain the original charge about the lying addition of a
sentence. He went so far as to claim that this was "of very subordinate
importance." Once again the direct disavowal of a fact which he knew, or
which it was his business to know.

In any case we take note of his admission that this charge does not hold
water, and congratulate his friend Brentano on this.
So what is the charge now? Simply that of Mr. Brentano's second line of
defence that Marx had wished to distort the sense of Gladstone's speech -- a
new charge of which, as we have noted, Marx never knew anything. In any
case, this brings us to a completely different field. What was concerned to
begin with was a definite fact: did Marx lyingly add this sentence or not? It
is now no longer denied that Marx victoriously rebuffed this charge. The
new charge of distorted quotation, however, leads us into the field of
subjective opinions, which necessarily vary. De gustibus non est
disputandum. [There can be no argument about taste. -- MECW Ed.] One
person may regard as unimportant -- intrinsically or for the purpose of
quotation -- something which another person declares to be important and
decisive. The conservative will [never] quote acceptably for the liberal, the
liberal never for the conservative, the socialist never for one of them or both
of them. The party man whose own comrade is quoted against him by an
opponent regularly discovers that the essential passage, the passage
determining the real sense, has been omitted in quotation. This is such an
everyday occurrence, something permitting so many individual viewpoints,
that nobody attaches the slightest significance to such charges. Had Mr.
Brentano utilised his anonimity to level this charge, and this charge alone,
against Marx, then Marx would scarcely have regarded it as worth the
trouble of a single word in reply.
In order to accomplish this new twist with that elegance peculiar to him
alone, Mr. Sedley Taylor finds it necessary to repudiate thrice his friend and
comrade Brentano. He repudiates him first when he drops his originally
sole charge of "lying addition", and even denies its existence as original and
sole. He repudiates him further when he summarily discards the infallible
Hansard, to quote exclusively from which is the "custom" of the ethical
Brentano, [Play on words: "Sitte" -- custom, "sittlich" -- ethical.-- MECW
Ed.] and uses instead the Times report, which the selfsame Brentano calls
"necessarily bungling". Thirdly, he repudiates him, and his own first letter
to The Times into the bargain, by seeking the "quotation in dispute" no
longer in the Inaugural Address but in Capital And this for the simple

reason that he had never laid his hand upon the Inaugural Address, to which
he "had the hardihood" to refer in his letter to The Times!
Shortly after his controversy with Eleanor Marx he vainly sought this
Address in the British Museum, and was introduced there to his opponent,
whom he asked whether she could not obtain a copy for him. Whereupon, I
sought out a copy amongst my papers, and Eleanor sent it to him. The
"detailed comparison of texts" which this enabled him to make apparently
convinced him that silence was the best reply.
And in fact it would be superfluous to add a single word to Eleanor Marx's
retort (Documents, No. 11)

V
Third act. My Preface to the fourth edition of the first volume of Marx's
Capital, reprinted as far as necessary in Documents, No. 12, explains why I
was forced to return to the bygone polemics of Messrs Brentano and Sedley
Taylor. This Preface forced Mr. Brentano to make a reply: this was the
pamphlet Meine Polemik mit Karl Marx usw. by Lujo Brentano, Berlin,
1890. Here he has reprinted his anonymous and now finally legitimated
Concordia articles, and Marx's answers in the Volksstaat, accompanied by
an introduction and two appendices, with which, for better or worse, we are
obliged to deal.
Above all we note that here too there is no longer any mention of the
"lyingly added" sentence. The sentence from the Inaugural Address is
quoted right on the first page, and it is then claimed that Gladstone had
"stated in direct opposition to Karl Marx's claim" that these figures referred
only to those paying income tax (which Marx had Gladstone say too, since
he explicitly limits these figures to taxable income) but that the condition of
the working class had at the same time improved in unexampled fashion
(which Marx also has Gladstone say, only nine lines before the challenged
quotation). I would request the reader to compare for himself the Inaugural
Address (Documents, No. 1) with Mr. Brentano's claim (Documents, No.
13) in order to see how Mr. Brentano either "lyingly adds", or fabricates in
another manner, a contradiction where there is none at all. But since the
charge about the lyingly added sentence has broken down ignominiously,
Mr. Brentano, contrary to his better knowledge, must attempt to take in his
readers by telling them Marx tried to suppress the fact that Gladstone had
spoken here only of "taxable income", or the income of classes which
possess property. And here Mr. Brentano does not even notice that his first
accusation is thus turned into the opposite, in that the second is a slap in the
face of the first.
Having happily accomplished this "forgery", he is moved to draw the
attention of the Concordia to the "forgery" allegedly committed by Marx,
and the Concordia then asks him to send it an article against Marx. What
now follows is too delicious not to be given verbatim:

"The article was not signed by me; this was done, on the one hand,
at the request of the editors in the interests of the reputation of
their paper, and, on the other hand, I had all the less objection,
since following earlier literary controversies pursued by Marx it
was to be expected that this time too he would heap personal
insults on his adversary, and for this reason it could only be
amusing to leave him in the dark as to the identity of his
adversary."
So the editors of the Concordia wished "in the interests of the reputation of
their paper" that Mr. Brentano should keep his name quiet! What a
reputation this implies for Mr. Brentano amongst his colleagues in his own
party. We can well believe that this actually happened to him, but that he
himself shouts it from the rooftops is a really pyramidal achievement on his
part. However, this is something which he has to settle with himself and
with the editors of the Concordia.
Since "it was to be expected that Marx would heap personal insults on his
adversary", it could naturally "only be amusing to leave him in the dark as
to the identity of his adversary". It was hitherto a mystery as to how you can
heap personal insults upon a person you do not know. You can only get
personal if you know something of the person in question. But Mr.
Brentano, made anonymous in the interests of the paper's reputation,
relieved his adversary of this trouble. He himself waded in with "insults",
first with the "lyingly added" printed in bold type, and then with "impudent
mendacity", "simply nefarious", etc. Mr. Brentano, the non-anonymous,
obviously made a slip of the pen here. Mr. Brentano "on the other hand, had
all the less objection" to the anonymity imposed upon himself, not so that
the well-known Marx could "heap personal insults" upon the unknown
Brentano, but so that the concealed Brentano could do this to the well-
known Marx.
And this is supposed to "be amusing"! That's what actually transpired, but
not because Mr. Brentano wanted it. Marx, as later his daughter, and now
myself, have all tried to see the amusing aspect of this polemic. Such
success as we have had, be it great or small, has been at the expense of Mr.
Brentano. His articles have been anything but "amusing". The only

contributions to amusement are the rapier-thrusts aimed by Marx at the
shady side of his "left-in-the-dark person", which the man at the receiving
end now wishes to laugh off belatedly as the "loutishness of his scurrilous
polemics". The Junkers, the priests, the lawyers and other right and proper
opponents of the incisive polemics of Voltaire, Beaumarchais and Paul
Louis Courier objected to the "loutishness of their scurrilous polemics",
which has not prevented these examples of "loutishness" from being
regarded as models and masterpieces today. And we have had so much
pleasure from these and similar "scurrilous polemics" that a hundred
Brentanos should not succeed in dragging us down to the level of German
university polemics, where there is nothing but the impotent rage of green
envy, and the most desolate boredom.
However, Mr. Brentano once again regards his readers as so duped that he
can lay it on thick again with a brazen face:
"When it was shown that The Times too ... carried this"
(Gladstone's) "speech in a sense according with the shorthand
report, he" (Marx) "acted, as the editors of the Concordia wrote,
like the cuttlefish, which dims the water with a dark fluid, in order
to make pursuit by its enemy more difficult, i.e. he tried as hard as
he could to hide the subject of controversy by clinging to
completely inconsequential secondary matters."
If the Times report, which contains the "lyingly added" sentence word for
word, accords in sense with the "shorthand" report -- should be with
Hansard -- which suppresses it word for word, and if Mr. Brentano once
again boasts that he had demonstrated this, this can mean nothing other than
the charge concerning the "lyingly added" sentence has been completely
dropped -- though shamefacedly and quietly -- and Mr. Brentano, forced
from the offensive onto the defensive, is retreating to his second line of
defence. We simply note this; we believe that in sections III and IV we have
thoroughly broken through the centre of this second line, and turned both
flanks.
But then the genuine university polemicist appears. When Brentano,
emboldened by the scent of victory, has thus driven his enemy into the
corner, the foe acts like the cuttlefish, darkening the water and hiding the

subject of controversy by focusing attention on completely inconsequential
secondary matters.
The Jesuits say: Si fecisti, nega. If you have perpetrated something, deny it.
The German university polemicist goes further and Says: If you have
perpetrated a shady lawyer's trick, then lay it at your opponent's door.
Scarcely has Marx quoted The Theory of the Exchanges and Professor
Beesly, and this simply because they had quoted the disputed passage like
he had, than Brentano the cuttlefish "clings" to them with all the suckers of
his ten feet, and spreads such a torrent of his "dark fluid" all around that you
must look hard and grasp firmly if you do not wish to lose from eye and
hand the real "subject of controversy", namely the allegedly "lyingly added"
sentence. In his rejoinder, exactly the same method. First he starts another
squabble with Marx about the meaning of the expression CLASSES IN
EASY CIRCUMSTANCES, a squabble which under the best of
circumstances could produce nothing but that very "obscuration" which Mr.
Brentano desires. And then dark fluid is again squirted in the matter of that
renowned relative clause which Marx had maliciously suppressed, and
which, as we have shown, could perfectly well be omitted, since the fact to
which it indirectly alluded had already been stated quite clearly in an earlier
sentence of the speech which had been quoted by Marx. And thirdly, our
cuttlefish has enough dark sauce left over to obscure once again the subject
of controversy, by claiming that Marx has again suppressed some sentences
from The Times -- sentences which had absolutely nothing to do with the
single point at issue between them at that time, the allegedly lyingly added
sentence.
And the same waste of sepia in the present self-apologia. First, naturally,
The Theory of the Exchanges must be the whipping boy.
Then, all of a sudden, we are confronted with the Lassallean "iron law of
wages" with which, as everyone knows, Marx was as little connected as Mr.
Brentano with the invention of gunpowder; Mr. Brentano must know that in
the first volume of Capital Marx specifically denied all and every
responsibility for any conclusions drawn by Lassalle, and that in the same
book Marx describes the law of wages as a function of differing variables
and very elastic, thus anything but iron. But when the ink-squirting has

started there is no stopping it: the Halle congress, Liebknecht and Bebel,
Gladstone's budget speech of 1843, the English trade unions, all manner of
far-fetched things are resorted to so as, faced with an opponent who has
gone over to the offensive, to cover by self-apologia the defensive line of
Mr. Brentano and his lofty philanthropic principles, treated so scornfully by
the wicked socialists. One gets the impression that a round dozen cuttlefish
were helping him do the "hushing up" here.
And all of this because Mr. Brentano himself knows that he has hopelessly
run aground with his claim about the "lyingly added" sentence, and has not
got the courage to withdraw this claim openly and honourably. To use his
own words:
"Had he" Brentano "simply admitted that he had been misled by
this book", Hansard, "...one might have been surprised that he had
relied upon such a source" as absolutely reliable "but the mistake
would at least have been rectified. But for him there was no
question of this."
Instead the ink was squirted in gallons for obscuring purposes, and if I have
to be so discursive here, this is only because I must first dispose of all these
far-fetched marginal questions, and disperse the obscuring ink in order to
keep eye and hand on the real subject of the controversy.
Meanwhile Mr. Brentano has another piece of information for us in petto [in
store], which in fact "could only be amusing". He has, in fact, been so
lamentably treated that he can find no peace and quiet until he has moaned
to us about all his misfortune. First the Concordia suppresses his name in
the interests of the reputation of the paper. Mr. Brentano is magnanimous
enough to consent to this sacrifice in the interests of the good cause. Then
Marx unleashes upon him the loutishness of his scurrilous polemics. This
too he swallows. Only he wished to reply to this "with the verbatim
publication of the entire polemic". But sadly
"editors often have their own judgement; the specialist journal
which I regarded as suitable above all others refused to publish, on
the grounds that the dispute lacked general interest".

Thus do the noble suffer in this sinful world; their best intentions founder
on the baseness or indifference of man. And to compensate this
unappreciated honest fellow for his undeserved misfortune, and since some
time will probably pass before he rounds up an editor who has not "often
his own judgement", we herewith present him the "the verbatim publication
of the entire polemic".

VI
In addition to the introductory self-apologia, Mr. Brentano's little pamphlet
contains two appendices. The first contains extracts from The Theory of the
Exchanges, intended to prove that this book was one of the main sources
from which Marx concocted his Capital I shall not go into detail about this
repeated waste of sepia. I only have to deal with the old charge from the
Concordia. His whole life long Marx could not and would not please Mr.
Brentano. Mr. Brentano thus certainly has a whole bottomless sack of
complaints against Marx, and I would be an idiot to let myself in for this.
There would be no end to pleasing him.
But it is naïve that here, at the end of the quotations, "the reproduction of
the teal budget speech" is demanded from Marx. So that is what Mr.
Brentano understands by correct quotation. However, if the whole actual
speech is always to be reproduced, then no speech has ever been quoted
without "forgery".
In the second appendix Mr. Brentano has a go at me. In the fourth edition of
Capital, volume one, I drew attention to The Morning Star in connection
with the allegedly false quotation. Mr. Brentano utilises this to once again
obscure completely, with spurts of sepia, the original point at issue, the
passage in the Inaugural Address, and instead of this to hit out at the
passage in Capital already quoted by Mr. S. Taylor. In order to prove that
my source of reference was false, and that Marx could only have taken the
"forged quotation" from The Theory of the Exchanges, Mr. Brentano prints
in parallel columns the reports of The Times and The Morning Star and the
quotation according to Capital This second appendix is printed here as
document No. 14.
Mr. Brentano has The Morning Star begin its report with the words "I
MUST SAY FOR ONE" etc. He thus claims that the preceding sentences on
the growth of taxable income from 1842 to 1852, and from 1853 to 1861
are missing in The Morning Star; from which it naturally follows that Marx
did not use The Morning Star but The Theory of the Exchanges.
"The readers" of his pamphlet "with whom he is concerned, cannot check
up on him!" But other people can, and they discover that this passage is

certainly to be found in The Morning Star. We reprint it here, next to the
passage from Capital in English and German for the edification of Mr.
Brentano and his readers.
"The Morning Star", April 17, 1863 "Capital", Vol. I, 1st ed., p.
639; 2nd ed., p. 678; 3rd., p. 671; 4th ed., p. 617, Note 103
"In ten years, from 1842 to 1852 the "From 1842 to 1852 the
taxable taxable income of the country increased income of the
country increased by by 6 per cent, as nearly as I can make 6 per
cent... out -- a very considerable increase in ten years. But in eight
years from 1853 to 1861 the income of the country ... In the 8
years from 1858 to 1861 ... again increased from the basis taken in
it had increased from the basis taken in 1853 by 20 per cent. The
fact is so 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing as to be
almost incred- astonishing as to be almost incredible."
In German translation:
The absence of this sentence in his quotation from The Morning Star is Mr.
Brentano's main trump card in his claim that Marx quoted from The Theory
of the Exchanges and not from The Morning Star. He confronts the claim
that the quotation was taken from The Morning Star with the incriminating
gap in the parallel column. And now the sentence is nevertheless to be
found in The Morning Star, in fact exactly as in Marx, and the incriminating
gap is Mr. Brentano's own invention. If that is not "suppression" and
"forgery", into the bargain, then these words lack any sense.
But if Mr. Brentano "forges" at the beginning of the quotation, and if he
now very carefully refrains from saying that Marx "lyingly added" a
sentence in the middle of the same quotation, this in no way prevents him
from insisting repeatedly that Marx suppressed the end of the quotation.
In Capital the quotation breaks off with the passage:
"Whether the extremes of poverty are less, I do not presume to
say."
Now in the reports in The Times and The Morning Star the sentence does
not end here; separated only by a comma, there follow the words:

"but the average condition of the British labourer, we have the
happiness to know to be extraordinary" (in The Times: has
improved during the last 20 years in a degree which we know to
be extraordinary) "and which we may almost pronounce to be
unexampled in the history of any country and of any age".
Thus Marx breaks off here in mid-sentence, "has Gladstone stop in mid-
sentence", "making this sentence quite meaningless". And already in his
rejoinder (Documents, No.7) Mr. Brentano calls this an "absolutely
senseless version".
Gladstone's sentence: "Whether the extremes of poverty are less, I do not
presume to say" is a quite definite statement, complete in itself. If it makes
sense, it makes sense when taken in isolation. If it makes no sense, no
addition however long, tacked on behind a "yet", can give it sense. If the
sentence in Marx's quotation is "completely senseless", then this is not due
to Marx who quoted it, but to Mr. Gladstone who uttered it.
To probe more deeply this important case, let us now turn to the only source
which, according to Mr. Brentano, it is the "custom" to quote, let us turn to
Hansard, pure of all original sin. According to Mr. Brentano's own
translation, it says:
"I will not presume to determine whether the wide interval which
separates the extremes of wealth and poverty is less or more wide
than it has been in former times" -- full stop.
And only after this full stop does the new sentence begin:
"But if we look to the average condition of the British labourer",
etc.
Thus if Marx likewise sets a full stop here, he does just as the virtuous
Hansard does; and if Mr. Brentano makes this full stop a new crime on the
part of Marx, and claims that Marx has Gladstone stop in the mid-sentence,
then he has relied upon the "necessarily bungling newspaper reports", and
he can only blame himself for the consequences. Thus the argument
collapses that Marx has made the sentence completely senseless through his
full stop; this comes not from him but from Mr. Gladstone, and let Mr.

Brentano now correspond with him about the sense or nonsense of the
sentence; we have nothing more to do with the matter.
For Mr. Brentano is anyway in correspondence with Mr. Gladstone. What
he has written to the latter we do not learn, of course, and we only learn
very little of what Mr. Gladstone has written to him. In any case, Mr.
Brentano has published from Gladstone's letters two meagre little sentences
(Documents, No.16) and in my reply (Documents, No. 17) I showed that
"this arbitrary mosaic of sentences torn from their context" proves nothing
at all in Mr. Brentano's favour whilst the fact that he indulges in this sort of
ragged publication, instead of publishing the whole correspondence, speaks
volumes against him.
But let us assume for a moment that these two little sentences only
permitted the interpretation most favourable to Mr. Brentano. What then?
"You are completely correct, and Marx completely incorrect." "I undertook
no changes of any sort." These are the alleged words -- for Mr. Gladstone
does not usually write in German, as far as I know -- of the former minister.
Does this mean: I did not utter the "notorious" sentence, and that Marx
"lyingly added" it? Certainly not. The eight London morning papers of
April 17, 1863 would unanimously give the lie to such a claim. They prove
beyond all doubt that this sentence was spoken. If Mr. Gladstone made no
changes in the Hansard report -- although I am twelve years younger than
him, I would not like to rely so implicitly on my memory in such trivialities
which occurred 27 years ago -- then the omission of the sentence in
Hansard says nothing in Mr. Brentano's favour, and a great deal against
Hansard.
Aside from this one point about the "lyingly added" sentence, Mr.
Gladstone's opinion is completely inconsequential here. For as soon as we
disregard this point, we find ourselves exclusively in the field of
inconsequential opinions, in which after years of strife each sticks to his
guns. If Mr. Gladstone, should he happen to be quoted, prefers the quotation
methods of Mr. Brentano, an admiring supporter, to those of Marx, a
sharply critical opponent, then this is quite obvious, and his indisputable
right. For us, however, and for the question as to whether Marx quoted in
good or in bad faith, his opinion is not even worth as much as that of any

old uninvolved third person. For here Mr. Gladstone is no longer a witness
but an interested party.

VII
In conclusion, let us go briefly into the question of what Mr. Gladstone said
in that -- thanks to Mr. Brentano, now "notorious" -- passage of his budget
speech of 1863, and what Marx quoted of what he said, or else what he
"lyingly added" or "suppressed". In order to oblige Mr. Brentano as far as
possible, let us take as our basis the immaculate Hansard, and in his own
translation.
"In ten years from 1842 to 1852 inclusive, the taxable income of
the country, as nearly as we can make out, increased by 6 per cent;
hut in eight years, from 1853 to 1861, the income of the country
again increased upon the basis taken by 20 per cent. That is a fact
so singular and striking as to seem almost incredible."
Mr. Brentano himself has nothing against Marx's quotation of this sentence,
apart from the fact that it is allegedly taken from The Theory of the
Exchanges. But of Brentano's quotation it must be said here that it too is far
removed from giving "the real budget speech". He excises Mr. Gladstone's
following excursus on the causes of this astonishing augmentation without
even indicating the omission with dots. -- Further:
"Such, Sir, is the state of the case as regards the general progress
of accumulation; but, for one, I must say that I should look with
some degree of pain, and with much apprehension, upon this
extraordinary and almost intoxicating growth, if it were my belief
that it is confined to the class of persons who may be described as
in easy circumstances. The figures which I have quoted take little
or no cognizance of the condition of those who do not pay income
tax; or, in other words, sufficiently accurate for general truth, they
do not take cognizance of the property of the labouring
population, or of the increase of its income."
There now follows the sentence which according to Mr. Brentano was
"lyingly added" by Marx, but which on the testimony of all eight morning
papers of April 17 was certainly uttered by Mr. Gladstone:

"The augmentation I have described, and which is founded, I
think, upon accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely confined
to classes of property." (The Times, The Manning Star, The
Manning Advertiser, Daily Telegraph.) ".. is entirely confined to
the augmentation of Capital". (Manning Herald, Standard, The
Daily News, Manning Post)
After the word "income", Hansard immediately continues with the words:
"Indirectly, indeed, the mere augmentation of Capital is of the
utmost advantage to the labouring class, because that
augmentation cheapens the commodity which in the whole
business of production comes into direct competition with labour."
Although Hansard omits the "notorious" sentence, it says in substance just
what the other papers say: it would be very embarrassing for the speaker if
this intoxicating augmentation were confined to CLASSES IN EASY
CIRCUMSTANCES, but although it pains him, this augmentation he has
described is confined to people who do not belong to the working class and
who are rich enough to pay income tax; yes, it is indeed a "mere
augmentation of Capital"!
And here, finally, the secret of Mr. Brentano's fury stands revealed. He
reads the sentence in the Inaugural Address, finds in it an embarrassing
admission, obtains the Hansard version, fails to find the embarrassing
sentence in it, and hurries to publish to the world: Marx lyingly added the
sentence in form and in content! -- Marx shows him the sentence in The
Times, The Morning Star, The Morning Advertiser. Now finally, for
appearance's sake at least, Mr. Brentano must make a "detailed comparison
of texts" and discovers -- what? That The Times, The Morning Star, The
Morning Advertiser "fully coincide materially" with Hansard!
Unfortunately he overlooks the fact that the "lyingly added" sentence must
then fully coincide materially with Hansard, and that then in the end it must
turn out that Hansard coincides materially with the Inaugural Address.
The whole hullabaloo therefore because Mr. Brentano had neglected to
undertake the detailed textual comparison ascribed to him by Mr. Sedley
Taylor, and because, in fact, he had himself not understood what Mr.

Gladstone had said according to Hansard. Of course, this was not that easy,
for although Mr. Brentano claims that this speech
"aroused the interest and admiration of the entire educated world
... notably through ... its clarity",
readers have been able to see for themselves that in the Hansard version it is
presented in a particularly stilted, complicated and involved language, tying
itself up in its own repetitions. In particular the sentence stating that the
increase in Capital is of extraordinary advantage to the worker, because it
cheapens the commodity which in the business of production comes into
direct competition with labour, is sheer nonsense. If a commodity comes
into Competition with labour, and this commodity (for example, machinery)
is cheapened, then the first and immediate result is a fall in wages, and
according to Mr. Gladstone this should be "of great benefit to the workers"!
How philanthropic it was of some London morning papers, i. e. The
Morning Star, in their "necessarily bungling" reports, to replace the above
incomprehensible sentence by what Mr. Gladstone probably wanted to say,
namely that an increase in Capital is of benefit to the workers because it
cheapens the main articles of consumption!
When Mr. Gladstone said that he should look with some degree of pain and
much apprehension at this intoxicating growth if he believed that it was
confined to classes in easy circumstances -- whether Mr. Gladstone thought
thereby of another growth of wealth than that of which he spoke, namely, in
his opinion, of the greatly improved situation of the entire nation; whether
he forgot at that moment that he was speaking of the increase in income of
the classes that pay income tax and of no others: this we cannot know. Marx
has been charged with forgery, and what is at issue is the text and the
grammatical meaning of what Mr. Gladstone said, and not what he possibly
wanted to say. Mr. Brentano does not know the latter either, and on this
point Mr. Gladstone, 27 years later, is no longer a competent authority. And
in no way does this concern us.
The abundantly clear meaning of the words is: taxable income has
undergone an intoxicating augmentation. I should be very sorry if this
augmentation just described were confined to classes of property, but it is
confined to them, since the workers have no income liable to tax, and it is

thus purely an increase in Capital! But the latter, too, is of advantage to the
workers, because they, etc.
And now Marx:
"This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power ... is entirely
confined to classes of property."
Thus runs the sentence in the Inaugural Address, where it provided the
occasion for this whole jolly controversy. But since Mr. Brentano has no
longer dared to claim that Marx lyingly added it, since then the Inaugural
Address has no longer been mentioned at all, and all attacks have been
directed against the quotation of this passage in Capital There Marx adds
the following sentence:
"but... but it must be of indirect benefit to the labouring
population, because it cheapens the commodities of general
consumption."
The "arbitrarily thrown-together mosaic of sentences torn from their
context" in Marx thus states "materially", "only formally more contracted",
exactly what the immaculate Hansard has Gladstone say. The only reproach
which can be levelled at Marx is that he utilised The Morning Star and not
Hansard, and thus, in the final sentence, placed words of sense in Mr.
Gladstone's mouth, although he had spoken nonsense. Further, according to
Hansard:
"But, besides this, a more direct and a larger benefit has, it may
safely be asserted, been conferred upon the mass of the people [of
the country]. It is a matter of profound and inestimable
consolation to reflect, that while the rich have been growing
richer, the poor have become less poor. I will not presume to
determine whether the wide interval which separates the extremes
of wealth and poverty is less or more wide than it has been in
former times."
In Marx:
"...while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been
growing less poor. At any rate, whether the extremes of poverty

are less, I do not presume to say."
Marx gives only the two rare positive statements which, in Hansard, swim
in a whole tureen of phrases as trivial as they are unctuous. It can be stated
with certainty that they lose nothing thereby, but rather gain.
Finally the conclusion, according to Hansard:
"But if we look to the average condition of the British labourer,
whether peasant, or miner, or operative, or artisan, we know from
varied and indubitable evidence that during the last twenty years
such an addition has been made to his means of subsistence as we
may almost pronounce to be without example in the history of any
country and of any age."
This sentence is quoted in the Inaugural Address a few lines above the
"notorious" one just given. There we find:
"Such are the official statements published by order of Parliament
in 1864, during the millennium of free trade, at a time when the
Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons that:
'The average condition of the British labourer has improved in a degree
we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the history of any
country or any age.'"
Thus everything essential is cited. But that this may be read in the Inaugural
Address, original edition, p. 4, this fact is stubbornly concealed from his
readers by Mr. Brentano; however, his readers cannot check upon him, for
we cannot possibly present each of them with a copy of the Address, as we
did Mr. Sedley Taylor.
Notabene: In his second reply (Documents, No. 6) Marx only had to defend
the Inaugural Address, since up to then Mr. Brentano had not got the
passage in Capital into his nagging range. And in his following rejoinder
(Documents, No.7) Mr. Brentano's attack is still directed against the
Inaugural Address and Marx's defence of this.
It is only after Marx's death that a new turn comes, and this not through Mr.
Brentano but through his Cambridge shield-bearer. Only now is it

discovered that in Capital Marx suppressed the resonant declarations made
by Mr. Gladstone about the unexampled improvement in the condition of
the British worker, and that this converted Mr. Gladstone's meaning into the
contrary.
And here we have to say that Marx missed the opportunity for a brilliant
burst of rhetoric. The whole section in the introduction to which this speech
by Gladstone is quoted has the purpose of furnishing evidence that the
condition of the great majority of the British working class was straitened
and unworthy, just at the time of this intoxicating augmentation of wealth.
What a magnificent contrast Gladstone's selfsame pompous words about the
happy condition of the British working class, ~a condition] unexampled in
the history of any country and any age, would have provided to this
evidence of mass poverty, drawn from the official publications of
Parliament itself!
But if Marx wished to refrain from such a rhetorical effect, he had no
reason to quote these words of Gladstone's. Firstly, they are nothing hut the
standard phrases which every British Chancellor of the Exchequer believes
it to be his moral duty to repeat in good or even in tolerable business
periods; they are thus meaningless. And secondly, Gladstone himself
retracted them within a year; in his next budget speech of April 7, 1864, at a
time of even greater industrial prosperity, he spoke of masses "on the border
of pauperism", and of branches of business in which wages have not
increased", and proclaimed -- according to Hansard:
"Again, and yet more at large, what is human life, but, in the great
majority of cases, a struggle for existence?" *
* And here some more from this speech, according to Hansard: the number
of paupers had fallen to 840,000. "That amount, however, does not include
persons who are dependent upon charitable establishments; or who are
relieved by private almsgiving.... But, besides all those whom it comprises,
think of those who arc on the borders of that region, think how many of the
labouring classes are struggling manfully but with difficulty to maintain
themselves in a position above the place of paupers." In the congregation of
a clergyman in the East End of London, 12,000 out of 13,000 souls were
always on the verge of actual want; a well-known philanthropist had

declared that there were whole districts in the East End of London in which
you cannot find an omnibus or a cab, in which there ii no street music, nor
even a street beggar... The means to wage the struggle for existence were,
however, somewhat better than previously (!) ... In many places wages had
increased, but in many others they had not, etc. And this jeremiad came just
one year after the pompous announcement of the "unexampled"
improvement!
But Marx quotes this other budget speech of Gladstone's immediately after
that of 1863, and if Mr. Gladstone himself, on April 7, 1864, declared that
the unexampled blessings were non-existent, those blessings for the
existence of which he had possessed "varied and indubitable evidence",
then for Marx there was no longer the slightest shadow of a reason to quote
these vivacious protestations, which were unfortunately ephemeral, even for
Mr. Gladstone. He could content himself with the speaker's admissions that
while the incomes of 150 pounds sterling and over had augmented
intoxicatingly, the poor had in any case become less poor, and that the
interval between extreme wealth and extreme poverty had scarcely been
reduced.
We shall not comment on the fact that it is the habit of the official German
economists to quote Marx in sentences torn from context. If he had created
a hullabaloo in every such case, as Mr. Brentano has done here, he would
never have been finished.
But now let us examine more closely the unexampled augmentation of the
means of subsistence enjoyed at that time by the British labourer, peasant or
miner, artisan or operative.
The peasant is in England and the greater part of Scotland only an
agricultural day labourer. In 1861 there were a total of 1,098,261 such
peasants, of whom 204,962 lived as farmhands on tenant farms. * From
1849 to 1859 his money wage had increased by 1 shilling, in a few cases by
2 shillings a week, but in the final analysis this was mostly only a nominal
increase. His position in 1863, the really abject housing conditions under
which he lived, are described by Dr. Hunter (Public Health, VII Report,
1864):

"The costs occasioned by the agricultural labourer are fixed at the
lowest figure at which he can live."
* The figures are taken partly from the census of 1861, partly from the
report of the CHILDREN'S EMPLOYMENT COMMISSION. 1863-l867.
[Census of England and Wales for the year 1861, London, 1863; Children's
Employment Commission (1862), Report (I- VI) of the Commissioners,
London, 1863. -- MECW Ed]
According to the same report, the food intake of a part of the day labourers'
families (particularly in eight named counties) was below the absolute
minimum necessary to avert starvation diseases. And Professor Thorold
Rogers, a political supporter of Gladstone, declared in 1866 (A History of
Agriculture and Prices) that the agricultural day labourer had once again
become a serf, and, as he demonstrated at length, a poorly fed and poorly
housed serf, much worse off than his ancestor at the time of Arthur Young
(1770 to 1780), and incomparably worse than the day labourer in the 14th
and 15th centuries. So Gladstone had no luck at all with the "peasants".
But how about the "miner"? On this we have the parliamentary report of
1866.a In 1861, 565,875 miners were working in the United Kingdom,
246,613 of them in coal mines. In the latter the wages of the men had risen
slightly, and they mostly did an eight-hour shift, while the youngsters had to
work 14 to 15 hours. Mine inspection was just a farce: there were 12
inspectors for 3,217 mines! The result was that the lives of the miners were
sacrificed wholesale in largely avoidable explosions; the mine-owners
compensated themselves in general for the small wage increases by wage
deductions based on false weights and measures. In the ore mines,
according to the report of the ROYAL COMMISSION of 1864, conditions
were still worse.
But the "artisan"? Let us take the metalworkers, altogether 396,998. Of
these, some 70,000 to 80,000 were machine fitters, and their situation was
in fact good, thanks to the toughness of their old, strong and rich trade
association. For the other metalworkers too, provided full physical strength
and skill were called for, a certain improvement had taken place, as was
natural with business having again become better since 1859 and 1860. In
contrast, the situation of the women and children also employed (10,000

women and 30,000 under 18 in Birmingham and district alone) was
miserable enough, and that of the nail makers (26,130) and chain makers
miserable in the extreme.
In the textile industry, the 456,646 cotton Spinners and weavers, and with
them 12,556 calico printers, are decisive. And they must have been very
surprised to hear of this unexampled happiness-in April 1863, at the height
of the cotton famine and the American Civil War, at the time (October
1862) when 60 per cent of the spindles and 58 per cent of the looms stood
idle, and the remainder were only working 2-3 days a week; when over
50,000 cotton operatives, individually or with families, were supported by
the Poor Law or the relief committee and (in March 1863) 135,625 were
employed by the same committee at starvation wages on public works or in
sewing schools! (Watts, The Facts of the Cotton Famine, 1866, p.21 1.) The
other textile operatives, particularly in the wool and linen branches, were
relatively prosperous; the lack of cotton increased their employment.
The reports of the CHILDREN'S EMPLOYMENT COMMISSION give us
the best information on how things looked in a number of smaller branches
of business: hosiery -- 120,000 workers, of whom only 4,000 were
protected by the Factory Act, amongst the others many quite young
children, colossally overworked; lace-making and dressing, mostly cottage
industry -- of 150,000 workers only 10,000 protected by the Factory Act,
colossal overworking of children and girls; straw-plaiting and straw-hat-
making -- 40,000, almost all children, disgustingly slave-driven; finally the
manufacture of clothing and shoes, employing 370,218 female workers for
outerwear and millinery, 380,716 ditto for underwear and -- in England and
Wales alone -- 573,380 male workers, including 273,223 shoemakers and
146,042 tailors, of whom between l/5 and 1/4 were under 20. Of these 1 1/4
million, a maximum of 30 per cent of the men were passably off, working
for private customers. The rest were exposed, as in all the branches of
business mentioned in this paragraph, to exploitation through middle men,
factors, agents, SWEATERS as they are called in England, and this alone
describes their lot: terrible overwork for a wretched wage.
Things were no better with the "unexampled" fortune of the workers in
paper-making (100,000 workers, half women), pottery (29,000), hat-making

(15,000 in England alone), the glass industry (15,000), book printing
(35,000), artificial flower-making (11,000), etc., etc.
In short, the CHILDREN'S EMPLOYMENT COMMISSION demanded
that no fewer than 1,400,000 women, young people and children should be
placed under the protection of the Factory Act, in order to guard them from
mostly ruinous overwork.
And finally the number of PAUPERS dependent upon poor relief from
public funds in 1863: 1,079,382.
On this basis we may make an unofficial list of those workers
unquestionably very badly off in 1863: agricultural day labourers in round
figures 1,100,000; cotton operatives 469,000; seamstresses and milliners
751,000; tailors and shoemakers, after the deduction of 30%, 401,000; lace-
makers 150,000; paper-makers 100,000; hosiery workers 120,000; smaller
branches investigated by the CHILDRENS EMPLOYMENT
COMMISSION 189,000; and finally PAUPERS 1,079,000. Together
4,549,000 workers, added to which, in some cases, their family members.
And 1863 was a good business year. The crisis of 1857 had been fully
overcome, demand was rising rapidly, with the exception of the cotton
industry nearly all branches of business were very busy. So where is the
"unexampled" improvement to be found?
The factory legislation of the forties had decisively improved the lot of
those workers subject to it. But in 1863 this benefited only the workers
employed in wool, linen and silk, altogether about 270,000, while the cotton
operatives were starving. For bleaching workers and dye workers, legal
protection existed Only on paper. Further: in branches of work in which full
male strength and sometimes dexterity are indispensable, the resistance of
the workers, organised in trade associations, had forced through for
themselves a share of the proceeds of the favourable business period, and it
may be said that on the average for these branches of work, involving heavy
male labour, the living standard of the workers had risen decisively, though
it is still ridiculous to describe this improvement as "unexampled". But
while the great mass of productive work has been transferred to machines
operated by weaker men, by women and young workers, the politicians like

to treat the strong men employed in heavy work as the only workers, and to
judge the whole working class according to their standard.
Against the 4 1/2 million worse-off workers and PAUPERS detailed above,
we have, as well-off, 270,000 textile workers in wool, linen and silk.
Further we may assume that of the 376,000 metal workers one third were
well-off, one third middling, and only the last third, including the workers
under 18, the nail-makers, chain-smiths, and women, were badly off. We
may classify the situation of the 566,000 miners as medium-good. The
situation of the building craftsmen may be considered as good, apart from
those in the cotton districts. Amongst the joiners, at most 1/3 were well-off,
the great mass worked for blood-sucking SWEATERS. Amongst the
railway employees there was already at that period colossal overworking,
which has only brought about organised resistance in the last 20 years. In
short, we may add together in total scarcely one million of whom we may
say that their situation had improved in relation to the improvement in the
business and the profits of the Capitalists; what remains over is in a
middling situation, has a few, on the whole insignificant, benefits from the
better business period, or consists of such a mixture of working people
according to sex and age that the improvements for the men are offset by
the overworking of the women and young workers.
And if this should not suffice, then one should consult the "Reports on
PUBLIC HEALTH" which became necessary precisely because the
"unexampled" improvement for the working class in the 20 years up to
1863 showed itself as typhus, cholera and other jolly epidemics, which
finally spread from the working-class quarters to the genteel areas of the
cities. Here the unexampled "augmentation of the means of subsistence" of
the British worker is investigated with respect to housing and food, and it is
found that in many cases his dwelling was simply a centre of infection, and
his nourishment was on the borderline, or even beneath the border at which
starvation diseases necessarily occur.
This was the real condition of the British working class at the beginning of
1863. This was the face of the "unexampled" improvement for the working
class of which Mr. Gladstone boasted. And if Marx is to he blamed for

anything, it is that he did Mr. Gladstone an unearned service by omitting his
bragging statement.
Conclusion: Firstly, Marx "lyingly added" nothing.
Secondly, he "suppressed" nothing about which Mr. Gladstone might have a
right to complain.
And thirdly, the octopus-like tenacity with which Mr. Brentano and his
companions cling to this single quotation amongst the many thousands of
quotations in Marx's writing proves that they know only too well "how Karl
Marx quotes" -- namely correctly.

Documents
I. The Incriminated Quotations
The original edition is entitled: "Address and Provisional Rules of the
Working Men's International Association, established September 28, 1864,
at a Public Meeting held at St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, London." Price
one penny. Printed at the "Bee-Hive" Newspaper Office, 10, Bolt Court,
Fleet Street, 1864. * The address begins: "It is a great fact that the misery of
the working masses has not diminished from 1848 to 1864, and yet this
period is unrivalled for the development of its industry and the growth of its
commerce." By way of proof, facts are quoted from the PUBLIC HEALTH
Reports about the poor nutrition of various groups of urban workers and
agricultural day labourers in the country. It then continues:
"Such are the official statements published by order of Parliament
in 1864, during the millennium of free trade, at a time when the
Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons that
"'the average condition of the British labourer has improved in a
degree we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the
history of any country or any age.'
"Upon these official congratulations jars the dry remark of the
official Public Health Report:
"'The public health of a country means the health of its masses,
and the masses will scarcely be healthy unless, to their very base,
they be at least moderately prosperous.'
"Dazzled by the 'Progress of the Nation' statistics dancing before
his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild
ecstasy:
'From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased
by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has
increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so
astonishing as to be almost incredible!... This intoxicating

augmentation of wealth and power,' adds Mr. Gladstone, 'is
entirely confined to classes of property.'" *
In German translation: [Now gives German translation of the above six
paragraphs.]

No. 2.  CAPITAL
MARX, CAPITAL, VOLUME 1, 3RD EDITION, pp. 670-672
After these few examples one understands the cry of triumph of the
Registrar-General of the British people:
"Rapidly as the population has increased, it has not kept pace with
the progress of industry and wealth." [101]
Let us turn now to the direct agents of this industry, or the producers of this
wealth, to the working class.
"It is one of the most melancholy features in the social state of this
country," says Gladstone, "that while there was a decrease in the
consuming power of the people, and while there was an increase
in the privations and distress of the labouring class and operatives,
there was at the same time a constant accumulation of wealth in
the upper classes, and a constant increase of Capital." [102]
Thus spoke this unctuous minister in the House of Commons of February
13th, 1843. On April 16th, 1863, 20 years later, in the speech in which he
introduced his Budget:
"From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased
by 6 per cent.... In the 8 years from 1853 to 1861, it had increased
from the basis taken in 1853, by 20 per cent! The fact is so
astonishing as to be almost incredible ... this intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power ... entirely confined to classes
of property ... must be of indirect benefit to the labouring
population because it cheapens the commodities of general
consumption. While the rich have been growing richer, the poor
have been growing less poor. At any rate, whether the extremes of
poverty are less, I do not presume to say." [104]
How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has remained "poor", only
"less poor" in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class "an
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power", then it has remained

relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they
have increased, because the extremes of wealth have. As to the cheapening
of the means of subsistence, the official statistics, e. g. the accounts of the
LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM, show an increase in price of 20% for the
average of the three years 1860-1862, compared with 1851-1853. In the
following three years, 1863-1865, there was a progressive rise in the price
of meat, butter, milk,, sugar, salt, coals, and a number of other necessary
means of subsistence. Gladstone's next budget speech of April 7th, 1864, is
a Pindaric dithyrambus on the advance of surplus-value-making and the
happiness of the people "tempered by poverty". He speaks of masses "on
the border of pauperism", of branches of trade in which "wages have not
increased", and finally sums up the happiness of the working-class in the
words: "human life is but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for existence".
Professor Fawcett, not bound like Gladstone by official considerations,
declares roundly:
"I do not, of course, deny that money wages have been augmented
by this increase of Capital" (in the last ten years), "but this
apparent advantage is to a great extent lost, because many of the
necessaries of life are becoming dearer" (he believes because of
the fall in value of the precious metals) "...THE RICH GROW
RAPIDLY RICHER, whilst there is no perceptible advance in the
comfort enjoyed by the industrial classes.... They (the labourers)
become almost the slaves of the tradesman, to whom they owe
money.")
(Footnote #104) See the official accounts in the Blue book:
"MISCELLANEOUS STATISTICS OF THE UN. KINGDOM", PART VI,
LONDON, 1866, pp. 260-273, passim. An addition to the second edition.
Instead of the statistics of orphan asylums &c., the declamations of the
ministerial journals in recommending dowries for the Royal children might
also serve. The greater dearness of the means of subsistence 15 never
forgotten there.
(Footnote 105) "THINK OF THOSE, WHO ARE ON THE BORDER OF
THAT REGION (PAUPERISM)", "WAGES... IN OTHERS NOT
INCREASED ... HUMAN LIFE IS BUT, IN NINE CASES OUT OF TEN,

A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE." (Gladstone, HOUSE OF COMMONS,
7th April, 1864). The continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget
speeches of 1863 and 1864 were characterised by an English writer by the
following quotation from Molière:
"Voila' l'homme en effet. Il va du blanc au noir.  Il condamne au matin ses sentiments du soir.  Importun a' tout autre, a' bi meme incommode,  Il change a' tous moments d'esprit comme de mode."
(The Theory of the Exchanges etc., London, 1864, p. 135).
(Footnote 106) H. Fawcett, l. c., [The Economic Position of the British
Labourer] pp. 67-68 As to the increasing dependence of labourers on the
retail shopkeepers, this is the consequence of the frequent oscillations and
interruptions of their employment.

II. BRENTANO AND MARX
No. 3. THE CHARGE
CONCORDIA. No. 10, MARCH 7, 1872 How Karl Marx Quotes
The following passage may be found in the Inaugural Address [note by
Brentano: Reprinted in the Volksstaat, No. 5 of January 17, 1872] of the
International Working Men's Association written by Karl Marx.
"Dazzled by the 'Progress of the Nation' statistics dancing before
his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild
ecstasy: 'From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country
increased by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it
has increased from the basis taken in 1853,20 per cent! The fact is
so astonishing as to be almost incredible!... This intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power,' adds Mr. Gladstone, 'is
entirely confined to classes of property.'"
This quotation by Marx has become famous. We have discovered it in a
considerable number of writings. However, the authors rarely quoted the
Inaugural Address of the International as the source upon which they had
drawn. They inferred that they had themselves read Gladstone's budget
speech. To what extent this was the case may be seen from the following
comparison with Gladstone's speech (see Hansard, Parliamentary Debates,
3rd Series, Vol. 170, p.243 ff.):
"The Income Tax, at 7d. in the pound, in the year 1842 3,
attaching to Great Britain only, and in Great Britain only to
incomes of £150 and upwards, was assessed upon an aggregate
amount of income in the schedules I have named reaching
£156,000,000. Upon the very same area, with the same
limitations, in 1860-1 the amount of assessed income was
£221,000,000. Further, I am not aware that there has been any
change in the machinery of the tax, or any improvement in the
powers of levying the tax, as compared with the powers of
escaping it, that will in any way account for the difference. On the

contrary, certain concessions and relaxations have from time to
time been enacted by the Legislature, which, as far as they go,
would rather tell in the opposite direction. The difference,
however, amounts to no less than £65,000,000 of annual income,
or two-sevenths of the whole annual taxable income of the country
within the area described. That is a most remarkable result; but
there is a certain feature of that result which, when carefully
examined, is yet more remarkable; and that is the accelerated rate
of increase in the latter portion of that period. I again invite the
attention of the Committee for a few minutes. I compare two
periods -- one of them before 1853, and the other since 1853, the
year when the basis was altered. In eight years from 1842 to 1852
inclusive, the liable to tax income of the country, as nearly as we
can make out, increased by 6 per cent; but in eight years, from
1853 to 1861, the income of the country again increased upon the
basis taken by 20 per cent. That is a fact so singular and striking as
to seem almost incredible. [...]
"Such, Sir, is the State of the case as regards the general progress
of accumulation; but, for one, I must say that I should look with
some degree of pain, and with much apprehension, upon this
extraordinary and almost intoxicating growth, if it were my belief
that it is confined to the class of persons who may be described as
in easy circumstances The figures which I have quoted take little
or no cognizance of the condition of those who do not pay income
tax; or, in other words, sufficiently accurate for general truth, they
do not take cognizance of the property of the labouring
population, or of the increase of its income. Indirectly, indeed, the
mere augmentation of Capital is of the utmost advantage to the
labouring class, because that augmentation cheapens the
commodity which in the whole business of production comes into
direct competition with labour. But, besides this, a snare direct
and a larger benefit has, it may safely be asserted, been conferred
upon the mass of the people of the country. It is matter of profound
and inestimable consolation to reflect, that while the rich have
been growing richer, the poor have become less poor. I will not
presume to determine whether the wide interval which separates

the extremes of wealth and poverty is less or more wide than it has
been in former times. But if we look to the average condition of
the British labourer, whether peasant, or miner, or operative, or
artisan, we know from varied and indubitable evidence that
during the last twenty years such an addition has been made
to his means of subsistence as we may almost pronounce to be
without example in the history of any country and of any age."
What is the relationship between this speech and the quotation by Marx?
Gladstone first makes the point that there has undoubtedly been a colossal
increase in the income of the country. This is proved for him by the income
tax. But income tax takes notice only of incomes of 150 pounds sterling and
over. Persons with lower incomes pay no income tax in England. The fact
that Gladstone mentions this so that his yardstick can be properly
appreciated is utilised by Marx to have Gladstone say: "This intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of
property." Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. It
says quite the opposite. Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form
and in content!

No. 4. Karl Marx's Reply
Der Volksstaat, No. 44. Saturday, June 1, 1872
A friend has sent me, from Germany, Concordia. Zeitschrift für die
Arbeiterfrage, No. 10, dated March 7, in which this "organ of the German
Manufacturers' Association" publishes an editorial entitled "How Karl Marx
Quotes".
In the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association I
quote, amongst other material, a portion of
Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863, which is not contained in
Hansard's semi-official report of parliamentary debates. On this basis, with
comfortable manufacturers' logic the Concordia concludes: "This sentence
is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech", and jubilates in the fullness
of its heart with this mocking sentence in manufacturers' German, printed in
mocking bold face:
"Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in
content!"
It would, in fact, be extremely strange if the Inaugural Address, originally
printed in English in London under Gladstone's very eyes, had placed in his
mouth a sentence interpolated by me, a sentence that, for seven and a half
years, circulated unchallenged in the London press, to be finally detected by
the "learned men" of the German Manufacturers' Association in Berlin.
The sentence in question of the Inaugural Address reads as follows:
"This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely
confined to classes of property" (p.6, Inaugural Address etc.). (In
the German translation literally: )
In an article in The Fortnightly Review (November 1870), which attracted
great attention and was discussed by all the London press, Mr. Beesly,
Professor of History at the university here, quoted as follows, p. 518:

"An intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, as Mr.
Gladstone observed, entirely confined to classes of property." (In
the German translation: )
Yet Professor Beesly's article appeared six years later than the Inaugural
Address! Good! Let us now take a specialised publication, intended solely
for the City and published not only before the appearance of the Inaugural
Address, but even before the International Working Men's Association was
founded It is entitled: The Theory of Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of
1844 London 1864, published by T. Cautley Newby, 30, Welbeck Street. It
examines Gladstone's budget speech at length and p. 134 gives the
following quotation from this speech:
"This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to
classes of property." (In the German translation: ...)
That is, word for word, exactly what I quoted.
This proves irrefutably that the German Manufacturers' Association "lied
both in form and in content" in decrying this "sentence as a fabrication "by
me"!
Incidentally: honest old Concordia printed in bold face another passage, in
which Gladstone prattled about an elevation of the English working class,
over the last 20 years, that was supposedly "extraordinary and unparalleled
in all countries and in all periods". The bold-face type is supposed to
indicate that I had suppressed this passage. On the contrary! In the
Inaugural Address I emphasised most strongly the screaming contrast
between this shameless phrase and the "APPALLING STATISTICS" as
Professor Beesly rightly calls them, contained in the official English reports
on the same period. [Marx note: Other whimsical apologetics from the same
speech are dealt with in my work Capital (p.638, 639).]
The author of The Theory of the Exchanges quoted, like myself, not from
Hansard, but from a London newspaper which, on April 17, published the
April 16 budget speech. In my collectanea of cuttings for 1863, I have
searched in vain for the relevant extract and thus, also, for the name of the
newspaper that published it. This is, however, not important. Although the
parliamentary reports of the London newspapers always differ from one

another, I was certain that none of them could completely suppress such a
striking quotation from Gladstone. So I consulted The Times of April 17,
1863 -- it was then, as now, Gladstone's organ -- and there I found, on p.7,
column 5, in the report on the budget speech:
"That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country. I
must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and with
pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if
it were my belief that it was confined to classes who are in easy
circumstances. [Marx note: The words "EASY CLASSES",
"CLASSES IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES" were apparently first
introduced by Wakefield for the really rich portion of the
propertied class.] This takes no cognizance at all of the condition
of the labouring population. The augmentation I have described,
and which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns. n an
augmentation entirely confined to classes of property."
In the German translation: ...
So, on April 16, 1863, Mr. Gladstone declared "both in form and in content"
in the House of Commons, as reported in his own organ, The Times, on
April 17, 1863 that "this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is
entirely confined to the classes possessed of property", and his apprehension
gives him a sort of shiver, but only because of his scruples that this was
confined to one part of this class, the part in really easy circumstances.
Italiam, Italiam! Finally we arrive at Hansard In its edition, here botchily
corrected, Mr. Gladstone was bright enough clumsily to excise the passage
that would be, after all, compromising on the lips of an English Chancellor
of the Exchequer. This is, incidentally, traditional English parliamentary
practice, and by no means the invention of little Lasker versus Bebel. A
careful comparison of Gladstone's speech itself, as it appeared in The Times,
and its subsequent form, as distorted by the same Gladstone, would provide
an amusing description of this unctuous, phrase-mongering, quibbling and
strictly-religious bourgeois hero, who timidly displays his piousness and his
liberal "ATTITUDES OF MIND".
One of the most infuriating things in my work Capital consists in the
masses of official proof describing how manufacturers work, something in

which no scholar could previously find a thing wrong. In the form of a
rumour this even reached the ears of the gentlemen of the German
Manufacturers' Association, but they thought:
"Was kein Verstand der Verstländigen sieht,  Das über in Einfalt ein kindlich' Gemüt."
No sooner said than done. They find a suspicious-looking quotation in the
Inaugural Address and turn for information to a business friend in London,
the first best Mundella, and he, being a manufacturer himself, rushes to
despatch overseas, in black and white, the extract from Hansard's
Parliamentary Debates. Now they have my fabrication secret. I manufacture
not only the text, but the quotations too. Drunk with victory, they trumpet
out to the world "How Karl Marx Quotes!" So my wares were discredited,
once and for all, and, as is fitting for manufacturers, in the way of normal
business, without the expense of Teamed men.
The irksome subsequent events will perhaps teach the Manufacturing
Associates that, however well they may know how to forge goods, they are
as well fitted to judge literary goods as a donkey is to play the lute.
London, May 23, 1872  Karl Marx

No. 5. RETORT BY ANONYMOUS
CONCORDIA, No. 27, July 4, 1872 HOW KARL MARX DEFENDS HIMSELF
I
Our readers will perhaps recall the article "How Karl Marx Quotes" in No.
10 of this paper on March 7 this year. In it we dealt with a passage from the
Inaugural Address of the International, written by Karl Marx, a passage
which has won a certain fame and is frequently quoted by the Social
Democrats as convincing proof of the irrevocable ruin of the working class
should the state and social conditions of today persist. Here Marx quotes
Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863. In this speeds Gladstone first
notes that there has been "an extraordinary and almost intoxicating growth"
of the income of the country, and he uses the increase in income tax
[revenue] to prove this. But the figures he quotes for this purpose "take little
or no cognizance of the condition of those who do not pay income tax";
they "do not take cognizance of the property of the labouring population, or
of the increase of its income". Persons with an income under 150 pounds
sterling, in fact, pay no income tax in England. And the fact that Gladstone
had mentioned this to allow a proper appreciation of his yardstick was
utilised by Marx in order to have Gladstone say: "This intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of
property. However, this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's
speech. On the contrary, Gladstone said that he did not believe this
augmentation "had been confined to the class of persons who may be
described as in easy circumstances". And indignant at the impudence with
which Marx quoted distortingly, we exclaimed: "Marx has added the
sentence lyingly, both in form and in content!"
This was a serious charge; combined with the convincing evidence
provided, it was absolutely devastating for the widespread trust amongst our
Social Democrats in the unparalleled and thorough learnedness, truthfulness
and infallibility of the London oracle. It could therefore not be allowed to
pass without a refutation, or at least something which looked like a

refutation. In number 44 of the Volksstaat dated June l, * Marx attempted to
give such a refutation. But our opponent has by no means been able to wash
himself clean of the charge of mala fides in his quotations. In fact, the ways
and means of his defence are more suitable than anything to prove his mala
fides. The brazenness, namely, with which he once again abuses the fact
that the readers of the Volksstaat have no possibility of checking his claims,
this brazenness even exceeds his frivolity in quotation.
* [Brentano note: That is almost a full three months after the article
appeared in the Concordia Despite this, the Volksstaat was impudent
enough scarcely 14 days after carrying Marx's rebuttal to accuse us of
"heroically silencing" this rebuttal. We believe that the Volksstaat had no
reason to press so hard for the second, and sharper, treatment of its lord and
master. Incidentally, the reason for the delay in our reply is partly due to the
fact that one of the sources cited by Marx was not available here and had to
be obtained from England, partly to the fact that the elucidation of this
quotation demanded lengthy extracts from the relevant sources and
consequently the above article became unusually long, so that, for reasons
of space, we were obliged to postpone publication several times. The
editors of the "Concordia".]
Marx naturally does not go so far as to challenge the correctness of our
quotation from the shorthand report of Parliament. His immediate aim is to
prove his bona fides in quotation, and to this end he refers to the fact that
others have quoted like he did. He writes:
"In an article in The Fortnightly Review (November 1870), which
attracted great attention and was discussed by all the London
press, Mr. Beesly, Professor of History at the university here,
quoted as follows, p. 518: 'An intoxicating augmentation of wealth
and power, as Mr. Gladstone observed, entirely confined to classes
of property.' -- Yet Professor Beesly's article appeared six years
later than the Inaugural Address!"
Quite right! Only the addition of another "yet" has been forgotten. This
article by Professor Beesly deals, in fact, with the history of the
International, and as the author himself informs every enquirer, was written
on the basis of material provided him by Marx. And there is still more. At

this point it is not Beesly who is quoting Gladstone at all; he is merely
saying that the Inaugural Address of the International contains this
quotation. "From this alarming statistics," Beesly writes, "the Address turns
to the income-tax returns, which show that the taxable incomes of the
country have increased by 20% in eight years, 'an intoxicating augmentation
of wealth and power', as Mr. Gladstone observed, entirely confined" etc. --
A fine way of proof indeed! You trick some person who does not know
your dishonesty into accepting a lying statement; this person repeats it in
good faith; and then you cite this and the honesty of the person who
repeated the statement in order to prove the correctness of the statement and
your own honesty. -- Marx continues his defence:
"Let us now take a specialised publication, intended solely for the
City and published not only before the appearance of the
Inaugural Address, but even before International Working Men's
Association was founded. It is entitled: The Theory of Exchanges.
The Bank Charter Act of 1844, London 1864, published by T.
Cautley Newby, 30, Welbeck Street. It examines Gladstone's
budget speech at length and p. 134 gives the following quotation
from this speech: 'This intoxicating augmentation' etc., that is,
word for word, exactly what I quoted. -- This proves irrefutably
that the German Manufacturers' Association 'lied in form' in
decrying this 'sentence' as a fabrication 'by me'!... The author of
The Theory of the Exchanges," Marx then continued, "quoted, like
myself, not from Hansard, but from a London newspaper which,
on April 17, published the April 16 budget speech."
And in fact the author of this hook, which incidentally is a vulgar diatribe,
quoted from Hansard just as little as did Marx. But Marx, as we shall soon
show, also did not even quote from a London newspaper. First, however, it
must be noted here that when we stated that Marx had lyingly added the
sentence in question to Gladstone's speech, we did not claim, either "in
form or In content", that he himself had also fabricated it. This would only
be the case if Marx himself had been the fabricator of that still very obscure
book, though one might be tempted to believe this on account of the ghastly
style in which it is written. The source from which Marx quotes this
sentence is actually this book itself, and this is also the reason why, as he

claims in his "collectanea of cuttings for 1863", he has "searched in vain for
the relevant extract and thus, also, for the name of the newspaper that
published it"! This origin of Marx's quotation is shown clearly by a
comparison of the passage in Capital, his book in which Marx reviews
Gladstone's budget speech, and The Theory of the Exchanges There, on p.
639, particularly in Note 103,a this speech is quoted in the absolutely
senseless version given verbatim by that book on p. 134. And the glosses
too, which Marx bases on the contradiction contained in this version, are
already contained in that book, in particular also the quotation from Molière
given in Note 105 on p. 640 of Capital; and in the same way the statement
of the LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM about the rising prices of foodstuffs
quoted by Marx appears on p. 135 of that book, though Marx bases his
claim for its correctness not on that book, but on that book's sources (see
Capital, p. 640, Note 104).
Now we ask; does anyone tell a lie only when he himself invents an untruth,
or does he not tell a lie quite as much when he repeats it contrary to what he
knows, or is hound to know better? We believe that the answer is beyond
doubt. And secondly, when Marx repeated the untruth contained in The
Theory of the Exchanges, did he not do this contrary to his better
knowledge, or should he at least not have known better? The answer here is
also simple. The first rule for any interpretation, a rule undoubtedly known
to Mr. Marx, is to interpret passages which at first glance contain
contradictions -- and thus make no sense -- in such a way that the
contradiction disappears; and if the available text appears to make this
impossible, one should make a textual criticism rather than believe in the
presence of a contradiction. And this was all the more imperative in the
case of a speech which aroused the interest and admiration of the entire
educated world, notably through its mastery of the material and its clarity.
And finally it was an act of frivolity bordering upon the criminal to act in
any other way than scrupulously when intending to tear Out of context a
passage which provides one half of the contradiction in this version and to
cast it as a denunciation of the propertied amongst the propertyless all over
the world. Karl Marx should have taken umbrage at this version if only on
the basis of general learning, science and conscientiousness; and the
criminal frivolity with which he accepts this lying quotation is completely

inexcusable in his case, since the full text of Gladstone's speech was
available to him. On the one hand, the English newspapers reproduced this
speech the day after it was delivered, and, if Dot true to the word, then true
to the sense. And then, immediately after the delivery of the speech,
Gladstone published it verbatim in his book Financial Statements, London,
1863, which attracted great attention; and on p.403 of that book the speech
is printed just as we quoted it. Finally, Marx could refer to the shorthand
report of this speech in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, and it is the
custom to always quote a speech to Parliament from the shorthand report,
even if it contains no contradictions to the necessarily bungling newspaper
reports.
But here we come, to be sure, to Marx's third line of defence, and this far
exceeds, in its impudent mendacity, anything which came before. Marx
actually does not shrink from citing The Times of April 17, 1863 as proof of
the correctness of his quotation. The Times of April 17, 1863, p.7, col. 5,
line 17ff, reports, however, the speech as follows:
"That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country.
I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and
with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power, if it were my belief that it was confined to classes
finding themselves in pleasant circumstances. This takes no
cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The
augmentation I have described, and the figures of which are
based, I think, upon accurate returns, * is entirely confined to
classes of property." (Marx quotes The Times to this point; we
quote further.) "Now, the augmentation of Capital is of indirect
benefit to the labourer, because it cheapens the commodity which
in the business of production comes into direct competition with
labour. (Hear, hear!) But we have this profound, and, I must say,
inestimable consolation, that, while the rich have been growing
richer, the poor have been growing less poor. -- Whether the
extremes of poverty are less extreme than they were I do not
presume to say, but the average condition of the British labourer,
we have the happiness to know, has improved during the last 20
years in a degree which we know to be extraordinary, and which

we may almost pronounce to be unexampled in the history of any
country and of any age. (Cheers)"
* (Note by Brentano: In his German quotation in the Volksstaat Marx omits
this relative clause and instead inserts: "which he" (Gladstone) "had just
described as 'this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power'." This
omission and this insertion too are designed to mislead the reader about the
sense of Gladstone's words. The omitted relative clause and in addition the
general context show that the sense of the speech is as follows: The
augmentation of wealth shown by the income tax returns is certainly
confined to the classes of property (since this tax is only imposed upon
persons with an income of 150 pounds sterling and over), but with regard to
the labouring class, we know, etc.)
A comparison of this Times report with the report after Hansard in the
Concordia of March 7 will show that both reports fully coincide materially.
The report in The Times just gives, formally more contracted, what the
shorthand report by Hansard gives verbatim. Yet despite the fact that the
Times report contains the direct opposite of that notorious passage in the
Inaugural Address, and the fact that according to the Times report, too, Mr.
Gladstone said he believed this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power not to be confined to classes in easy circumstances, Marx has the
impudence to write in the Volksstaat of June 1:
"So, on April 16, 1863, Mr. Gladstone declared 'both in form and
in content' that 'this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power is entirely confined to the classes possessed of property'."
But even more. Since we had already presented to the public the complete
text of the speech from Hansard, and this text completely excluded the
possibility of any distortion, an attempt is made to delete this very
embarrassing circumstance with the phrase in the Hansard "edition, here
botchily corrected, Mr. Gladstone was bright enough clumsily to excise the
passage that would be, after all, compromising on the lips of an English
Chancellor of the Exchequer"! All that is lacking is the claim that Gladstone
probably did this in deference to the diatribe The Theory of the Exchanges,
which did not appear until 1864!

What can one say about such methods? First we are presented, on the basis
of an obscure diatribe, with a quotation which was completely forged, and
the contradictory substance of which proved that it was forged, even
without confronting it with the original. Called to account in this matter,
Marx states that others quoted in the same way as he did, and refers to
people whom he himself fooled with this lie. Even more: from the fact that
his fuzzy sources accord with him, he tries to fashion an argument to excuse
himself and show the correctness of his quotation, as though both of them
had drawn upon a joint, correct, third source, though in fact one had only
copied from the other. And finally he has the impudence to base himself on
newspaper reports which directly contradict him. Indeed, to describe these
practices we know only one word, a word with which Marx himself is very
familiar (see Capital, p. 257): they are simply "nefarious".
Marx closes his defence with these words: "The irksome subsequent events
will perhaps teach the Manufacturing Associates that, however well they
may know how to forge goods, they are as well fitted to judge literary
goods as a donkey is to play the lute."
We confidently leave it to the reader to decide on which side the forgery
and the irksomeness ultimately lie. In a further article we shall explain to
Mr. Marx the importance which we attach to the content of Gladstone's
words.
* * *

The second article, Concordia, No. 28, July 11, 1872, contains absolutely
nothing of relevance, and is therefore omitted.

No. 6. MARX'S SECOND REPLY
DER VOLKSSTAAT, No. 55, AUGUST 7, 1872
In the Concordia of July 4, the German Manufacturers' Association
attempted to prove to me that its "learned men" were as well fitted to judge
literary goods as the Association was to forge commercial ones.
With reference to the passage from Gladstone's budget speech of April 16,
1863, as quoted in the Inaugural Address of the International, the
manufacturers' organ (No. 10) stated:
"Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in
content."
It thus declares that I fabricated the sentence in both form and content, with
hair and bones. Even more: it knows exactly how I did so. The paper writes:
"The fact that Gladstone mentioned this, etc., was utilised by Marx in order
to hove Gladstone say, etc." By quoting the sentence from a work published
before the Inaugural Address, The Theory of the Exchanges, I exposed the
crude lie of the manufacturers' organ. As the paper itself relates, it then
ordered from London this work which it did not know, and convinced itself
of the facts of the matter. How could it lie itself out of the situation? See
here:
"When we stated that Marx had lyingly added the sentence in
question to Gladstone's speech, we did not claim, either in form or
in content, that he himself had also fabricated it."
Here we obviously have a case of equivocation peculiar to the mind of
manufacturers. For example, when a manufacturing swindler, in agreement
with business colleagues, sends out into the world rolls of ribbon that
contain, instead of the alleged three dozen ells only two dozen, then he has
in fact lyingly added one dozen ells, precisely because he "has not
fabricated" them. Why, moreover, should lyingly added sentences not
behave just like lyingly added ells? "The understandings of the greater part

of men," says Adam Smith, "are necessarily formed by their ordinary
employments", the understandings of the manufacturer included.
Through the Volksstaat, I extended the erudite materials of the
manufacturers' organ, not only with the quotation from The Theory of the
Exchanges, but also with the pages from my work Capital concerning
Gladstone's budget speeches. Now, from the material with which I provided
it, the paper attempts to prove that I did not quote the disputed passage from
a "London newspaper", but from The Theory of the Exchanges. The chain
of arguments is another sample of manufacturers' logic.
I told the manufacturers' sheet that The Theory of the Exchanges quotes on
page 134 exactly as I quoted, and it discovers -- that I quoted exactly as The
Theory of the Exchanges quotes on page 134.
And further!
"And the glosses too, which Marx bases on the contradiction
contained in this version, are already contained in that book."
This is simply a lie. On page 639 of Capital, I give my glosses to the words
in Gladstone's speech:
"While the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been
growing less poor. Whether the extremes of poverty are less, I do
not presume to say."
My remark on this is: "How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has
remained 'poor', only 'less poor' in proportion as it produces for the wealthy
class 'an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power', then it has
remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not
lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have." And
these "glosses" are nowhere to be found in The Theory of the Exchanges.
"And the glosses too ... are already contained in that hook, in
particular also the quotation from Molière given in Note 105 on
p. 640 of Capital."
So, "in particular also" I quote Molière, and leave it up to the "learned men"
of the Concordia to detect and communicate to the public the fact that the

quotation comes from The 'Theory of the Exchanges. In fact, however, I
state expressly in Note 105, p. 640 of Capital that the author of The Theory
of the Exchanges "characterises with the following quotation from Molière"
the "continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches".
Finally:
"... in the same way the statement of the LONDON ORPHAN
ASYLUM about the rising prices of foodstuffs quoted by Marx
appears on p. 135 of that book, though Marx bases his claim for its
correctness not on that hook, but on that book's sources (see
Capital, p. 640, Note 104)".
The Concordia advisedly forgets to inform its readers that "that book" gives
no sources. What was it trying to prove? That I took from that "book" a
passage from Gladstone's speech without knowing its source. And how
does the Concordia prove it? By the fact that I really did take a quotation
from that book, and checked it with the original sources, independent of the
book!
Referring to my quotation from Professor Beesly's article in The Fortnightly
Review (November 1870), the Concordia remarks.
"This article by Professor Beesly deals, in fact, with the history of
the International, and as the author himself informs every
enquirer, was written on the basis of material provided him by
Marx himself."
Professor Beesly states:
"To no one is the success of the association so much due as to Dr.
Karl Marx, who, in his acquaintance with the history and statistics
of the industrial movement in all parts of Europe, is, I should
imagine, without a rival. I am LARGELY indebted to him for the
information contained in this article."
All the material with which I supplied Professor Beesly referred exclusively
to the history of the International, and not a word concerned the Inaugural
Address, which he had known since its publication. The context in which
his above remark stood left so little doubt on this point that The Saturday

Review, in a review of his article, more than hinted that he himself was the
author of the Inaugural Address. [Brentano note: Professor Beesly drew my
attention, in writing, to this quid pro quo.]
The Concordia asserts that Professor Beesly did not quote the passage in
question from Gladstone's speech, but only stated "that the Inaugural
Address contained this quotation". Let us look into this.
Professor Beesly states:
"The address [...] is probably the most striking and powerful
statement of the workman's case as against the middle class that
has ever been compressed into a dozen small pages. I wish I had
space for copious extracts from it."
After mentioning the "frightful statistics of the Blue Books", to which the
Address refers, he goes on:
"From these appalling Statistics the address passes on to the
income-tax returns, from which it appeared that the taxable
income of the country had increased in eight years twenty per
cent, 'an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power', as Mr.
Gladstone observed, 'entirely confined to classes of property'."
Professor Beesly sets the words: "as Mr. Gladstone observed" outside
quotation marks, Saying these words on his own behalf, and thus proves to
the Concordia with the greatest clarity that he knows Gladstone's budget
speech -- solely from the quotation in the Inaugural Address! As the
London business friend of the German Manufacturers' Association, he is the
only man who knows Gladstone's budget speeches, just as he, and he alone,
knows: "Persons with an income under 150 pounds sterling, in fact, pay no
income tax in England." (See the Concordia, Nos. 10 and 27.) Yet English
tax officials suffer from the idée fixe that this tax only stops at incomes
under 100 pounds sterling.
Referring to the disputed passage in the Inaugural Address, the
manufacturers' paper stated:
"Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech." I
proved the contrary with a quotation from the "Times" report of

April 17, 1863. I gave the quotation in the Volksstaat in both
English and German, since a commentary was necessary on
account of Gladstone's assertion that he would "look almost with
apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation
of wealth and power, if it were" his "belief that it was confined to
the CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES". Basing
myself on Wakefield, I declared that the "CLASSES WHO ARE IN
EASY CIRCUMSTANCES" -- an expression for which there is no
German equivalent -- means the "really rich", "the really
prosperous portion" of the propertied classes. Wakefield actually
calls the real middle class "THE UNEASY CLASS which is in
German roughly "die ungemächliche Klasse". [Marx note: "THE
MIDDLE OR UNEASY CLASS" [E. G. Wakefield]
("ENGLAND AND AMERICA", London, 1833, V.1, p.185).]
The manufacturers' worthy organ not only suppresses my exposition, it ends
the passage I quoted with the words: "Marx quotes The Times to this point",
thus leaving the reader to suppose that it had quoted from my translation; in
fact, however, the paper, leaving my version aside, does not translate
"CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES" as "wohlhabenden
Klassen" but as "Klassen, die sich in angenehmen Verhältnissen befinden".
The paper believes its readers capable of understanding that not all sections
of the propertied class are "prosperous", though it will always be a "pleasant
circumstance" for them to possess property. Even in the translation of my
quotation, as given by the Concordia, however, Gladstone describes the
progress of Capitalist wealth as "this intoxicating augmentation of wealth
and power", and remarks that here he has "taken no cognizance at all of the
condition of the labouring population", closing with words to the effect that
this "augmentation is entirely confined to the classes possessed of
property". Once the "learned man" of the German Manufacturers'
Association has, in the report of The Times of April 17, 1863, thus had
Gladstone say "both in form and in content", the same as I had him say in
the Inaugural Address, he strikes his swollen breast, brimming with
conviction, and blusters:
"Yet despite this Marx has the impudence to write in the Volksstaat
of June 1: 'So, on April 16, 1863, Mr. Gladstone declared 'both in

form and in content' in the House of Commons, as reported in his
own organ, The Times, on April 17, 1863 that 'this intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to the
classes possessed of property'."
The "learned man" of the German Manufacturers' Association obviously
knows exactly what to offer his readership!
In the Volksstaat of June 1, I remarked that the Concordia was trying to
make its readers believe I had suppressed in the Inaugural Address
Gladstone's phrases about the improvement in the condition of the British
working class, though in fact the exact opposite was the case, and I stressed
there with great emphasis the glaring contradiction between this
declamation and the officially established facts. In its reply of July 4, the
manufacturers' paper repeated the same manoeuvre. "Marx quotes The
Times to this point," the paper says, "we quote further." In confrontation
with the paper, I needed only to quote the disputed passage, but let us look
for a moment at the "further".
After pouring forth his panegyric on the increase of Capitalist wealth,
Gladstone turns to the working class. He takes good care not to say that it
had shared in the "intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power". On the
contrary, he goes on, according to The Times: "Now, the augmentation of
Capital is of indirect benefit to the labourer, etc." He consoles himself
further on with the fact "that while the rich have been growing richer, the
poor have been growing less poor". Finally, he asserts that he and his
enriched parliamentary friends "have the happiness to know" the opposite
of what parliamentary enquiries and statistical data prove to be the fact,
viz.,
"that the average condition of the British labourer has improved
during the last 20 years in a degree which we know to be
extraordinary, and which we may almost pronounce to be
unparalleled in the history of any country and of any age".
Before Mr. Gladstone, all his predecessors "had the happiness" to
supplement the picture of the augmentation of Capitalist wealth in their
budget speeches with self-satisfied phrases about the improvement in the

condition of the working class. Yet he gives the lie to them all; for the
millennium dates only from the passing of the Free Trade legislation. The
correctness or incorrectness of Gladstone's reasons for consolidation and
congratulation is, however, a matter of indifference here. We are concerned
solely with this: that, from his standpoint, the pretended "extraordinary"
improvement in the condition of the working class in no way contradicts the
"intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power that is entirely confined to
the classes possessed of property". On the contrary. It is the orthodox
doctrine of the mouthpieces of Capital -- Mr. Gladstone being one of the
best paid -- that the most infallible means for working men to benefit
themselves is -- to enrich their exploiters.
The shameless stupidity or stupid shamelessness of the manufacturers'
organ culminates in its assurance: "The report in The Times just gives,
formally more contracted, what the shorthand report by Hansard gives
verbatim." [Marx note: The manufacturers' paper appears actually to believe
that the big London newspapers employ no shorthand writers for their
parliamentary reports.] Now let us see both reports:
I:
From Gladstone's speech of April 16, 1863, printed in "The
Times" of April 17, 1863 debates of March 27 to May 28 1863
"That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country.
I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and
with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power if it were my belief that was confined to the CLASSES WHO
ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES. This takes no cogniz- ance at
all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation
I have described ... is an augmentation entirely confined to the
classes possessed of property. Now the augmentation of Capital is
of indirect benefit to the labourer etc. they do not take cognizance
of the property (!) of the labouring population, or (!) of the
increase of its income. Indirectly, indeed, the mere augmentation
of Capital is of the utmost advantage to the labouring class, etc."
II:

From Gladstone's speech of April 16, 1863, printed by Hansard,
Vol. 170, parliamentary
"Such [...] is the state of the case as regards the general progress
of accumulation; but, for one, I must say that I should look with
some degree of pain, and with much apprehension, it upon this
extraordinary and almost intoxicating growth, if it were my belief
that it is confined to THE CLASS OF PERSONS WHO MAY BE
DESCRIBED AS IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES. The figures which
I have quoted take little or no cognizance of the condition of those
who do not pay income tax; or, in other words, sufficiently
accurate for general truth (!),
I leave it to the reader himself to compare the stilted, involved,
complicated CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE [From Ch. Dickens' Little
Dorrit -- MECW Ed.] style of the Hansard publication with the report
in The Times.
Here it is enough to establish that the words of the Times report: "This
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power ... the augmentation I have
described ... is an augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed
of property", are in part garbled by Hansard and in part completely
suppressed. Their emphatic "exact wording" escaped no earwitness. For
example:
"The Morning Star", April 17, 1863 (Gladstone's budget speech of April 16,
1863).
"I must say, for one, I should look with apprehension and with
pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if
it were my belief that it was confined to the CLASSES WHO
ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES. THIS GREAT INCREASE
OF WEALTH takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the
labouring population. THE AUGMENTATION IS AN
AUGMENTATION ENTIRELY CONFINED TO THE CLASSES
POSSESSED OF PROPERTY. BUT THAT AUGMENTATION
must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, etc."

"The Morning Advertiser", April 17, 1863 (Gladstone's budget speech of
April 16, 1863).
"I must say, for one, I should look almost with apprehension and
ALARM upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power, if it were my belief that it was confined to the CLASSES
WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES. This great increase of
wealth takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring
population. THE AUGMENTATION STATED is an augmentation
entirely confined to the CLASSES POSSESSED OF PROPERTY.
THIS AUGMENTATION must be of indirect benefit to the
labouring population, etc."
Thus, Gladstone subsequently filched away from the semiofficial Hansard
report of his speech the words that he had uttered in the House of Commons
on April 16, 1863: "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power ...
is an augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed of property."
The Concordia did not, therefore, find this in the excerpt provided by their
business friend in London, and trumpeted:
"Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech.
Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in
content."
It is no surprise that they now weepingly tell me that it is the critical
"custom" to quote parliamentary speeches as officially falsified, and not as
they were actually delivered. Such a "custom" in fact accords with the
"general" Berlin "education", and the limited thinking of the German
Manufacturers' Association which is typical of Prussian subjects. Lack of
time forces me to end, once and for all, my pleasurable exchange of
opinions with the Association, but as a farewell, another nut for its "learned
men" to crack. In what article did a man -- and what was his name -- utter to
an opponent of a rank at least equal with that of the Concordia, the weighty
words: "Asinus manebis in secula seculorum"? ["Thou wilt remain an ass
for evermore."]
London, July 28, 1872  Karl Marx

No. 7. THE REJOINDER OF ANONYMOUS
CONCORDIA, No. 54, AUGUST 22, 1872 More on the Character of Karl Marx
On August 7, in the Volksstaat, Karl Marx replied to the article "How Karl
Marx Defends Himself" in No. 27 of the Concordia. Astonishing is the
dogged mendacity with which he clings to the distorted quotation from
Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863, astonishing even for someone
for whom no means are too base for his subversive plans. In fact this can
only be explained by the fear, which must be called forth in the author, of
the very embarrassing effect of confessing that this quotation, the
bombshell of the Inaugural Address, is false, given the great circulation of
the latter.
It will be recalled that in his first defence Marx admitted the shorthand
report of Gladstone's speech in Hansard did not contain this quotation. But
the reason was: Mr. Gladstone had clumsily excised this compromising
passage! Initial proof: Professor Beesly, in an article in The Fortnightly
Review had quoted this speech in the same way as the Inaugural Address.
This could lead the reader to believe that Professor Beesly had quoted
Gladstone's speech in an essay on some other historical theme than the
International. We therefore remarked, firstly, that this article dealt with the
history of the International, and was written on the basis of material that
Marx himself had provided the author with. And Marx does not now deny
this. However, he assures us that the material he provided did not contain a
single word referring to the contents of the Inaugural Address, which had
been known to Professor Beesly since its publication. However, we never
said or insinuated such a thing. And we absolutely believe Mr. Marx's
assurance. Had he shown Mr. Beesly The Theory of the Exchanges as the
source of his quotation, Beesly would certainly have refrained from
reprinting it. Secondly, we replied -- and this is the main rejoinder: it was
not Beesly who quoted the passage in question from Gladstone's speech; he
only cited it in an analysis of the Inaugural Address. We quoted word for
word the relevant sentence from Beesly's article, as can be seen in No. 27 of

the Concordia. The fact that Beesly, in his analysis, gave the words "as Mr.
Gladstone observed" without quotation marks * is now used by Marx to
explain to his readers that Beesly, suddenly interrupting his analysis, said
these words on his own behalf!! [Note by Brentano: Additional note on
republication: Professor Beesly copied the passage which he quoted from
the Inaugural Address exactly as given there. There, however, the inserted
clause is naturally without quotation marks.]
Marx sought to find further proof that Gladstone had clumsily excised the
words in question from his speech in the fact that The Theory of the
Exchanges, a publication which appeared before the Inaugural Address,
quoted Gladstone's budget speech word for word as in the Address. We
checked with the book, saw that this was correct, but that everything
suggests Marx himself took his quotation from this book. The main sign of
this was that Capital by Marx, on p.639, especially in Note 103, quotes this
speech in the absolutely senseless version given verbatim by The Theory of
the Exchanges on p.134. This suggestion that The Theory of the Exchanges
was the source of Marx's quotation is further supported by the fact that in
the passage in his book Capital where he quotes the Gladstone speech just
as The Theory of the Exchanges did on p. 134, he gives other quotations to
be found at the same place in that book, and adds glosses like this. How
does Mr. Marx reply to this? For a start, that he also added glosses which
are not to be found in The Theory of the Exchanges. But neither is this
precluded by our remark. Then he states that he specifically named the
author of The Theory of the Exchanges as the author of the quotation from
Molière. But we did not claim the contrary. Finally, regarding the statement
of the LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM, which Marx quotes on p. 640 of his
book just as The Theory of the Exchanges does on p. 135, Marx himself
admits that he quoted verbatim from this book, but that he checked the
correctness with the original sources. Marx thus testifies himself that part of
the glosses which he appends to the quotation from Gladstone's speech
come from The Theory of the Exchanges. He thus bears witness to the
correctness of the points with which we supported our main argument that
he had also taken from The Theory of the Exchanges the quotation from
Gladstone's speech. But he has nothing to say in answer to this main
argument, in answer to the remark that he, like The Theory of the

Exchanges, quotes Gladstone's speech in the same absolutely senseless
version.
Thirdly and finally, Marx attempts to prove his claim that Gladstone
subsequently falsified his own budget speech in the shorthand report in
Hansard by referring to the report of this speech in The Times of April 17,
1863. But this report shows the exact opposite, since The Times and
Hansard fully coincide materially. To obscure recognition of this fact by his
readers, Marx utilises various methods. The first method, designed
simultaneously to awaken amongst the readers of the Volksstaat new
admiration for the erudition of their oracle, was a philological lecture.
Gladstone explicitly stated, also according to the Times report, insofar as
Marx quoted this, that he believed that the intoxicating augmentation of
wealth and power of which he had spoken was not confined "TO THE
CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES", i.e. the classes
finding themselves in pleasant circumstances. Basing himself upon
Wakefield, who had written a book entitled The Middle or Uneasy Class,
Marx now claimed that Gladstone had said he believed this augmentation
was Dot confined to the "really rich", the "really prosperous portion" of the
propertied classes; and since we took no notice of this entire argumentation,
he now accuses us of suppression. But if we remained silent about this
further attempt at falsification, the only reason was that it was, in fact, too
manifest. For whatever Wakefield may have meant when he called the
middle class THE UNEASY CLASS the whole context of Gladstone's
speech, in the Times report too, shows that by the "CLASSES WHO ARE
IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES" Gladstone at this point meant those classes
which are not part of the working population, since he drew a contrast
between them and it.
Marx's second method of obscuring the Times report was simply to
suppress, in his German translation of this report, the relative clause which
showed that Gladstone had only said that the augmentation of wealth,
which was shown by the income tax returns, was confined to the classes of
property, since the working classes were not subject to income tax, and that
thus nothing about the increase in the prosperity of the working classes
could be learned from the income tax returns; not, however, that the
working classes in reality had been excluded from the extraordinary

augmentation of national wealth. Marx, who, as we just have seen, quite
unwarrantably accused the Concordia of suppression, once again quietly
suppressed this relative clause, although we had remonstrated with him
about his distortion. And even more. We had stated, in accordance with the
truth, that the report in The Times just gives, formally more contracted, what
the shorthand report by Hansard gives verbatim; but he denies this and
dares to print side by side the Times report and that from Hansard, though
he naturally once again omits this relative clause. But what does it matter?
The readers of the Volksstaat, with whom he is concerned, cannot check up
on him!
Thirdly and finally, Marx attempted to conceal the agreement between the
Times report and the Hansard report by failing to quote those sentences in
which, according to The Times too, Gladstone directly and explicitly
testified to the elevation of the British working class. We made a remark
about this, and quoted in full the relevant passage of the Times report.
Despite this, Marx lies to his readers that we had wanted to give the
impression that we were quoting The Times according to his translation! But
against this, he naturally suppresses our proof (in No. 28) that the glaring
contradiction, according to Marx, between Gladstone's claim about the
improvement in the condition of the British working class and the officially
established facts, does not exist in reality; instead he repeats once again this
accusation.
Apart from this, Marx, in his reply in the Volksstaat of August 7, produces
two further witnesses to the correctness of his reading of Gladstone's budget
speech: The Morning Star and The Morning Advertiser of April 17, 1863.
But we do not need to check whether Marx has quoted the two papers
without fresh falsification. [Note by Brentano: Additional note on
republication: Here too Marx omits the same sentences which he
suppressed in his reproduction of the Times report. See the two reports at
the beginning.] For these papers, even as he quotes them, speak for us.
After Gladstone had said, according to both papers, that he did not believe
this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is confined to the
classes which find themselves in pleasant circumstances, he continued:
"This great increase of wealth takes no cognizance at all of the condition of
the labouring population. The augmentation which I have described is an

augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed of property." The
context and the use of the expression "take cognizance" show clearly that
this increase and the augmentation of the increase cited, and the citing, are
intended to indicate those discernible in the income tax returns.
But the introduction of these new alleged witnesses is only an expression of
the faked thoroughness, intended to perpetuate the faith of Volksstaat
readers in their oracle. Marx's article in the Volksstaat of August 7 is a
model of this, and worthy of perusal by our readers in person. We need only
quote one more example of this, in order to deprive Mr. Marx of the
argument that we wished to conceal from our readers that he had corrected
us on a point of minor import. We had stated that in England persons with
an income under 150 pounds sterling paid no income tax. Mr. Marx taunts
us that we do not know this tax only ceases on incomes under 100 pounds
sterling. In fact the law of 1842 left all incomes under 150 pounds sterling
quite free of tax, but in 1853 the tax was extended downwards to 100
pounds sterling, although the newly included incomes were treated more
lightly, since they were subjected to a lower rate of tax than those of 150
pounds sterling and above. In 1863 the favored sector was extended to 200
pounds sterling exclusive upwards, and the tax reduction granted in the
manner that for every income from that figure down to 100 pounds sterling
inclusive, 60 pounds sterling could be subtracted as tax-free.
Mr. Marx closes his article by telling us that lack of time forces him to end,
once and for all, his pleasurable exchange of opinions with us. We
understand that Mr. Marx welcomes the opportunity of avoiding somebody
who uncovers his forgeries. When Mr. Marx finally ends his article by
breaking into abuse, we can assure him that his opponents could desire
nothing more than the confession of guilt which lies herein. Abuse is the
weapon of those whose other means of defence have run out.

III
SEDLEY TAYLOR AND ELEANOR MARX
No. 8. ATTACK BY S. TAYLOR
THE TIMES, NOVEMBER 29, 1885 To the Editor of "The Times"
Sir, -- I ask leave to point out in The Times that the Origin of the misleading
quotation from Mr. Gladstone's Budget speech of April 16, 1863, which so
eminent a publicist as Professor Émile de Laveleye a has been led to
reproduce through reliance on German sources, and with respect to which
he inserts a correction in The Times of this day, is to be found as far back as
1864 in an address issued by the council of the famous International
Working Men's Association.
What appears extremely singular is that it was reserved for Professor
Brentano (then of the University of Breslau, now of that of Strassburg) to
expose, eight years later in a German newspaper, the bad faith which had
manifestly dictated the citation made from Mr. Gladstone's speech in the
address.
Herr Karl Marx, who as the acknowledged author of the address attempted
to defend the citation, had the hardihood, in the deadly shifts to which
Brentano's masterly conduct of the attack speedily reduced him, to assert
Mr. Gladstone had "manipulated" (zurechtgestümpert) the report of his
speech in The Times of April 17, 1863, before it appeared in "Hansard", in
order "to obliterate" (wegzupfuschen) a passage which "was certainly
compromising for an English Chancellor of the Exchequer". On Brentano's
showing, by a detailed comparison of texts, that the reports of The Times
and of "Hansard" agreed in utterly excluding the meaning which craftily-
isolated quotation had put upon Mr. Gladstone's words, Marx withdrew
from further' controversy under the plea of "want of time"!
The whole of the Brentano-Marx correspondence is eminently worthy of
being unearthed from the files of newspapers under which it lies buried, and

republished in an English form, as it throws upon the latter disputant's
standard of literary honesty a light which can be ill spared at a time when
his principal work is presented to us as nothing less than a fresh gospel of
social renovation.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Sedley Taylor  Trinity College, Cambridge,  November 26th [1883]
This letter appeared in The Times on November 29, 1883. On November 30,
Eleanor, Marx's junior daughter, sent her reply to The Times. Her letter did
not appear. She again wrote in vain to the editor. Then she addressed herself
t9 the Daily News, but once more without success. Then she published both
Mr. Sedley Taylor's accusation and her reply in the February 1884 issue of
the socialist monthly To-Day. We publish her reply below.

No. 9. ELEANOR MARX'S REPLY
TO-DAY, FEBRUARY 1884
To the Editor of "The Times"
Sir, -- In The Times of November 29th Mr. Sedley Taylor refers to a certain
quotation of a speech by Mr. Gladstone,
"to be found as far back as 1864, in an address issued by the
council of the famous International Working Men's Association".
He continues: (I here quote Mr. Taylor's letter from "What appears" to
"want of time").
The facts are briefly these. The quotation referred to consists of a few
sentences from Mr. Gladstone's Budget speech of April 16th, 1863. After
describing the immense increase of wealth that took place in this country
between 1853 and 1861 Mr. Gladstone is made to say:
"This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely
confined to classes of property."
An anonymous writer, who turns out to be Professor Brentano, published in
a German paper, Concordia, of the 7th March, 1872 a reply in which it was
stated:
"This sentence does not exist in Mr. Gladstone's speech, Marx has
added it lyingly, both as to form and contents" (formel und
materiel hinzugelogen).
This was the only point at issue between my father and his anonymous
opponent.
In his replies in the Leipzig Volksstaat, June 1st and August 7th, 1872, Dr.
Marx quotes the reports of Mr. Gladstone's speech as follows:
"The Times, April 17th:

"The augmentation I have described, and which is founded, I
think, on accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely
confined to classes of property.
Morning Star 17th April:
"This augmentation is an augmentation confined entirely to
the classes possessed of property,
Morning Advertiser, April 17th:
"The augmentation stated is altogether limited to classes
possessed of property.
The anonymous Brentano, in the "deadly shifts to which his own masterly
conduct of the attack had reduced him", now took refuge under the
assertion usual in such circumstances, that if the quotation was not a forgery
it was, at all events, "misleading", in "bad faith", "craftily isolated", and so
forth. I am afraid you would not allow me space to reply to this accusation
of Herr Brentano, repeated now, after eleven years, by Mr. Taylor. Perhaps
it will not be required, as Mr. Taylor says:
"The whole of this Brentano-Marx correspondence is eminently
worthy of being unearthed from the file of newspapers in which it
lies buried and republished in an English form."
I quite agree with this. The memory of my father could only gain by it. As
to the discrepancies between the newspaper reports of the speech in
question and the report in "Hansard" I must leave this to be settled by those
most interested in it.
Out of thousands and thousands of quotations to be found in my father's
writings this is the only one the correctness of which has ever been
disputed. The fact that this single and not very lucky instance is brought up
again and again by the professorial economists is very characteristic. In the
words of Mr. Taylor,
"it throws upon the latter disputant's" (Dr. Marx) "standard of
literary honesty a light which can ill be spared at a time when his

principal work is presented to us as nothing less than a fresh
gospel of social renovation".
I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
Eleanor Marx  London, November 30, 1883

No. 10. SEDLEY TAYLOR'S RETORT
TO-DAY, MARCH 1884 To the Editors of "To-Day"
Gentlemen,
No one can regret more than I do that Miss Marx should have been refused
the public hearing to which she was so manifestly entitled. I am, however,
far from thinking with her that the question whether a particular sentence
did, or did not, occur in Mr. Gladstone's speech "was the only point at issue
between" Dr. Marx and Professor Brentano. I regard that question as having
been of very subordinate importance compared to the issue whether the
quotation in dispute was made with the intention of conveying, or of
perverting, Mr. Gladstone's meaning.
It would obviously be impossible to discuss in this letter the contents of the
voluminous Brentano-Marx controversy without making an inadmissible
demand on your space. As, however, Miss Marx has in your columns
characterised as a "calumny" and "libel" an opinion publicly expressed by
me, [Note by Engels: In the covering letter to the Editors of To-Day, not
published here.] I feel bound to ask your insertion, side by side, of the two
following extracts, which will enable your readers to judge for themselves
whether Dr. Marx has quoted fairly or unfairly from the Budget Speech of
1863 in his great work, "Das Kapital". My reason for using the Times report
in preference to that of Hansard will be obvious to readers of Dr. Marx'
letters in his correspondence with Brentano.
Times, April 17, 1863
"In ten years, from 1842 to 1852 inclusive, the taxable income of
the country, as nearly as we can make out, increased by 6 per
cent.; but in eight years, from 1853 to 1861, the income of the
country again increased from the basis taken by 20 per cent. That
is a fact so strange as to be almost incredible....
"I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and
with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and

power if it were my belief that it was confined to the classes who
are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognisance at all of the
condition of the labouring population. The augmentation I have
described, and which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is
an augmentation entirely confined to classes possessed of
property. Now, the augmentation of Capital is of indirect benefit to
the labourer, because it cheapens the commodity which in the
business of production comes into direct competition with labour.
But we have this profound, and I must say, inestimable
consolation, that, while the rich have been growing richer, the
poor have been growing less poor. Whether the extremes of
poverty are less extreme than they were I do not presume to say,
but the average condition of the British labourer, we have the
happiness to know, has improved during the last 20 years in a
degree which we know to be extraordinary, and which we may
almost pronounce to be unexampled in the history of any country
and of any age."
Capital, 2nd edition, 1872 page 678, note 103
"From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased
by 6 per cent...
"In the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it had increased from the
basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing as to be
almost incredible...
"...This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power...
"...entirely confined to classes of property... must be of indirect
benefit to the labouring population because it cheapens the
commodities of general consumption...
"...while the rich have been growing richer the poor have been
growing less poor! At any rate, whether the extremes of poverty
are less I do not presume to say."
Mr. Gladstone, in House of Commons, 16th April, 1863

I invite especial attention to the hearing on Mr. Gladstone's meaning of
the passages in the Times report which I have thrown into italics. The
sentence, "I must say ... easy circumstances," conveys the speaker's
belief that the intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power
previously described was not confined to those in easy circumstances.
There is, it is true, a verbal contrariety with the later sentence, "The
augmentation ... property," but the intervening words, "This takes no
cognisance... population," unmistakably show what Mr. Gladstone
meant, viz., that the figures which he had given, being based on the
income-tax returns, included only incomes above the exemption limit,
[Note by Taylor: This stood at £150 from 1842 to 1853, and was then
lowered to £100.] and therefore afforded no indication to what extent
the total earnings of the labouring population had increased during the
period under consideration. The closing passage, from "but the
average" to the end, announces in the most emphatic language that, on
evidence independent of that obtained from the income-tax returns, Mr.
Gladstone recognised as indubitable an extraordinary and almost
unexampled improvement in the average condition of the British
labourer.
Now, with what object were these essential passages almost wholly struck
out in the process by which the newspaper report was reduced to the
remarkable form in which it appears in Dr. Marx' work? Clearly, I think, in
order that the arbitrarily-constructed mosaic, pieced together out of such of
Mr. Gladstone's words as were allowed to remain, might be understood as
asserting that the earnings of the labouring population had made but
insignificant progress, while the incomes of the possessing classes had
increased enormously -- a view which the omitted passages explicitly
repudiate in favour of a very different opinion.
I must not pass over unnoticed the fact that the German translation of this
docked citation in the text of "Das Kapital" is immediately followed there
by the expression of Dr. Marx' contemptuous astonishment at the "lame
anti-climax" presented by the sentence made to figure as the conclusion of
Mr. Gladstone's paragraph, when compared with his previous description of
the growth of wealth among the possessing classes.

I am, Gentlemen, yours truly,
Sedley Taylor  Trinity College, Cambridge  February 8th, 1884

No. 11. ELEANOR MARX'S SECOND REPLY
TO-DAY, MARCH 1884 To the Editors of "To-Day"
Gentlemen,
Mr. Sedley Taylor disputes my statement that, when the anonymous
slanderer fell foul of Dr. Marx, the only point at issue was whether Mr.
Gladstone had used certain words or not. According to him, the real
question was,
"whether the quotation in dispute was made with the intention of
conveying or of perverting Mr. Gladstone's meaning".
I have before me the Concordia article (No. 10, 7th March, 1872), "How
Karl Marx Quotes". Here the anonymous author first quotes the "Inaugural
Address" of the International; then the passage of Mr. Gladstone's speech,
in full, from Hansard; then he condenses the passage in his own way, and to
his own satisfaction; and lastly, he concludes,
"Marx takes advantage of this to make Gladstone say, 'This
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely
confined to classes possessed of property. This sentence, however,
is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. The very contrary is
said in it. Marx has lyingly added this sentence, both as to form
and contents."
That is the charge, and the only charge, made against Dr. Marx. He is
indeed accused of perverting Mr. Gladstone's meaning by "lyingly adding"
a whole sentence. Not a word about "misleading", or "craftily isolated"
quotations. The question simply is, "whether a particular sentence did, or
did not, occur in Mr. Gladstone's speech".
Of two things, one. Either Mr. Taylor has read Brentano's attacks and my
father's replies, and then his assertion is in direct contradiction of what he
cannot help knowing to be the truth. Or else he has not. And then? Here is a
man who dates his letters from Trinity College, Cambridge, who goes out of

his way to assail my dead father's literary honesty in a way which must
needs turn out to be a "calumny" unless he proves his case; who makes this
charge upon the strength of a literary controversy dating as far back as
1872, between an anonymous writer (whom Mr. Taylor now asserts to be
Professor Brentano) and my father; who describes in glowing terms the
"masterly conduct" in which Saint George Brentano led his attack, and the
"deadly shifts" to which he speedily reduced the dragon Marx; who can
give us all particulars of the crushing results obtained by the said St. George
"by a detailed comparison of texts"; and who after all, puts me into this
delicate position that I am in charity bound to assume that he has never read
a line of what he is speaking about.
Had Mr. Taylor seen the "masterly" articles of his anonymous friend, he
would have found therein the following:
"Now we ask; does anyone tell a lie only then when he himself
invents an untruth, or does he not tell a lie quite as much when. he
repeats it contrary to what he knows, or is bound to know better?"
Thus saith the "masterly" Brentano, as virtuous as he is anonymous, in his
rejoinder to my father's first reply (Concordia, No. 27, 4th July, 1872, p.
210). And on the same page he still maintains against all comers:
"According to the Times report, too, Mr. Gladstone said he
believed this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power not
to be confined to classes of property."
If Brentano thus appears utterly ignorant of what was the real point at issue,
is Mr. Sedley Taylor better off? In his letter to The Times it was a quotation
made in the "Inaugural Address" of the International. In his letter to To-Day
it is a quotation in "Das Kapital". The ground is shifted again, but I need not
object. Mr. Taylor now gives us the Gladstonian passage as quoted on pages
678 and 679 of "Das Kapital", side by side with the same passage as
reported -- not by Hansard, but by The Times.
"My reason for using the Times report instead of that of Hansard,
will be obvious to readers of Dr. Marx's letters and his
correspondence with Brentano."

Mr. Taylor, as we have seen, is not of these "readers". His reason for his
proceeding may therefore be obvious to others, but upon his own showing
at least, it can hardly be so to himself.
Anyhow, from Hansard the Infallible we are brought down to that very
report, for using which the anonymous Brentano (Concordia, same page,
210), assails my father as quoting "necessarily bungling (stümperhafte)
newspaper reports". At any rate, Mr. Taylor's "reason" must be very
"obvious" to his friend Brentano.
To me that reason is obvious indeed. The words which my father was
accused of having lyingly added ("an augmentation", etc.), these words are
contained in The Times as well as in the other dailies' reports, while in
Hansard they are not only "manipulated", but entirely "obliterated". Marx
established this fact. Mr. Taylor, in his letter to The Times, still awfully
shocked at such unpardonable "hardihood", is now himself compelled to
drop the impeachable Hansard, and to take refuge under what Brentano
calls the "necessarily bungling" report of The Times.
Now for the quotation itself. Mr. Taylor invites especial attention to two
passages thrown by him into italics. In the first he owns:
"there is, it is true, a verbal contrariety with the latter sentence'.
the augmentation property; but the intervening words: this takes ...
population, unmistakeably show what Mr. Gladstone meant," etc.,
etc.
Here we are plainly on theological ground. It is the well-known style of
orthodox interpretation of the Bible. The passage, it is true, is in itself
contradictory, but if interpreted according to the true faith of a believer, you
will find that it will bear out a meaning not in contradiction with that true
faith. If Mr. Taylor interprets Mr. Gladstone as Mr. Gladstone interprets the
Bible, he must not expect any but the orthodox to follow him.
Now Mr. Gladstone on that particular occasion, either did speak English or
he did not. If he did not, no manner of quotation or interpretation will avail.
If he did, he said that he should be very sorry if that intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power was confined to classes in easy

circumstances, but that it was confined entirely to classes of property. And
that is what Marx quoted.
The second passage is one of those stock phrases which are repeated, with
slight variations, in every British budget speech, seasons of bad trade alone
excepted. What Marx thought of it, and of the whole speech is shown in the
following extract from his second reply to his anonymous slanderer;
"Gladstone, having poured forth his panegyric on the increase of
Capitalist wealth, turns towards the working class. He takes good
care not to say that they had shared in the intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power. On the contrary, he continues
(according to The Times): 'Now, the augmentation of Capital is of
indirect benefit to the labourers,' etc. He consoles himself with the
fact that while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have
been growing less poor. He asserts, finally, he and his enriched
parliamentary friends 'have the happiness to know' the contrary of
what official enquiries and statistical dates prove to be the fact,
viz.,
"'that the average condition of the British labourer has
improved during the last 20 years in a degree which we
know to be extraordinary, and which we may almost
pronounce to be unexampled in the history of any country
and of any age.
"Before Mr. Gladstone, all his predecessors 'had the happiness' to
complete in their budget speeches the picture of the augmentation
of Capitalist wealth by self-complacent phrases about the
improvement in the condition of the working class. Yet he gives
the lie to them all; for the millennium dates only from the passing
of the Free Trade legislation. But the correctness or incorrectness
of Gladstone's reasons for consolation and congratulation is a
matter of indifference here. What alone concerns us is this, that
from his stand-point the pretended 'extraordinary' improvement in
the condition of the working-class is not at all in contradiction
with the augmentation of wealth and power which is entirely
confined to classes possessed of property. It is the orthodox

doctrine of the mouth-pieces of Capital -- one of the best paid of
whom is Gladstone -- that the most infallible means for working
men to benefit themselves is -- to enrich their exploiters."
(Volksstaat, No. 63, August 7, 1872).
Moreover, to please Mr. Taylor, the said passage of Mr. Gladstone's speech
is quoted in full in the Inaugural Address, page 5, immediately before the
quotation in dispute. And what else but this address did Mr. Taylor
originally impute? Is it as impossible to get a reference to original sources
out of him, as it was to get reasons out of Dogberry?
"The continuous crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches"
form the subject of Note 105 on the same page (679) of "Das Kapital" to
which Mr. Taylor refers us. Very likely indeed, that Marx should have taken
the trouble to suppress "in bad faith" one of the contradictions! Quite the
contrary. He has not suppressed anything worth quoting, neither has he
"lyingly" added anything. But he has restored, rescued from oblivion, a
particular sentence of one of Mr. Gladstone's speeches, a sentence which
had indubitably been pronounced, but which somehow or other had found
its way -- out of Hansard.
Eleanor Marx

IV. ENGELS AND BRENTANO
No. 12. FROM ENGELS' PREFACE TO THE FOURTH
GERMAN EDITION OF MARX'S
Capital, VOLUME ONE
Meanwhile a complete revision of the numerous quotations had been made
necessary by the publication of the English edition. For this edition Marx's
youngest daughter, Eleanor, undertook to compare all the quotations with
their originals, so that those taken from English sources, which constitute
the vast majority, are given there not as retranslations from German but in
the original English form. In preparing the fourth edition it was therefore
incumbent upon me to consult this text. The comparison revealed various
small inaccuracies. Page numbers wrongly indicated, due partly to mistakes
in copying from notebooks, and partly to the accumulated misprints of three
editions; misplaced quotation or omission marks, which cannot be avoided
when a mass of quotations is copied from notebook extracts; here and there
some rather unhappy translation of a word; particular passages quoted from
the old Paris notebooks of 1843-45, when Marx did not know English and
was reading English economists in French translations, so that the double
translation yielded a slightly different shade of meaning, e.g., in the case of
Steuart, Ure, etc., where the English text had now to be used -- and other
similar instances of trifling inaccuracy or negligence. But anyone who
compares the fourth edition with the previous ones can convince himself
that all this laborious process of emendation has not produced the smallest
change in the book worth speaking of. There was only one quotation which
could not be traced -- the one from Richard Jones (4th edition, p. S62, Note
47). Marx probably slipped up when writing down the title of the book. All
the other quotations retain their cogency in full, or have enhanced it due to
their present exact form.
Here, however, I am obliged to revert to an old story.
I know of only one case in which the accuracy of a quotation given by Marx
has been called in question. But as the issue dragged beyond his lifetime I

cannot well ignore it here.
On March 7, 1872, there appeared in the Berlin Concordia, organ of the
German Manufacturers' Association, an anonymous article entitled: "How
Karl Marx Quotes." It was here asserted, with an effervescence of moral
indignation and unparliamentary language, that the quotation from
Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863 (in the Inaugural Address of
the International Working Men's Association. 1864, and repeated in
Capital, Vol. I, p.617, 4th edition; p. 671, 3rd edition),c had been falsified;
that not a single word of the sentence: "this intoxicating augmentation of
wealth and power ... is entirely confined to classes of property" was to be
found in the (semi-official) shorthand report in Hansard. "Yet this sentence
is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. It says quite the opposite."
(In bold type): "Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in
content!"
Marx, to whom the number of Concordia was sent the following May,
answered Anonymous in the Volksstaat of June 15. As he could not recall
which newspaper report he had used for the quotation, he limited himself to
citing, first the equivalent quotation from two English publications, and
then the report in The Times, according to which Gladstone says:
"That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country.
I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and
with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power, if it were my belief that it was confined to classes who are
in easy circumstances. This takes no cognizance at all of the
condition of the labouring population. The augmentation I have
described and which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is
an augmentation entirely confined to classes of property."
Thus Gladstone says here that he would be sorry if it were so, but it is so:
this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to
classes of property. And as to the semi-official Hansard, Marx goes on to
say: "In its edition, here botchily corrected, Mr. Gladstone was bright
enough clumsily to excise the passage that would be, after all,
compromising on the lips of an English Chancellor of the Exchequer. This

is, incidentally, traditional English parliamentary practice, and by no means
the invention of little Lasker versus Bebel."
Anonymous gets angrier and angrier. In his answer in the Concordia, July
4, he sweeps aside second-hand sources and demurely suggests that it is the
"custom" to quote parliamentary speeches from the shorthand report;
adding, however, that the Times report (which includes the "lyingly added"
sentence) and the Hansard report (which omits it) "fully coincide
materially", while the Times report likewise contains "the direct opposite of
that notorious passage in the Inaugural Address". This fellow carefully
conceals the fact that the Times report explicitly includes that self-same
"notorious passage , alongside of its alleged "opposite". Despite all this,
however, Anonymous feels that he is stuck fast and that only some new
dodge can save him. Thus, whilst his article bristles, as we have just shown,
with "impudent mendacity" and is interlarded with such edifying terms of
abuse as "bad faith", "dishonesty", "lying statement", "that lying quotation",
"impudent mendacity", "a quotation completely forged", "this forgery",
"simply nefarious", etc., he finds it necessary to divert the issue to another
domain and therefore promises "to explain in a second article the
importance which we" (the non-"mendacious" Anonymous) "attach to the
content of Gladstone's words". As if his particular opinion, of no decisive
value as it is, had anything whatever to do with the matter. This second
article was printed in the Concordia on July 11.
Marx replied again in the Volksstaat of August 7 now giving also the reports
of the passage in question from The Morning Star and The Morning
Advertiser of April 17, 1863. According to both reports Gladstone said that
he would look with apprehension, etc., upon this intoxicating augmentation
of wealth and power if he believed it to be confined to CLASSES IN EASY
CIRCUMSTANCES. But this augmentation was in fact ENTIRELY
CONFINED TO CLASSES POSSESSED OF PROPERTY. So these reports
too reproduced word for word the sentence alleged to have been "lyingly
added". Marx further established once more, by a comparison of the Times
and the Hansard texts, that this sentence, which three newspaper reports of
identical content, appearing independently of one another the next morning,
proved to have been really uttered, was missing from the Hansard report,
revised according to the familiar "custom", and that Gladstone, to use

Marx's words, "had subsequently filched it away". In conclusion Marx
stated that he had no time for further intercourse with Anonymous. The
latter also seems to have had enough, at any rate Marx received no further
issues of Concordia.
With this the matter appeared to be dead and buried. True, once or twice
later on there reached us, from persons in touch with the University of
Cambridge, mysterious rumours of an unspeakable literary crime which
Marx was supposed to have committed in Capital; but despite all
investigation nothing more definite could be learned. Then, on November
29, 1883, eight months after Marx's death, there appeared in The Times a
letter dated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and signed Sedley Taylor, in
which this little man, who dabbles in the mildest sort of co-operative affairs,
seizing upon some chance pretext or other, at last enlightened us, not only
concerning those vague Cambridge rumours, but also Anonymous in the
Concordia.
"What appears extremely singular," says the little man from
Trinity College, "is that it was reserved for Professor Brentano
(then of the University of Breslau, now of that of Strassburg) to
expose ... the bad faith which had manifestly dictated the citation
made from Mr. Gladstone's speech in the '(Inaugural)' Address.
Herr Karl Marx, who ... attempted to defend the citation, had the
hardihood, in the DEADLY SHIFTS to which Brentano's masterly
conduct of the attack speedily reduced him, to assert that Mr.
Gladstone had 'manipulated' the report of his speech in The Times
of April 17, 1863, before it appeared in Hansard, in order to
'obliterate' a passage which 'was certainly compromising for an
English Chancellor of the Exchequer'. On Brentano's showing, by
a detailed comparison of texts, that the reports of The Times and of
Hansard agreed in utterly excluding the meaning which craftily-
isolated quotation had put upon Mr. Gladstone's words, Marx
withdrew from further controversy under the plea of 'want of
time!'"
So that was at the bottom of the whole business! And thus was the
anonymous campaign of Mr. Brentano in the Concordia gloriously reflected
in the productively co-operating imagination of Cambridge. Thus he stood,

sword in hand, and thus he battled, in his "masterly conduct of the attack",
this St. George of the German Manufacturers' Association, whilst the
infernal dragon Marx, "in deadly shifts", "speedily" breathed his last at his
feet.
All this Ariostian battle-scene, however, only serves to conceal the dodges
of our St. George. Here there is no longer talk of "lying addition" or
"forgery", but of "CRAFTILY ISOLATED QUOTATION". The whole issue
was shifted, and St. George and his Cambridge squire very well knew why.
Eleanor Marx replied in the monthly journal To-Day (February 1884) a, as
The Times refused to publish her letter. She once more focused the debate
on the sole question at issue: had Marx "lyingly added" that sentence or
not? To this Mr. Sedley Taylor answered that
"the question whether a particular sentence did or did not occur In
Mr. Gladstone's speech" had been, in his opinion, "of very
subordinate importance" in the Brentano-Marx controversy,
"compared to the issue whether the quotation in dispute was made
with the intention of conveying, or of perverting, Mr. Gladstone's
meaning".
He then admits that the Times report contains "a verbal contrariety"; but, if
the context is rightly interpreted, i.e., in the Gladstonian Liberal sense, it
shows what Mr. Gladstone meant to say. (To-Day, March 1884) The most
comic point here is that our little Cambridge man now insists upon quoting
the speech not from Hansard, as, according to the anonymous Brentano, it is
"customary" to do, but from the Times report, which the same Brentano had
characterised as "necessarily bungling". Naturally so, for in Hansard the
vexatious sentence is missing.
Eleanor Marx had no difficulty (in the same issue of To-Day) in dissolving
all this argumentation into thin air. Either Mr. Taylor had read the
controversy of 1872 in which case he was now making not only "lying
additions" but also "lying suppressions"; or he had not read it and ought to
remain silent. In either case it was certain that he did not dare to maintain
for a moment the accusation of his friend Brentano that Marx had made a
"lying" addition. On the contrary, Marx, it now seems, had not lyingly

added hut suppressed an important sentence. But this same sentence is
quoted on page 5 of the Inaugural Address, a few lines before the alleged
"lying addition". And as to the "contrariety" in Gladstone's speech, is it not
Marx himself, who in Capital, p. 618 (3rd edition, p. 672), Note 105 a
refers to "the continuous crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget
speeches of 1863 and 1864"? Only he does not presume à la Mr. Sedley
Taylor to resolve them into complacent Liberal sentiments. Eleanor Marx,
in concluding her reply, finally sums up as follows:
"Marx has not suppressed anything worth quoting, neither has he
'lyingly' added anything. But he has restored, rescued from
oblivion, a particular sentence of one of Mr. Gladstone's speeches,
a sentence which had indubitably been pronounced, but which
somehow or other had found its way -- out of Hansard."
With that Mr. Sedley Taylor too had had enough, and the result of this
whole professorial cobweb, spun out over two decades and two great
countries, is that nobody has since dared to cast any other aspersion upon
Marx's literary honesty; whilst Mr. Sedley Taylor, no doubt, will hereafter
put as little confidence in the literary war bulletins of Mr. Brentano as Mr.
Brentano will in the papal infallibility of Hansard.
London, June 25, 1890  Frederick Engels

No. 13. BRENTANO'S REPLY
"My Polemic with Karl Marx", Berlin, 1890, pp. 3-5
On September 28, 1864, a public meeting was held in St. Martin's Hall,
Long Acre, London, at which Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Poles and
Italians were represented. Karl Marx submitted to this meeting the
Provisional Rules of an international workers' organisation which was to be
founded, together with the Inaugural Address he had drafted for the same.
Both were adopted unanimously, and the Inaugural Address went round the
world. It contained a quotation from Gladstone's budget speech of April 16,
1863, which attracted more attention than all the other statements contained
therein:
"Dazzled by the 'Progress of the Nation' statistics dancing before
his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild
ecstasy: 'From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country
increased by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it
has increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is
so astonishing as to be almost incredible!... This intoxicating
augmentation of wealth and power,' adds Mr. Gladstone, 'is
entirely confined to classes of property.'"
In the winter of 1871-72, while working on the second volume of my Die
Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, I was obliged to investigate (cf. II, 241) to
what extent the oft-heard objection -- that a wage increase diminishes the
future demand for labour -- accords with the facts. In the previous decades
this objection had repeatedly been used against the English trade
associations every time they called for wage increases. Here I recalled this
quotation from Gladstone's budget speech. However, it appeared to me to
be unwise to quote as a source the Address of the International, as many
others had, and the relevant passage in Marx's Capital, Vol 1,1867, p.639. I
consulted the shorthand report of Gladstone's budget speech and found that
this in fact showed that the wage increases in the period 1842-1861 had not
limited the increase in the income of the possessing classes in any way
which negatively affected their demand for labour; but that, on the contrary

Gladstone had stated in direct opposition to Karl Marx's claim: "The figures
which I have quoted take little or no cognizance of the condition of those
who do not pay income tax ... of the property of the lahouring population,
or of the increase of its income... But if we look to the average condition of
the British labourer, whether peasant, or miner, or operative, or artisan, we
know from varied and indubitable evidence that during the last twenty years
such an addition has been made to his means of subsistence as we may
almost pronounce to be without examp]e in the history of any country and
of any age.
In view of the great importance of the Gladstone's quotation for the Social
Democratic claim that in the framework of the existing state and social
order the rich would necessarily become ever richer and the poor ever
poorer, I drew the attention of the editors of the Concordia, Zeitschrift für
die Arbeiterfrage, at that time appearing in Berlin, to the forgery which had
been committed here. They asked me to write an article on the subject,
which was published in the Concordia of March 7, 1872. The article was
not signed by me; this was done, on the one hand, at the request of the
editors in the interests of the reputation of their paper, and, on the other
hand, I had all the less objection, since following earlier literary
controversies pursued by Marx it was to be expected that this time too he
would heap personal insults upon his adversary, and that for this reason it
could only be amusing to leave him in the dark as to the identity of his
adversary.
Three months later Marx replied in the Volksstaat. In the polemic which
then developed it became clear that Marx had not undertaken the forgery
himself, but had taken the forged quotation from a diatribe which had been
published anonymously in 1864. This work, entitled The Theory of the
Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of 1844. The abuse of the metallic
principle to depreciation. Parliament mirrored in Debate, supplemental to
'The Stock Exchange and the Repeal of Sir J. Barnard's Act', London: T.
Cautley Newby, 80, Welbeck Street, 1864, is the work of a perverse
Thersites and consists largely of garbled quotations from writings and
speeches on national economy, bestrewn with Latin, English and French
verses and other comments, aimed at derision. Being of such a nature, this
book has understandably remained in thorough obscurity.

Had Marx simply admitted that he had been misled by this book, and from
then on reproduced the quotation correctly, one might have been surprised
that he had relied upon such a source, hut the mistake would at least have
been rectified. But for him there was no question of this. And given the
wide circulation which had been attained by the Inaugural Address, the loss
of this show-piece as the result of this correction, would have been very
embarrassing for the agitation. One of the main agitational methods of
Social Democracy is that its representatives proclaim themselves the sole
proprietors of real science; and as the Party Congress in Halle 148 showed,
they prefer to accuse themselves of having utilised the iron law of wages in
deliberate untruthfulness simply as a means of agitation, rather than confess
that they have been shown to be in error. Instead of withdr;iwing, Marx
therefore attempted to prove that Gladstone had subsequently tinkered with
the shorthand report of his budget speech; the loutishnesses of his
Scurrilous polemics was now directed against the supposed manufacturer,
who had attempted to tell him what to do with the help of an English
business partner; when it was shown that The Times too, in its issue which
appeared on the morning following the night in which Gladstone had made
his speech, carried this speech in a sense according with the shorthand
report, he acted, as the editors of the Concordia wrote: "like the cuttlefish,
which dims the water with a dark fluid, in order to make pursuit by its
enemy more difficult, i.e. he tries as hard as he can to hide the subject of
controversy by clinging to completely inconsequential secondary itatters;
and finally he saves himself with the explanation that for 'lack of time' he
cannot go into the matter any further." And for all time he failed to reply to
my analysis of his rejoinder published in the Concordia on August 22,
1872.
The fact that I was the author of the articles in the Concordia of March 7,
July 4 and 11, and August 22, 1872 was known to a ntimber of people, and
in the second edition of Mehring's Geschichte der Sozialdemokratie, which
was published while Marx was still alive, I was publicly named as such.
Having his attention thus drawn to it, Mr. Sedley Taylor of Trinity College,
Cambridge studied the polemic, and wrote a letter about it to The Times.
This brought upon the scene Miss Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx,
who had died in the meantime, and in the socialist monthly To-Day of

March 1884 she not only defended her father's loyalty, but closed with the
remark that her father had restored and rescued from oblivion a particular
sentence from one of Gladstone's speeches, a sentence which had
indubitably been pronounced, but which somehow or other had found its
way out of the shorthand report in Hansard.
Even at that time I considered replying to this obstinate clinging to the false
quotation with the verbatim publication of the entire polemic. But editors
often have their own judgement; the specialist journal which I regarded as
suitable above all others refused to publish, on the grounds that the dispute
lacked general interest. Engels was obviously of a different opinion. In the
Preface to the fourth edition of the first volume of Capital, which he
undertook, he returned to the polemic, hut reported upon it in such a manner
that the dishonesty with which it had been conducted by Marx was,
understandablv not made clear in addition he left unchanged the passage in
Capital I, 4th edition, p. 617, in which Marx had Gladstone say the opposite
of what he really said and Lven more while Marx in his first edition simply
referred to "Gladstone in H.o.C. April 16 1863", the 4th edition added "The
Morning Star, April 17 1863 as though the report in this newspaper really
contained the quotation as given by Marx. But the report in The Morning
Star too contains all those sentences omitted by The Theory of the
Exchanges and subsequently by Marx, sentences which show that where
Gladstone refers in his budget speech to income tax revenue, he is onlv
contrasting the incomes of those who pay this tax with the incomes of those
who, because of lower incomes, are free of this tax; that he perceives from
the income tax lists an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, and
remarks at the same time that the increase in income shown by these lists is
confined to those in easy circumstances -- quite naturally, since the incomes
of the rest are not shown in these lists; but that he does not believe this
augmentation is confined to these classes, since it is known from other
sources that at the same time the condition of the British labourer has
improved to a degree unexampled in any country and any age...
(The remainder has nothing to do with the charge and is simply a
"Contribution to the Question" etc. -- F. Engels.)

No. 14. FROM THE APPENDICES TO BRENTANO'S
REPLY
a) From [H. Roy,] The Theory of the Exchanges, London, 1864, p. 134.
"From 1842 to 1852, the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per
cent ... in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it had increased from the basis
taken in 1853, 20 per cent! My honourable friend says, it is owing to
Australian gold. I am sorry to see that he is lost in the depths of heresy upon
the subject of gold. This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is
entirely confined to classes of property, but must be of indirect benefit to
the labouring population, because it cheapens the commodities of general
consumption -- while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been
growing less poor! at any rate, whether the extremes of poverty are lest, I
do not presume to say." *
"Voilà l'homme en effet. II va du blanc au noir.  Il condamne au matin ses sentiments du soir.  Importun à tout autre, à lui meme incommode,  Il change a' tous moments d'esprit comme de mode."
"The average condition of the British labourer hat improved during the last
twenty years in a degree we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in
the history of any country or any age, a matter of the greatest thankfulness,
because, etc hardly have earnings given a sufficiency of prime
necessaries,..."
Noteworthy for the connection between The Theory of the Exchanges, and
Marx's remarks in Capital, I, 1st edition, p. 639 is also the following.
Having advanced here the details, quoted from The Theory of the
Exchanges, given by the LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM, against
Gladstone's sentence "WHETHER THE EXTREMES OF POVERTY ARE
LESS EXTREME THAN THEY WERE, I DO NOT PRESUME TO SAY",
Marx turns against Gladstone's budget speech of April 7, 1864; The Theory
of the Exchanges has an APPENDIX, in which, as a supplement to the
pages just printed here, there is also a gloss on the budget of 1864. The style

in which this is done is the same as that which is familiar enough from the
foregoing. This excursus contains the following passage (p. 234):
"But the Chancellor is eloquent upon 'poverty'... 'Think of those who are on
the border of that region...', upon 'wages ... in others it is true not
increased... human life is, but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for
existence'."
Now compare with this Marx, 1, 1st ed., p.640, 4th ed., p. 618. Here too
again, instead of the reproduction of the actual budget speech verbatim, [we
find the same mosaic of sentences torn from their context as in The Theory
of the Exchanges. And here too it is not this source which is referred to, but
simply to Gladstone, H.o.C., April 7, 1864. And then the text continues:
"The continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches of
1863 and 1864 were characterised by an English writer by the following
quotation from Molière" (followed by the verse from Molière printed
above).
It becomes clear that Marx took not only this quotation, but also the
"continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches of 1863
and 1864", invented by the author of The Theory of the Exchanges, from
this book.
* * *

b) At was already remarked in the introduction to this reprint, Engels, in the
fourth edition of the first volume of Marx's Capital, p. 617, added "The
Morning Star, April 17, 1863" to the now-as-ever falsely reproduced
quotation from Gladstone's budget speech. The relevant portions of this
speech are given above on pp. 8 and 9 according to Hansard's shorthand
report. Although on p.13 the Times report -- completely coincident in sense,
with its wording condensed only as is a newspaper's wont, this report,
together with that in The Morning Star quoted by Engels, and the wording
of the quotation in Marx are presented parallel here:
The Times  April 17, 1863

"In ten years, from 1842 to 1852 inclusive, the taxable income of
the country, as nearly as we can make out, increased by 6 per
cent; but in eight years, from 1853 to 1861, the income of the
country again increased from the basis taken by 20 per cent. That
is a fact so strange as to be almost incredible... I must say for one,
I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my
belief that it was confined to the classes who are in easy
circumstances. This takes no cognizance at all of the condition of
the labouring population. The augmentation I have described, and
which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns, it an
augmentation entirely confined to classes of property. Now, the
augmentation of Capital it of indirect benefit to the labourer,
because it cheapens the commodity which in the business of
production comes into direct competition with labour. (Hear,
hear.) But we have this profound, and, I must say inestimable
consolation, that while the rich have been growing richer the poor
have been growing less poor. Whether the extremes of poverty are
less extreme than they were I do not presume to say, but the
average condition of the British labourer, we have the happiness
to know, has improved during the last twenty years in a degree
which we know to be extraordinary, and which we may almost
pronounce to be unexampled in the history of any country and of
any age. (Cheers.)" *
The Morning Star  April 17, 1863
"I must say, for one, I should look with apprehension and with
pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it
were my belief that it was confined to the classes who are in easy
circumstances. This great increase of wealth takes no cognizance
at all of the condition of the labouring population. The
augmentation is an augmentation entirely confined to classes of
property. But that augmentation must be of indirect benefit to the
labouring population, because it cheapens the commodities which
go to the general consumption. So that we have this profound, and
I almost say, inestimable consolation -while the rich have been

growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. (Hear,
hear.) At any rate, whether the extremes are less extreme than they
were I do not presume to say, but the average condition of the
British labourer, we have the happiness to know to be
extraordinary, and that we may almost pronounce it to be
unexampled in the history of any country or any age. (Cheers)"
Capital I, 1st ed., p. 639, Note 103
"From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country
increased by 6 per cent. In the eight years from 1853 to 1861 it
had increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact
is so astonishing as to be almost incredible
"This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power
"is entirely confined to classes of property, but must be of indirect
benefit to the labouring population, because it cheapens the
commodities of general consumption --
"while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been
growing less poor! At any rate, whether the extremes of poverty
are less, I do not presume to say."
Here, in the middle of a sentence, as the reprint above shows, The
Theory of the Exchanges breaks off to insert a quotation from
Molière; Marx who, as the comparison above shows, did not take
the quotation from The Morning Star but -- omitting a passage
marked by him with dots -- verbatim from The Theory of the
Exchanges, has Gladstone end in the middle of a sentence...
The comparison above shows us that the arbitrarily thrown-
together mosaic of sentences torn from their context, which Marx
presents as Gladstone's budget speech, can be found as little in
The Morning Star as in The Times or Hansard; on the other hand,
it can be found solely in The Theory of the Exchanges. The
heavily leaded sentences a are those omitted by Henry Roy, and

still more by Karl Marx-compare the last sentence -- in order to
have Gladstone say the opposite of what be really said.

No. 15. FROM THE PARLIAMENTARY REPORTS OF THE LONDON PRESS OF APRIL 17,1863
Morning Herald. I may say that I for one would look with fear and
apprehension at this intoxicating increase of wealth if I were of opinion
that it is confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This great
increase of wealth which I have described, and which is founded on
accurate returns is confined entirely to the augmentation of Capital,
and takes no account of the poorer classes.
Morning Post. I may say, I for one, would look with fear and apprehension
when I consider this great increase of wealth if I believed that its benefits
were confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This augmentation of
wealth which I have described, and which is founded on accurate returns is
confined entirely to the augmentation of Capital, and takes no account of
the augmentation of wealth of the poorer classes.
Daily Telegraph. I may say for one, that I should look almost with
apprehension and alarm on this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and
power if it were my belief that it was confined to the masses who are in
easy circumstances. This question to wealth takes no cognizance at all of
the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation stated is an
augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed of property.
Daily News. I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension
when I consider this great increase of wealth if I believed that its benefits
were confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This augmentation of
wealth which I have described, and which is founded upon accurate returns,
is confined entirely to the augmentation of Capital, and takes no account of
the augmentation of wealth of the poorer classes.
Standard. I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension at
this intoxicating increase of wealth if I were of the opinion that it was
confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This great increase of wealth
which I have described, and which is founded on the accurate returns is

confined entirely to the augmentation of Capital, and takes no account of
the poorer classes.

No. 16. GLADSTONE TO BRENTANO
DEUTSCHES WOCHENBLATT, No. 49, DECEMBER 4,1890
Message
In number 45 of the Deutsches Wochenblatt Professor Lujo Brentano
published an essay My Polemic with Karl Marx", which served at the same
time as an introduction to a republication of this polemic as a pamphlet.
This polemic dealt mainly with a parliamentary speech delivered by
Gladstone in 1863, and which Marx reproduced in a distorted form in his
Inaugural Address on the formation of the International Working Men's
Association.
Obviously nobody is more qualified to settle this dispute about the wording
of Gladstone's speech than Gladstone himself. It is therefore of special
interest that Gladstone, as a result of the republication of Brentano's
polemic with Marx, has addressed two letters to Brentano. On November 22
Gladstone wrote to Brentano: "You are completely correct, and Marx
completely incorrect", and on November 28: "I undertook no changes of
any sort". Thus the affair, which throws a revealing light on the Social
Democratic line of argumentation, may finally be decided to the detriment
of the Social Democratic standpoint.
By uncovering this deceit Brentano has done a service, and it was very
timely that he chose this precise moment to rekindle the memories of this
dispute.
O.A.

No. 17. ENGELS' REPLY TO No. 16
DIE NEUE ZEIT, No. 13, 1891, p.425
In the Case of Brentano V. Marx
In my preface to the fourth edition of Marx's Capital, Vol. I, I was obliged
to report upon the course of Mr. Lujo Brentano's favourite anonymous
campaign against Marx, a campaign based upon the charge that Marx had
forged a quotation from a speech by Gladstone.
Mr. Brentano responded to this with a pamphlet My Polemic with Karl
Marx by Lujo Brentano, Berlin, Walter und Apolant, 1890.1 shall reply to
this in his own coin.
In the meantime, No. 49 of the Deutsches Wochenblatt, December 4, 1890,
carries a further note on this matter, which states:
"Obviously nobody is more qualified to settle this dispute about
the wording of Gladstone's speech than Gladstone himself. It is
therefore of special interest that Gladstone, as a result of the
republication of Brentano's polemic with Marx, has addressed two
letters to Brentano. On November 22 Gladstone wrote to
Brentano: 'You are completely correct, and Marx completely
incorrect', and on November 28: 'I undertook no changes of any
sort'."
What is this supposed to mean? In what "are you completely correct" and
Marx "completely incorrect"? In what "have I undertaken no changes of any
sort"? Why is Mr. Brentano's message confined to these two short
sentences?
Either Mr. Gladstone has not given his permission to publish the whole of
the letters. This is then proof enough that they prove nothing.
Or else Mr. Gladstone wrote the letters in the first place for the public, and
permitted Mr. Brentano to make what use he would of them. Then the
publication only of these meaningless extracts proves even more strongly

that Mr. Gladstone's testimony in its entirety is unusable for Mr. Brentano,
and therefore "bodged together" as above.
In order to know what the two sentences above are worth, we must have
before us not only the two letters from Mr. Gladstone, but also the relevant
letters from Mr. Brentano. And as long as the whole correspondence in this
matter has not been published in the original language, the fragments above
are completely insignificant to the question under dispute, and not worth the
paper they are printed on.
F. Engels