MARX TO FERDINAND LASSALLE” 

London, 14 November 1859 
9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 

Dear Lassalle, 

I am answering your by return. 

It isn’t a question of your finding the money, but of a bill 
transaction. Would you allow me to draw on you at 3 months? If 
so you would be provided with security (guaranteed not only by 
myself, but also by Engels) before the bill fell due. It’s a question, 
therefore, of an accommodation bill or, to put it more crudely, 
kite-flying. It still remains very doubtful, of course, whether I could 
manage to negotiate a bill of this kind over here. However there 
might be some chance of it. Engels would have procured what was 
necessary had not all his liquid assets been tied up as a result of an 
action for causing bodily harm to an Englishman.* The affair is 
costing more than £100 and accommodation bills drawn in 
London on Manchester are only possible between businessmen. 

I think it is now too late to insert the anti-Meyen statement.” 
Assuming the Reform and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung accept 
it, it would arrive too late in Berlin.© Assuming they don’t accept it, 
it will in any case be too late for any consideration of the great 
Meyen’s article,’ which will by then be outdated. 

4 Daniells. See this volume, p. 490. - » K. Marx, ‘Statement to the Editors of Die 
Reform, the Volks-Zeitung and the Allgemeine Zeitung’. - © i.e. the editorial office of the 
Volks-Zeitung - 2 [E. Meyen,} ‘Der Proceß Carl Vogt’s gegen die Augsburger Allg. 
Ztg.’, Der Freischiitz, No. 132, 3 November 1859. 

As regards Vogt, it behoves our party—as opposed to vulgar 
democracy—to force him to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by 
Blind. Both gentlemen seem to be equally anxious to keep their 
distance. It was very clever of Vogt to make me out to be the 
source of the denunciation, but also to select as his target the 
A. Z. in Augsburg rather than the Volk in London. As regards 
myself, he can attribute the thing to rancour, if only because of 
the erstwhile opposition to him on the part of the Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung. (You are doubtless aware that, when Lupus came to the 
National Assembly in Frankfurt, he opposed Uhland’s vote of 
thanks to John, the imperial regent. Vogt seized this opportunity 
to vent his spleen and made an abusive speech attacking the 
N. Rh. Z. en général and Lupus in particular.”” Lupus thereupon 
called him out. But Vogt thought his skin too valuable to the 
Fatherland to risk it in this way. Lupus thereupon threatened to 
box his ears publicly in the street. Thereafter Vogt never made an 
appearance unless flanked by his sister on one side and a woman: 
acquaintance of his sister’s on the other. And Lupus was too 
courteous, etc.) But again, Mr Vogt knew that Germany’s vulgar 
democrats regard me as their béte noire. Furthermore, had he sued 
Das Volk instead of the A. Z., Blind, etc., would have been legally 
compelled to give evidence on oath and the matter would have 
been bound to come to light. Finally, it was one thing to break a 
lance with a revolutionary paper direct, and quite another to do so 
with the reactionary A. Z. The way in which the ‘noble’ Vogt 
(Vogt the ‘well-rounded’, as his barrister described him,*” is rather 
more To THE point) attacked me in the Biel Handels-Courier* rejoiced 
my heart. I am, it seems, in communication with ‘the police’, live off 
the workers, and such-like inanities. 

As to Kossuth, all the particulars about his transaction with 
Bonaparte were provided by Szemere (formerly Hungarian Prime 
Minister, presently in Paris).*’”? I sent him my anti-Kossuth article? 
in the Tribune and shall let you have it as soon as he returns me 
the cutting from Paris. The nicest part of it is that Kossuth’s agent, 
Pulszky, is the Tribune’s London correspondent. 

The Schiller festival here was a Kinkel festival.“ Freiligrath 
himself, who took part in it despite my warning, now realises that 
Gottfried used him simply as a tool. He told me that Kinkel’s 
melodramatic speech was a veritable farce which literally had to be 
seen to be believed. You’d laugh heartily were I to tell you what 

a [K. Vogt,] ‘Zur Warnung’, Schweizer Handels-Courier, No. 150 (supplement), 2 June 
1859. The article was reprinted, with editorial comments, in Das Volk, No. 6, 11 June 
1859. - » K. Marx, ‘Kossuth and Louis Napoleon’. 

went on behind the scenes between Kinkel and Freiligrath before 
the public performance actually took place.* In the days of the 
N. Rh. Z. Gottfried invariably figured in the press with a 
travelling-bag for attribute. Later on, it was a musket, then a lyre, 
then a distaff. Now our parson never does so without a black, red 
and gold flag.“ The so-called ‘working men’ whom he has 
gathered round him belong to a guild; article 1 of the rules of 
their society runs: ‘In accordance with the rules, all politics are to 
be excluded from the society’s debates.’ Before 1848 these same 
fellows enjoyed Bunsen’s patronage. 

Well, enough of gossip, for this note was simply intended to be 
de re pecuniaria. 

Salut. 
Your 

K. M.