{London,} 4 September 1867 

Dear Frep, 

The £5 received with thanks. 

Borkheim wrote to me a few days ago from Berne and sent me 
‘for comment if you would be so kind’ the brouillon* for the 
speech, which he is intending to give at the Prace Concress in 
Geneva.*” He also wanted your assistance. I wrote to him, as we 
had agreed, that you had not yet returned. You can, however, 
send the money to his associate Schyler, 65 Fenchurch Street. But it 
is £50, not 45. When I looked, I found that the bill was on £48, 
and Borkheim then told me that he could probably give me the 
full sum of £50. I did not tell you of this before, as I was 
expecting the money I had been promised any day, and then 
wanted to pay the £50 myself. 

Enclosed: 

1. the last sheets of the proofs.” 

2. 2 Diplomatic Reviews and 1 number of Courrier frangais. 

Regarding the final sheets, they have put the Addendum to the 
Notes in large print, and the Appendix on the Form of Value in small 
print, despite my instructions*”” They probably did this so that the 
book should be neither over nor under 50 sheets in length. In my 

a draft - > of the first volume of Capital 

opinion, Meissner has made a serious blunder in increasing the 
purchase-price from 3 talers to 3 talers 10 silver groschen. It is, 
however, possible as well that he has subsequently received so 
many more firm orders that this was commercially the correct 
thing to do. 

A word of explanation concerning the article in the Courrier 
frangais (which you must send back to me after you have read it 
through): ‘Les Conditions de la Paix”: 

You know that on the Genera. Councn I expressed my 
opposition to our joining the peace-at-any-price party.” My speech 
lasted anout '/3 Hour. As minute-secretary, Eccarius reported on it 
in The Bee-Hive, giving only a few sentences of what I said. The 
reprint in the Courrier even omits the sentences about the 
necessity for armies vis-a-vis Russia and about the cowardice of 
these fellows.*”' The affair has, nevertheless, created quite a stir. 
The jackasses from the Peace Concress, whose agent in London is 
M. de Colleville, completely changed their original programme and 
even smuggled into the new one, which is much more democratic, 
the words ‘rue HARMONIZING OF ECONOMIC INTERESTS WITH LIBERTY’, Which 
could mean almost anything, including just rreerrave. They have 
been bombarding me with letters and even had the impertinence 
to send me the enclosed scrap of paper with the new programme. 
Their impertinence consists in nominating me aS a ‘MEMBER OF THE 
Geneva, ETc., Conoress’in the address. The Courrier, which was their 
most vociferous advocate in Paris, is deserting them, as you will 
see. The same Courrier has changed its policy in respect of Russia, 
following a private Jetter that I wrote to Vermorel asour a 
fortnight ago‘ (we are not acquainted). 

The main point was that these fine gentlemen from the peace 
congress, Victor Hugo, Garibaldi, L. Blanc, etc., had kept them- 
selves supremely aloof from our Internationa, Association. I have 
now obliged them to acknowledge us as a real force. 

From Naples I have received the first 2 numbers of a paper 
Liberta e Guiustizia. In No. I they declare themselves to be our 
organ. I have passed it to Eccarius to place before the congress.*” 
No. II, which I shall send you, contains a very good attack on 
Mazzini‘ I suspect that Bakunin has a hand in it. 

With regard to the confiscation and prohibition of my book,° 
there is a world of difference between prohibiting electoral 

a by L. Dubois. See Le Courrier frangais, No. 77, 2 September 1867. - > i.e., the 
League of Peace and Freedom -¢ See this volume, pp. 413-14. - 4 ‘La questione 
romana’, Liberta e Giustizia, No. 2, 24 August 1867. -¢ See this volume, p. 417. 

pamphlets and a book of 50 sheets which has such an air of 
erudition and even contains notes in Greek. Admittedly, that 
might be of little avail if I had chosen 12 administrative districts in 
Prussia instead of 12 counties in England to describe the conditions 
of the agricultural workers. I also feel that Mr Bismarck will think 
twice about the matter before provoking me into attacking his 
regime in London and Paris. 

What conditions are like in Prussia, incidentally, is shown by the 
following statement by O. Htibner, Director of the Central Statistical 
Archive, in a message to his electors: 

‘The people are already overburdened. Apart from the armament factories, 
almost every trade is depressed, hundreds of hungry men are applying for the 
humblest positions, in the cities the number of empty dwellings and of citizens, who 
cannot afford to pay rent, is growing, a whole host of estates and houses are being 
subjected to compulsory auction, the poor-houses are being besieged by our maimed 
victors and by the unemployed, everywhere there is a lack of confidence in the 
present and the future, and the budgets of the poorest are beset by the realisation 
that they are already paying more for the services of the state than they are worth” 

In Berlin, neither the government nor the National-Libera] 
Party *” has got a single candidate through.? But just what utter 
blockheads those men of Progress’? are who now form the 
extreme left, is shown amongst other things by the following 
extract from their ‘most radical’ organ, the Zukunft: 

‘The whole English nation is permeated by a snobbery which treats all alike and to 

which all personal industry is anathema. [...] It is this same snobbery which is for ever 
urging reduction of working hours and prohibits overtime on account of the UNIONS!’> 

Would you credit it! Even now the Parisian press is truly a giant 
compared with the German press! 

Your 
K. Marx