1) The Society? has been totally changed in character by the 
emigration, caused by the political situation, of members who were 
for financial reasons readily accepted by Messrs. Schapper and 
Willich, and by honorary members accepted with the right to vote, 
who pay no contributions at all. The payment of moneys to the 
Society would only lead to their being used for purposes entirely 
contrary to the original intention. 

2) We have taken over the moneys as Trustees of the Society. The 
position of trustees is laid down in English law. A trustee can use the 
money at his discretion provided he is able to pay it after the 
customary notice. 

3) Concerning the present use of the moneys, Citizens Schapper 
and Willich, who now for private considerations insist on the 
repayment of the moneys, know very well that at all times the Society 
has been backed, without the prior knowledge of most members, by a 
secret committee with unlimited powers to dispose of the Society’s 
funds. Herr Schapper knows this the better as he has more than once 
received money from the Society for personal purposes through the 
medium of the committee. 

4) The money was nevertheless offered to the Society by us and as 
the Society, after seemingly accepting our proposals, suddenly took 
us to court—without success—we have deposited the money with a 
London citizen > in whose hands it will remain until the Society offers 
adequate guarantees for its use in accordance with the original 
intention. 

5) Concerning the refusal to put things in writing, such writing 
would have no validity in law. Even a written declaration would not 
bind the signatories legally vis-a-vis a moral person. Such a written 
declaration would have no other purpose than to be put to a use 
contrary to contract. 

The undersigned are workers and not used to live by exploiting 
the Society, like Herr Schapper, or by using the refugee fund like 
Herr von Willich. 

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 

STATEMENT * 

In an article from London dated January 13 the Bremer Tages- 
Chronik of January 17 this year has imported a whole cargo of badly- 
written stupidities, of fabricated and misunderstood gossip, of 
clumsy insinuations and moral posturing against the Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung and against the undersigned. 

“Prominent and decided men”? of the calibre of this London 
correspondent have from time immemorial responded to superior 
criticism in the manner of apes. They bombard their enemy with 
their own excrement. Chacun selon ses facultés. 

We let this “decided and prominent” man off with his nicely 
fabricated little stories about the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. In answer 
to his well-meaning insinuations on our resignation from the Great 
Windmill Society we declare: 

Neither before nor after their resignation from this Society have 
Engels and Marx ever had the slightest connection with the man- 
agement of its funds. They took part in the management of the 
refugee fund, and resigned only after their administration up to that 
point had been audited and found correct.? That the resigna- 
tion occurred to avoid the payment of a monthly contribution of 
ninepence—this is the notion of a Reichs-Stuiber which has been 
thrown out of circulation! And for this purpose one of them is said to 
have moved to Manchester and the other to have wished to travel 

overseas. What pure pearls rest in the depths of morally incensed 
souls! 

The real motives for our resignation from the Society and for 
our parting with its leaders are known to our party comrades in 
Germany. They are approved and shared by them, they do not 
concern the general public. Under existing German conditions a 
more skilful agent provocateur would not have given us cause for 
further explanations, much less the bearishly* clumsy one of the 
Bremer Tages-Chrontk. 

It suffices in conclusion to indicate that the man besmirching the 
Bremer Tages-Chronik from London with his own guano is none other 
than that Pomeranian thinker to whom the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 
has constantly returned with a kind of artistic preference, whom we 
have characterised elsewhere on the basis of his writings as “the 
gutter into which all the rhetorical refuse and all the contradictions 
of German democracy flow together”, in a word, that the fellow in 
Bremen is no less a person than “Arnold Winkelried Ruge”’, the fifth 
wheel on the carriage of state of European central democracy.*” 
Now one can understand the depravity of the Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung. 

London, January 27, 1851 
Karl Marx, Frederick Engels