Karl Marx

[“Neue Oder-Zeitung” No. 297, June 29, 1855]

London, June 26. In yesterday’s sitting of the House of Commons, Mr. Otway rose:

“Does Lord Palmerston intend to take any measures to induce Lord Grosvenor to withdraw his Sunday Trading Bill?” (General cheers.)

Lord Palmerston:

“If my noble friend” (Grosvenor) “has heard these general cheers, I think he will be disposed to comply with them.” (Cheers.)

One sees, the mass demonstration in Hyde Park has intimidated the House of Commons. It drops the Bill and puts a good face on a bad game (bonne mine à mauvais jeu). The *Times* calls the Sunday scene in Hyde Park “a great act of retributive justice,” the Bill a product of “class legislation,” “a measure of organised hypocrisy,” and makes merry over “parliamentary theology.”

With reference to the Hangö massacre, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Charles Wood, states that he has today received dispatches from Admiral Dundas. According to them, 5 seamen and the Finnish captain were killed by the Russians’ fire, 4 seamen and 2 Finns wounded and taken prisoner, 3 officers, 4 seamen and 2 Finns taken prisoner without being wounded. Admiral Dundas had written a letter to the Governor of Helsingfors, establishing the facts and remonstrating in the most decided manner against the abominable act of firing on a boat under a flag of truce. He had received a reply in which the Governor excused the act and to some extent justified it. He declared that, by their own account, the officers and men had not seen the flag of truce. They had been exasperated because on various other occasions ships had hoisted the Russian flag, and newspapers had reported how English ships had elsewhere used the flag of truce to take soundings with the lead. The whole justification therefore boils down to the short-sightedness of the Russian soldiers and officers. At any rate, it is a sign of civilisation that Russian soldiers read newspapers and are “exasperated” by newspaper reports.

The Administrative Reformers have announced a new meeting at Drury Lane Theatre for tomorrow. As before: a meeting with admission tickets and prearranged speakers. Pontius Pilate asked: What is truth? Palmerston asked: What is merit? The Administrative Reformers have answered: Merit is what a man earns annually. Accordingly, these reformers have carried out a transformation in their internal organisation. Previously, the members of the General Committee – in fact self-chosen – were subjected to a sham election by general vote of the Association. Now, whoever pays an annual subscription of £50 or more becomes a member of the General Committee as a matter of course. Previously, the ten-guinea and one-guinea clause was deemed sufficient to protect the “movement” against plebeian intrusiveness. Now the ten-guinea gentlemen are no longer considered sufficiently “respectable”, and the one-guinea persons are looked upon entirely as the “mob”. The placards announcing the meeting state literally:

“Admission only by ticket, which can be obtained from members. Subscribers of £50 and upwards are members of the General Committee, subscribers of ten guineas and one guinea are members of the Association.”

The rights of members within the Association are thus calculated by a sliding scale of guineas. The naked, unvarnished rule of the guinea is brutally proclaimed. The City reformers have blabbed their secret. What agitators! Moreover, recent times have not been favourable to them. Drummond openly accused them in Parliament of “systematic immorality” and “corruption”. And what illustrations of the purity of their class have followed one after another, as if at a word of command! First, the *Lancet* (medical journal) provides proofs that the adulteration and poisoning of all commodities and articles of food is by no means confined to small retailers, but is carried on on principle by wholesale trade. Then it transpires that “respectable” City firms have circulated false dock warrants (warehouse receipts). Finally, the great fraudulent bankruptcy, connected with direct theft of deposited securities, of the private bank of Strahan, Sir Jones Paul and Bates. In this last case the aristocracy has learnt to pay homage to the “administrative” talent of the City gentry, for the bank “administered” above all aristocratic guineas. Palmerston is a sufferer, as is the Marquis of Clanricarde, and Admiral Napier has lost almost his entire fortune. The Church has also been deprived of much earthly substance, since Messrs. Strahan, Paul and Bates stood in a special odour of sanctity, occasionally presided at meetings for “the conversion of the heathen” in Exeter Hall, figured among the first subscribers to the society for “the propagation of the Bible”, and sat on the board of the “Association for the Reform of Criminals”. Their faith had procured them credit. They were the favourite bank of clerical gentlemen and free foundations. But their “administrative” talent has spared nothing, from widows’ and orphans’ funds down to the hard-earned pence of sailors. Why not admit them to the administration of “public funds”, for which they are now stretching out their hands?

“There are now,” the *Daily News*, the organ par excellence of the City reformers, plaintively cries, “symptoms among us which prove that no time is to be lost in bringing forward a case of the high immoral tone among the industrial classes.”

The crisis of Messrs. Strahan and Co. has naturally provoked a “run” by the public on the coffers of the City private banks, which up to now were considered incomparably more respectable than the joint-stock banks. Already the great private bankers find themselves compelled to encourage one another “publicly” to make periodic mutual inspections of the state of the securities deposited with them, and likewise, through the *Times*, to invite their customers to examine with their own eyes the effects entrusted to them. Another circumstance, which comes extremely inopportune for the reforming City gentlemen, is the following: One of their kings, Rothschild, is notoriously standing as their chosen representative on the threshold of the House of Commons, without being admitted into the holy of holies, because he cannot swear the “oath of a true Christian” and Lord John Russell, his colleague, does not want to “realise” the Jews’ Bill. Now, yesterday, Duncombe rose, having ferreted out that, according to an Act of Parliament of 1782, any deputy who has concluded a supply contract with the government after his election forfeits his seat in the House of Commons, that Rothschild has undertaken the last loan of £16 million, and therefore gives notice that he will move tomorrow evening for the issue of a writ for a new City election. There is more. Malins follows hot on Duncombe’s heels and announces a similar motion against Lindsay, who in the reform debate was openly accused by Sir Charles Wood of having concluded supply contracts for ships with the government while sitting as a member of Parliament. The incident is important not only on account of the compromised persons, a City magnate and a City reform magnate! It is important because it reminds the public that Pitt, Perceval and Liverpool, who flouted the Act of 1782, found their main pillars precisely in the grand dignitaries of the City, the contractors for loans and supplies for the government inside and outside Parliament. This financial aristocracy – more corrupt then than under Louis-Philippe – was the soul of the anti-Jacobin war. While it plucked his golden apples of the Hesperides, it demonstrated to the nation in notorious City meetings that “it must sacrifice money and blood in order to save the blessed comforts of our holy religion from the altar-desecrating French and itself from the gloomy despair of atheism”. Thus, at the most inopportune moment, the nation is reminded that the City rebelling against the oligarchy was the hothouse in which that same oligarchy grew large and put forth its most luxuriant blossoms.