Marx to Engels  
in Manchester  
[London] 5 January 1866

Dear Fred,

In great haste.

Many thanks for the £10.

The bill falls due on 18 February and amounts to £48. I wanted the Landlord to draw it only for the 2 due dates, but not also for the third quarter, which only becomes due at the end of January. He insisted, however.

An intrigue has been formed against the International Association, in which I need your co-operation. More on this later in detail. For now only this: Herr Le Lubez and Vesinier (the latter aware that an inquiry into his past is under way; he is back in Brussels) have formed a French branch here (in fact an opposition branch!), involving also Longuet, the editor of the “Rive Gauche”, and with which the whole Proudhonist gang in Brussels is connected. First Vesinier publishes a long screed against us in the “Echo de Verviers”, of course anonymously. Then the London branch publishes in the same paper, which carries the slanders against our Association (among other things also mendaciously passing off Tolain and Fribourg as Bonapartists), a programme, draft future statutes, which they, the true ones, will lay before the congress.

The actual nerve of the polemic is the Polish question. The fellows have all tied themselves to the Proudhon–Herzen Muscovite line. I shall therefore send you the earlier articles of the oracles in the “Tribune du Peuple” against Poland, and you must produce a counter-piece, be it for our Geneva papers (the “German” one) or for the “Workman’s Advocate”. The Russian gentlemen have found the very latest allies in the Proudhonised section = “Jeune France”.

Yours,  
K.M.