[London,] 10 February 1866

Dear Fritz,

It was a close shave this time. My family did not know how sérieux the cas* was. If the matter recurs in that form three or four times more, I shall be a dead man. I am marvellously wasted away and still damned weak, not in the mind but about my loins and in my legs. The doctors are quite right to think that excessive work at night has been the chief cause of this relapse. But I cannot tell these gentlemen the reasons that force this extravagance on me—nor would it serve any purpose to do so. At this moment, I have all kinds of little progeny about my person, which is painful but no longer in the least dangerous.

What was most loathsome to me was the interruption in my work,’ which had been going splendidly since January Ist, when I got over my liver complaint. There was no question of ‘sitting’, of

a Alexander H- > See this volume, pp. 212-13. - © H. Denis, ‘La question polonaise et la démocratie’, La Tribune du Peuple, Nos. 41-43, 45, 46; 5, 26 March, 17 April, 29 May, 30 June 1864. - 4 that would be doing it too great an honour - © serious the case - on Capital

lying down, I was able to forge ahead, even if only for short periods of the day. I could make no progress with the really theoretical part. My brain was not up to that. I therefore elaborated the section on the ‘Working-Day’ from the historical point of view, which was not part of my original plan. What I have now ‘inserted’ supplements your book* (sketchily) up to 1865 (and I say so in a note”) and fully justifies the discrepancy between your estimation of the future and what will actually happen. Therefore, as soon as my book appears, it is necessary to have the second edition of your book, which will be easy in the circumstances. I shall provide the necessary theory. Regarding the additional historical supplement, which you should give as an appendix to your book, all the material, excepting the ‘Factory Reports’,” the ‘Children’s Employment Commission Reports’ and the ‘Board of Health Reports’,© is utter trash and scientifically unusable. Your energy being undiminished by carbuncles, you will easily cope with this material within 3 months.

As far as the Russians are concerned, I have no material. As soon as my condition permits, I shall go to the Museum about it and look around for it among the Poles. There’s been a great crisis with The Workman’s Advocate. which will appear tomorrow as The Commonwealth, a transformation pushed through by the bourgeois element, for which my absence from the Counci was to blame. From my sickbed I have, nevertheless, managed to baulk the plot by means of written threats, with the effect that Eccarius has been made editor instead of a gentleman from The Nonconformast, and an EDITORIAL supervision Committee has been appointed which will meet weekly. It consists of myself, Fox, Howell, Weston and Miall (the pusuisnereprror of The Nonconformist and our publisher now), 4 atheists against one ‘Protestant’. Poor Eccarius now needs your article“ urgently (there being a whole mass of intrigues and I unable to help; my book requires al] my writing time).

Your wine is having a miraculous effect on me. While my illness was in full bloom I had to buy bad porrwine—it being the only wine suitable for an acute carbuncle condition.

Apropos. As I see from one of the latest ‘Factory Reports’, John Watts has published a pamphlet ‘On Macuinery.! Ask him, on my behalf, to send me a copy.

a F. Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England. - > Reports of the Inspectors of Factories to Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department. - © Public Health, Reports of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council. - 4 the British Museum Library - ¢ F. Engels, ‘What Have the Working Classes to Do with Poland?’ f J. Watts, Trade Societies and Strikes... Machinery...

I am going to write a few lines to Wilhelm? cursing him for his spinelessness. The collapse of the Social-Demokrat and of all the Lassallean trash is, of course, the very thing we want.?”!

Lyons (the workers there) have sent £8 to the Internationa. Counci..

Salut. Your Moor