Manchester, 1 November 1869 

Dear Moor, 

The resolution on landed property” has worked real wonders. It 
forces the fellows in Germany to think, for the first time since 
Lassalle started his agitation, something hitherto regarded as 
completely superfluous. This can be seen plainly in the letter from 
Bonhorst.*? In other respects, too, I find the letter not bad; 
despite the affectation and semi-education, it contains a certain 
healthy popular humour and, with the mortgage, he has hit the 
nail on the head. Incidentally, the people forget that, apart from 
the main business with big landed property, there are also various 
sorts of peasant: (1) the tenant farmer to whom it is immaterial 
whether the land belongs to the state or to the big landowner; (2) 
the owner, first the big peasant, against whose reactionary 
existence the day-labourers and farm-hands should be incited; 
second the middle peasant, also reactionary and not very 
numerous; and third, the debt-laden small peasant, who can be 
got at through his mortgage. In addition it may be said that, for 

a See this volume, p. 358. - > Ibid., p. 364. 

the time being, the proletariat has no interest in raising the 
question of small land-holding. 

It is delightful that that simple soul Goegg has now been sacked 
by his own people for being too communist! The worthy 
Ladendorff is behind this. Beust* may be a communist on paper, 
but can easily be caught if he is told that the money was not given 
for that reason, but only to revolutionise Germany in general. 
Now we are supposed even to keep alive the unhappy Felleisen, 
though all that can be said is that, the sooner it goes to the devil, 
the better. 

You could send me some characteristic specimens of the 
German stuff so that I might remain a little au courant? 

The Prussians have once again produced a wonderful Prussian 
trick by destroying the Langensalza memorial in Celle. Never has 
anything been more grovelling than Mr Miquel’s interpellation 
on this point. Roon took the opportunity to conclude that, in 
Prussia, an official order from above is sufficient for the military 
to trample on any court decision.** 

I am sorry about Serno‘; he seems, for a change, to have been a 
decent Russian.** But I am still sorrier for Goegg with his opinion 
about Serno’s classical French,’ of which we have also seen 
samples. 

It is a real stroke of luck that the Bee-Hive is now flaunting the 
bourgeois colours both insolently and stupidly. I have never seen 
such a filthy issue as that of yesterday.’ This cringing to 
Gladstone and the whole bourgeois-patronising-philanthropic tone 
must break the back of the sheet, and make the need felt for a 
real workers’ paper. It is a very good thing that, just at the 
moment when the workers sober up from their liberal intoxica- 
tion, their only paper should become more and more bourgeois. 
But Sam Morley should not be so stupid as to put such stupid 
chaps there, and to allow them to spread the bourgeois varnish so 
thickly and so obviously. 

The Fenian demonstration in London‘ simply proves once again 
the value the press attaches to public opinion. About 100,000 
assembled in the most imposing demonstration seen in London for 
years and, since it is in the interests of respecrasiuity, the entire 
London press, with no exception, manages to depict this as a 
shabby Famure. 

In connection with the present srrike by the spinners in 

a Friedrich von Beust - > in the know - ¢ Serno-Solovyevich - 4 See this volume 
p. 186. -¢ Ibid., pp. 364-65. 

259, Marx to Engels. 6 November 1869 367 

Bolton,*” a master spinner told Sam Moore quite frankly: We Don'T CARE 

AT ALL ABOUT THE 5% REDUCTION OF WAGES, WHAT WE WANT AND INTEND TO 
HAVE IS A REDUCED PRODUCTION (that is to say a STRIKE). 

The Wakefield* has still not been found here. But before I need 
it, I must check the basis more thoroughly, that’s to say, the 
history of 1600-1700. 

So that my Irish sources should not lack a comic side, I have 
found here in the Foreign Library Irland by Jacobus Venedey! 

Best greetings. Lousy weather here. 

Your 
F. E.