278 

Manchester, 19 January 1870 

Dear Moor, 

I hope you are having a better time with the infamous carbuncle 
following the lancing. It's a ghastly business. Keep on with the 
arsenic till all the symptoms have disappeared, and then for at least 
another 3 months. I shall go to Gumpert in the next few days and 
ask him for his opinion,’ but be so good as to let me know first for 
how long you stopped taking the arsenic, and when you began 
again, so I can answer his very first question. 

I would have thought you really must realise that in the interests 
of your 2nd volume,” too, you need a change of life-style. If there 
is a constant repetition of such suspensions, you will never get 
finished; with an increase in movement in fresh air, which will 
keep off the carbuncles, then sooner or later. 

a Johann Jacob Klein-> 2 Samuel 8:18; 15:8-¢ See this volume, pp. 551, 
552. - 4 Ibid., p. 551. 

Unfortunately, now that I can no longer call upon the packers 
in the warehouse I haven’t such opportunities for sending wine as 
formerly. I must wait, as with Brauneberger, until I find a 
ready-packed crate, or depend somehow or other on chance. That 
is why the small crate of port ] am sending you today, has proved 
so slim. It is an old butter crate from Renshaws; I could not get 
more than 5 bottles in the narrow space, and the thin boards 
would not have stood more weight. It should keep you going for a 
while, however. 

The Peter Bonaparte business is a bang-up inauguration for the 
new era in Paris.*’° Louis* is décidément? unlucky. For the 
bourgeois a very rude awakening from the illusion that the whole 
foundation of corruption and dirty work, carefully and slowly 
constructed over eighteen years, would disappear immediately 
noble Ollivier took over the helm. Constitutional Government with 
such a Bonaparte, such generals, prefects, police and Decembrists! 
The anxiety of the fellows, I mean the bourgeois, is nowhere more 
clearly expressed than in Prévost-Paradol’s letter in Monday’s 
Times?” 

The worst part of this business is that Rochefort thereby 
acquires a quite exaggerated nimbus. To be sure, though, the 
official Republicans are also a miserable lot. 

John Bright deserves congratulations. The poor fellow is so 
helpless in his new and elevated situation that, despite all 
discretion, he promises the Irish Free Land and OPENING OF THE PRISON 
poors.”'" The latter naturally only to revoke it the following day, as 
soon as the slightest attempt is made to take him at his word. As 
far as FREE LAND is concerned, this was already—in Bright’s sense, a 
la FREE Trade—introduced by the EncumsBerep Estates Court. 

I have at last discovered a copy of Prendergast in a local 
library, and hope to be able to obtain it. To my good or bad 
fortune, the ancient Irish laws**' are now also appearing, and I 
shall have to wade through these as well. The more I study the 
subject, the clearer it becomes to me that, as a result of the 
English invasion, Ireland was cheated of its whole development, 
and thrown back centuries. And this ever since the 12th century; 
neither should it be forgotten, of course, that 300 years of 
invasion and plunder by the Danes had already dragged the 
country considerably backwards; but this had ceased more than 
100 years earlier. 

* Napoleon HI - > decidedly -¢ J. P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of 
Treland. 

In recent years there has been rather more criticism in Irish 
research, particularly in Petrie’s antiquarian studies*; he also 
forced me to read some Celtic-Irish (naturally with a parallel 
translation). It doesn’t seem all that difficult, but I shan’t delve 
deeper into the stuff; I’m already hobbled with enough philologi- 
cal nonsense. In the next few days, when I get the book, I'll see 
how the ancient laws have been dealt with. 

I congratulate you on your progress in Russian. You will charm 
Borkheim, and it is also a good thing because mine has nearly all 
become very rusty again, and if you let yours become rusty again, 
then I shall have to start once more. 

Best greetings to your wife and the girls. Lafargue is in a really 
frightful hurry.” 

Your 
F. E.