[London,] 19 February 1870 
Dear Fred, 

Although it is still very inopportune to go out in the evenings in 
such weather, nevertheless I visited Gaudissart* yesterday evening. 
He had, you see, written to me that he had something very 
important to tell me, and could not really drag the files to me. 
And what was it? A giant letter about Russica, an impossible 
omnium-gatherum rambling on from one thing to another, with 
which he had honoured Zukunft*’* and which this had not 
printed; neither had he received an answer to his furious letter 
requesting ‘an explanation’ of such methods. Further: a letter 
from the publisher‘ of Hermann here, requesting him to write 
against Russia for his paper. It would thus appear that Bismarck is 
very cross about Katkov’s attacks. 

Finally, an article in Katkov’s paper“ in which he 1. makes’ 
insinuations against Bakunin concerning various money matters; 
2. describes him as his Siberian correspondent; 3. charges Baku- 
nin with having written an extremely humble letter to Emperor Nicho- 
las, from Siberia or shortly before being sent there—I don’t re- 

* Gertrud Kugelmann - > Kugelmann’s daughter Franziska - ¢ Sigismund Bork- 
heim - ¢ Heinemann - ¢ Mocxoecxian ebdomocmu 

member exactly.’ Gaudissart will send me a copy of this, which I 
shall then communicate to you. 

Gaudissart has business again, but not yet a new orrice in the 
City. He also has to get the susiness going again. 

This evening—although yesterday evening did me no good—I 
must go into town again. I have been summoned to the subcommittee. 
It is, in fact, an important matter, since the people in Lyons have 
thrown Richard out of their society, though the General Council 
must make the decision. Richard, hitherto weaver in Lyons, a very 
young man, is very active. Apart from his inreopaTion to Bakunin 
and a_super-wisdom linked with this, I don’t know what 
reproaches can be made against him. It appears that our last 
circular letter“ caused quite a sensation and that a hunt for 
Bakuninists has started in both Switzerland and France. But est 
modus in rebus” and I shall see to it that there is no injustice.°” 

The best bit of Gladstone’s speech‘ is the long introduction, 
where he states that even the ‘senericent’ laws of the English always 
have the opposite effect in practice. What better proof does the 
fellow want that England is not fit to be lawgiver and adminis- 
trator of Ireland! 

His measures are a pretty piece of patchwork. The main thing 
in them is to lure the Lawyers with the prospect of lawsuits, and the 
LANDLORDS with that of ‘state aid’. 

Odger’s election scandal was doubly useful: the lousy Whigs 
have seen, for the first time, that they must let workers into 
Parliament, or Tories will get in. Second, the lesson for Mr Odger 
and consorts. Despite Waterlow,”’ he would have got in if part of 
the Irish workers had not abstained, because he had behaved so 
trimming during the debate in the Generar Councn, which they 
found out from Reynolds's.“ 

You'll receive the Irish Bill*** next week. 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M. 

Apropos. Mr Siebel or Sybel,° or whatever the fellow is called, 
appears to forget that the Prussians had already left the Austrians 

« K. Marx, The General Council to the Federal Council of Romance Switzerland. - » allhas 
its measure (Horace, Satires, I, 1). - © Gladstone’s speech in the House of Commons 
on 15 February 1870 was published in The Times, 16 February and in Manchester 
Daily Examiner and Times, 17 February 1870. See also this volume, p. 432. - 4 See this 
volume, pp. 386-87, 392. - © Ibid., pp. 432-33. 

in the lurch, in order to participate in the second partitioning of 
Poland excluding them. The filthy behaviour of the Prussians on 
that occasion was already disclosed in a Polish publication of 1794, 
which I have read in German translation, and the very clumsy way 
in which Russia made the two great German powers into its TooLs 
and roots in the anti-Jacobin war is very well set out in a Polish 
pamphlet, written in French in 1848.* The names of the two 
authors quoted escape my memory, but they are in my notebooks.