Mr. Sedley Taylor disputes my statement that, when the 
anonymous slanderer fell foul of Dr. Marx, the only point at issue 
was whether Mr. Gladstone had used certain words or not. 
According to him, the real question was, 

“whether the quotation in dispute was made with the intention of conveying or 
of perverting Mr. Gladstone’s meaning”. 

* This stood at £150 from 1842 to 1853, and was then lowered to £100. 
[Note by Taylor.] 

160 In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx 

I have before me the Concordia article (No. 10, 7th March, 
1872), “How Karl Marx Quotes”. Here the anonymous author 
first quotes the “Inaugural Address” of the International; then 
the passage of Mr. Gladstone’s speech, in full, from Hansard; then 
he condenses the passage in his own way, and to his own 
satisfaction; and lastly, he concludes, 

“Marx takes advantage of this to make Gladstone say, “This intoxicating 
augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes possessed of 
property.’ This sentence, however, is nowhere to be found in Gladstone’s speech. The very 
contrary is said in it. Marx has lyingly added this sentence, both as to form and contents.” 

That is the charge, and the only charge, made against Dr. Marx. 
He is indeed accused of perverting Mr. Gladstone’s meaning by 
“lyingly adding” a whole sentence. Not a word about “mislead- 
ing’, or “craftily isolated” quotations. The question simply is, 
“whether a particular sentence did, or did not, occur in 
Mr. Gladstone’s speech”. 

Of two things, one. Either Mr. Taylor has read Brentano’s 
attacks and my father’s replies, and then his assertion is in direct 
contradiction of what he cannot help knowing to be the truth. Or 
else he has not. And then? Here is a man who dates his letters 
from Trinity College, Cambridge, who goes out of his way to assail 
my dead father’s literary honesty in a way which must needs turn 
out to be a “calumny” unless he proves his case; who makes this 
charge upon the strength of a literary controversy dating as far 
back as 1872, between an anonymous writer (whom Mr. Taylor 
now asserts to be Professor Brentano) and my father; who 
describes in glowing terms the “masterly conduct” in which Saint 
George Brentano led his attack, and the “deadly shifts” to which 
he speedily reduced the dragon Marx; who can give us all 
particulars of the crushing results obtained by the said St. George 
“by a detailed comparison of texts”; and who after all, puts me 
into this delicate position that I am in charity bound to assume 
that he has never read a line of what he is speaking about. 

Had Mr. Taylor seen the “masterly” articles of his anonymous 
friend, he would have found therein the following: 

“Now we ask; does anyone tell a lie only then when he himself invents an 
untruth, or does he not tell a lie quite as much when he repeats it contrary to what 
he knows, or is bound to know better?” 

Thus saith the “masterly” Brentano, as virtuous as he is 
anonymous, in his rejoinder to my father’s first reply (Concordia, 
No. 27, 4th July, 1872, p. 210).2 And on the same page he still 
maintains against all comers: 

a See this volume, pp. 140-44.— Ed. 

Documents.— III. Sedley Taylor and Eleanor Marx 161 

“According to the Times report, too, Mr. Gladstone said he believed this 
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power not to be confined to classes of 

property.” 

If Brentano thus appears utterly ignorant of what was the real 
point at issue, is Mr. Sedley Taylor better off? In his letter to The 
Times it was a quotation made in the “Inaugural Address” of the 
International. In his letter to To-Day it is a quotation in “Das 
Kapital”. The ground is shifted again, but I need not object. 
Mr. Taylor now gives us the Gladstonian passage as quoted on 
pages 678 and 679 of “Das Kapital’’, side by side with the same 
passage as reported—not by Hansard, but by The Times. 

“My reason for using the Times report instead of that of Hansard, will be 
obvious to readers of Dr. Marx’s letters and his correspondence with Brentano.” 

Mr. Taylor, as we have seen, is not of these “readers”. His 
reason for his proceeding may therefore be obvious to others, but 
upon his own showing at least, it can hardly be so to himself. 

Anyhow, from Hansard the Infallible we are brought down to 
that very report, for using which the anonymous Brentano 
(Concordia, same page, 210), assails my father as quoting “neces- 
sarily bungling (sttimperhafte) newspaper reports”. At any rate, 
Mr. Taylor’s “reason” must be very “obvious” to his friend 
Brentano. 

To me that reason is obvious indeed. The words which my 
father was accused of having lyingly added (“an augmentation”, 
etc.), these words are contained in The Times as well as in the 
other dailies’ reports, while in Hansard they are not only 
“manipulated”, but entirely “obliterated”. Marx established this 
fact. Mr. Taylor, in his letter to The Times, still awfully shocked at 
such unpardonable ‘“hardihood”’, is now himself compelled to 
drop the impeachable Hansard, and to take refuge under what 
Brentano calls the “necessarily bungling” report of The Times. 

Now for the quotation itself. Mr. Taylor invites especial 
attention to two passages thrown by him into italics. In the first he 
owns: 

‘there is, it 1s true, a verbal contrariety with the latter sentence; the augmentation 
. property; but the intervening words: this takes ... population, unmistakeably 
show what Mr. Gladstone meant,” etc., etc. 

Here we are plainly on theological ground. It is the well-known 
style of orthodox interpretation of the Bible. The passage, it is 
true, is in itself contradictory, but if interpreted according to the 
true faith of a believer, you will find that it will bear out a 
meaning not in contradiction with that true faith. If Mr. Taylor 

162 In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx 

interprets Mr. Gladstone as Mr. Gladstone interprets the Bible, he 
must not expect any but the orthodox to follow him. 

Now Mr. Gladstone on that particular occasion, either did speak 
English or he did not. If he did not, no manner of quotation or 
interpretation will avail. If he did, he said that he should be very 
sorry if that intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power was 
confined to classes in easy circumstances, but that it was confined 
entirely to classes of property. And that is what Marx quoted. 

The second passage is one of those stock phrases which are 
repeated, with slight variations, in every British budget speech, 
seasons of bad trade alone excepted. What Marx thought of it, 
and of the whole speech is shown in the following extract from his 
second reply to his anonymous slanderer; 

“Gladstone, having poured forth his panegyric on the increase 
of capitalist wealth, turns towards the working class. He takes good 
care not to say that they had shared in the intoxicating 
augmentation of wealth and power. On the contrary, he continues 
(according to The Times): ‘Now, the augmentation of capital is of 
indirect benefit to the labourers,’ etc. He consoles himself with the 
fact that while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have 
been growing less poor. He asserts, finally, he and his enriched 
parliamentary friends ‘have the happiness to know’ the contrary of 
what official enquiries and statistical dates prove to be the fact, 
Viz., 

ee 

that the average condition of the British labourer has improved during the 
last 20 years in a degree which we know to be extraordinary, and which we may 
almost pronounce to be unexampled in the history of any country and of any 

age.’” 

‘Before Mr. Gladstone, all his predecessors ‘had the happiness’ 
to complete in their budget speeches the picture of the augmenta- 
tion of capitalist wealth by self-complacent phrases about the 
improvement in the condition of the working class. Yet he gives 
the lie to them all; for the millennium dates only from the passing 
of the Free Trade legislation. But the correctness or incorrectness 
of Gladstone’s reasons for consolation and congratulation is a 
matter of indifference here. What alone concerns us is this, that 
from his stand-point the pretended ‘extraordinary’ improvement 
in the condition of the working-class is not at all in contradiction 
with the augmentation of wealth and power which is entirely 
confined to classes possessed of property. It is the orthodox 
doctrine of the mouth-pieces of capital—one of the best paid of 
whom is Gladstone—that the most infallible means for working 

Documents.— III. Sedley Taylor and Eleanor Marx 163 

men to benefit themselves is—to enrich their exploiters.” (Volks- 
staat, No. 63, August 7, 1872).* 

Moreover, to please Mr. Taylor, the said passage of Mr. Glad- 
stone’s speech is quoted in full in the Inaugural Address, page 5, 
immediately before the quotation in dispute. And what else but 
this address did Mr. Taylor originally impute? Is it as impossible 
to get a reference to original sources out of him, as it was to get 
reasons out of Dogberry? 

“The continuous crying contradictions in Gladstone’s budget 
speeches” form the subject of Note 105 on the same page (679) of 
“Das Kapital” to which Mr. Taylor refers us. Very likely indeed, 
that Marx should have taken the trouble to suppress “in bad 
faith” one of the contradictions! Quite the contrary. He has not 
suppressed anything worth quoting, neither has he “lyingly” 
added anything. But he has restored, rescued from oblivion, a 
particular sentence of one of Mr. Gladstone’s speeches, a sentence 
which had indubitably been pronounced, but which somehow or 
other had found its way—out of Hansard. 

Eleanor Marx* 

a Cf. this volume, p. 149; present edition, Vol. 23, pp. 194-95.— Ed. 

IV 

No. 12. FROM ENGELS’ PREFACE TO THE FOURTH GERMAN EDITION OF MARX’S 
CAPITAL, VOLUME ONE4 

Meanwhile a complete revision of the numerous quotations had 
been made necessary by the publication of the English edition.” For 
this edition Marx’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, undertook to 
compare all the quotations with their originals, so that those taken 
from English sources, which constitute the vast majority, are given 
there not as retranslations from German but in the original 
English form. In preparing the fourth edition it was therefore 
incumbent upon me to consult this text. The comparison revealed 
various small inaccuracies. Page numbers wrongly indicated, due 
partly to mistakes in copying from notebooks, and partly to the 
accumulated misprints of three editions; misplaced quotation or 
omission marks, which cannot be avoided when a mass of 
quotations is copied from notebook extracts; here and there some 
rather unhappy translation of a word; particular passages quoted 
from the old Paris notebooks of 1843-45, when Marx did not 
know English and was reading English economists in French 
translations,“ so that the double translation yielded a slightly 
different shade of meaning, e.g., in the case of Steuart, Ure, etc., 

a See present edition, Vol. 35.— Ed. 

b The English edition of Capital appeared in 1886, i.e. between the third 
(1883) and fourth (1890) German editions.— Fd. 

© The reference is to Marx’s extracts from the following books: A. Smith, 
Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, Vols. 1-5, Paris, 1802; 
D. Ricardo, Des principes de l'économie politique et de l’impét, Vols. 1-2, Paris, 1835; 
J. Mill, Eléments d’économie politique, Paris, 1832; J. R. MacCulloch, Discours sur 
lorigine, les progrés, les objets particuliers, et V'importance de l’économie politique, Paris, 
1825 (MEGA, Abt. IV, Bd. 2, Berlin, 1981, pp. 332-86, 392-427, 428-70, 
473-79).— Ed. 

Documents.— IV. Engels and Brentano 165 

where the English text had now to be used—and other similar 
instances of trifling inaccuracy or negligence. But anyone who 
compares the fourth edition with the previous ones can convince 
himself that all this laborious process of emendation has not 
produced the smallest change in the book worth speaking of. 
There was only one quotation which could not be traced—the one 
from Richard Jones (4th edition, p. 562, Note 47). Marx probably 
slipped up when writing down the title of the book.’ All the other 
quotations retain their cogency in full, or have enhanced it due to 
their present exact form. 

Here, however, I am obliged to revert to an old story. 

I know of only one case in which the accuracy of a quotation 
given by Marx has been called in question. But as the issue 
dragged beyond his lifetime I cannot well ignore it here. 

On March 7, 1872, there appeared in the Berlin Concordia, 
organ of the German Manufacturers’ Association, an anonymous 
article entitled: “How Karl Marx Quotes’”.” It was here asserted, 
with an effervescence of moral indignation and unparliamentary 
language, that the quotation from Gladstone’s budget speech of 
April 16, 1863 (in the Inaugural Address of the International 
Working Men’s Association, 1864, and repeated in Capital, Vol. I, 
p. 617, 4th edition; p. 671, 3rd edition),° had been falsified; that 
not a single word of the sentence: “this intoxicating augmentation 
of wealth and power ... is entirely confined to classes of property” 
was to be found in the (semi-official) shorthand report in 
Hansard. “Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone’s 
speech. It says quite the opposite.” (In bold type): ‘Marx has added 
the sentence lyingly, both in form and in content!” 

Marx, to whom the number of Concordia was sent the following 
May, answered Anonymous in the Volksstaat of June Ist.“ As he 
could not recall which newspaper report he had used for the 
quotation, he limited himself to citing, first the equivalent 
quotation from two English publications, and then the report in 
The Times, according to which Gladstone says: 

*“That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country. I must say 

for ane, I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon. this 
intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my belief that it was 

a The reference is to R. Jones, Text-book of Lectures on the Political Economy of 
Nations, Hertford, 1852. See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Chapter XXII (present 
edition, Vol. 35).— Ed. 

b See this volume, pp. 135-36.— Ed. 

© Ibid., pp. 132-34.— Ed. 

d Ibid., pp. 136-40.— Ed. 

166 In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx 

confined to classes who are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognizance at all of 
the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation I have described and 
which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely 
confined to classes of property.” * 

Thus Gladstone says here that he would be sorry if it were so, 
but it 7s so: this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power 1s 
entirely confined to classes of property. And as to the semi-official 
Hansard, Marx goes on to say: “In its edition, here botchily 
corrected, Mr. Gladstone was bright enough clumsily to excise the 
passage that would be, after all, compromising on the lips of an 
English Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is, incidentally, 
traditional English parliamentary practice, and by no means the 
invention of little Lasker versus Bebel.” '*’ 

Anonymous gets angrier and angrier. In his answer in the 
Concordia, July 4,7 he sweeps aside second-hand sources and 
demurely suggests that it is the “custom” to quote parliamentary 
speeches from the shorthand report; adding, however, that the 
Times report (which includes the “lyingly added” sentence) and 
the Hansard report (which omits it) “fully coincide materially”, 
while the Times report likewise contains “the direct opposite of 
that notorious passage in the Inaugural Address”. This fellow 
carefully conceals the fact that the Times report explicitly includes 
that self-same “notorious passage”, alongside of its alleged 
“opposite”. Despite all this, however, Anonymous feels that he is 
stuck fast and that only some new dodge can save him. Thus, 
whilst his article bristles, as we have just shown, with “impudent 
mendacity” and is interlarded with such edifying terms of abuse as 
“bad faith”, “dishonesty”, “lying statement”, “that lying quota- 
tion”, “impudent mendacity”, “a quotation completely forged”, 
“this forgery”, “simply nefarious”, etc., he finds it necessary to 
divert the issue to another domain and therefore promises ‘to 
explain in a second article the importance which we’ (the 
non-“mendacious” Anonymous) “attach to the content of Glad- 
stone’s words”. As if his particular opinion, of no decisive value as 
it is, had anything whatever to do with the matter. This second 
article was printed in the Concordia on July 11. 

Marx replied again in the Volksstaat of August 7° now giving also 
the reports of the passage in question from The Morning Star and 
The Morning Advertiser of April 17, 1863. According to both 
reports Gladstone said that he would look with apprehension, etc., 
upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if he 

a See this volume, pp. 140-44.— Ed. 
b Ibid., pp. 144-51.— Ed. 

Documents.—IV. Engels and Brentano 167 

believed it to be confined to classes IN EAsy circumstances. But this 
augmentation was in fact ENTIRELY CONFINED TO CLASSES POSSESSED OF 
PROPERTY. SO these reports too reproduced word for word the 
sentence alleged to have been “lyingly added”. Marx further 
established once more, by a comparison of the Times and the 
Hansard texts, that this sentence, which three newspaper reports 
of identical content, appearing independently of one another the 
next morning, proved to have been really uttered, was missing 
from the Hansard report, revised according to the familiar 
“custom”, and that Gladstone, to use Marx’s words, ‘had . 
subsequently filched it away’. In conclusion Marx stated that he 
had no time for further intercourse with Anonymous. The latter 
also seems to have had enough, at any rate Marx received no 
further issues of Concordia. 

With this the matter appeared to be dead and buried. True, 
once or twice later on there reached us, from persons in touch 
with the University of Cambridge, mysterious rumours of an 
unspeakable literary crime which Marx was supposed to have 
committed in Capital; but despite all investigation nothing more 
definite could be learned. Then, on November 29, 1883, eight 
months after Marx’s death, there appeared in The Times a letter 
dated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and signed Sedley 
Taylor,’ in which this little man, who dabbles in the mildest sort of 
co-operative affairs, seizing upon some chance pretext or other, at 
last enlightened us, not only concerning those vague Cambridge 
rumours, but also Anonymous in the Concordia. 

“What appears extremely singular,” says the little man from Trinity College, “‘is 
that it was reserved for Professor Brentano (then of the University of Breslau, now 
of that of Strassburg) to expose ... the bad faith which had manifestly dictated the 
citation made from Mr. Gladstone’s speech in the ‘(Inaugural)’ Address. Herr 
Karl Marx, who ... attempted to defend the citation, had the hardihood, in the 
DEADLY SHIFTS to which Brentano’s masterly conduct of the attack speedily reduced 
him, to assert that Mr. Gladstone had ‘manipulated’ the report of his speech in The 
Times of April 17, 1863, before it appeared in Hansard, in order to ‘obliterate’ a 
passage which ‘was certainly compromising for an English Chancellor of the 
Exchequer’. On Brentano’s showing, by a detailed comparison of texts, that the 
reports of The Times and of Hansard agreed in utterly excluding the meaning 
which craftily-isolated quotation had put upon Mr. Gladstone’s words, Marx 
withdrew from further controversy under the plea of ‘want of time!’” 

So that was at the bottom of the whole business!” And thus was 
the anonymous campaign of Mr. Brentano in the Concordia 

a See this volume, p. 155.— Ed. 
b Marx has: “des Pudels Kern”, an allusion to the saying. “Das also war des 
Pudels Kern”, in Goethe’s Faust, Act I, Scene III (“Faust’s Study”).— Ed. 

13* 

168 In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx 

gloriously reflected in the productively co-operating imagination 
of Cambridge. Thus he stood, sword in hand, and thus he battled, 
in his “masterly conduct of the attack”, this St. George of the 
German Manufacturers’ Association, whilst the infernal dragon 
Marx, “in deadly shifts”, “speedily” breathed his last at his feet. 

All this Ariostian battle-scene, however, only serves to conceal 
the dodges of our St. George. Here there is no longer talk of 
“lying addition” or “forgery”, but of “cRaFrity ISOLATED QUOTA- 
tion”. The whole issue was shifted, and St. George and his 
Cambridge squire very well knew why. 

Eleanor Marx replied in the monthly journal To-Day (February 
1884)*, as The Times refused to publish her letter. She once more 
focussed the debate on the sole question at issue: had Marx 
“lyingly added” that sentence or not? To this Mr. Sedley Taylor 
answered that 

“the question whether a particular sentence did or did not occur in 
Mr. Gladstone’s speech” had been, in his opinion, “of very subordinate impor- 
tance” in the Brentano-Marx controversy, “compared to the issue whether the 
quotation in dispute was made with the intention of conveying, or of perverting, 
Mr. Gladstone’s meaning”. 

He then admits that the Times report contains “a _ verbal 
contrariety”; but, if the context is rightly interpreted, i.e., in the 
Gladstonian Liberal sense, it shows what Mr. Gladstone meant to 
say? (To-Day, March 1884.)” The most comic point here is that our 
little Cambridge man now insists upon quoting the speech not 
from Hansard, as, according to the anonymous Brentano, it is 
“customary” to do, but from the Times report, which the same 
Brentano had characterised as “necessarily bungling”. Naturally 
so, for in Hansard the vexatious sentence is missing. 

Eleanor Marx had no difficulty (in the same issue of To-Day)‘ 
in dissolving all this argumentation into thin air. Either Mr. Taylor 
had read the controversy of 1872 in which case he was now 
making not only “lying additions” but also “lying suppressions”; 
or he had not read it and ought to remain silent. In either case it 
was certain that he did not dare to maintain for a moment the 
accusation of his friend Brentano that Marx had made a “lying” 
addition. On the contrary, Marx, it now seems, had not lyingly 
added but suppressed an important sentence. But this same 
sentence is quoted on page 5 of the Inaugural Address, a few lines 
before the alleged “lying addition”. And as to the “contrariety” in 

@ See this volume, pp. 156-57. 
> Ibid., pp. 156-59.— Ed. 
¢ Ibid., pp. 159-63.— Ed. 

Documents.— IV. Engels and Brentano 169 

Gladstone’s speech, is it not Marx himself, who in Capital, p. 618 
(3rd edition, p. 672), Note 105* refers to “the continuous crying 
contradictions in Gladstone’s budget speeches of 1863 and 1864’? 
Only he does not presume a la Mr. Sedley Taylor to resolve them 
into complacent Liberal sentiments. Eleanor Marx, in concluding 
her reply, finally sums up as follows: 

“Marx has not suppressed anything worth quoting, neither has 
he ‘lyingly’ added anything. But he has restored, rescued from 
oblivion, a particular sentence of one of Mr. Gladstone’s speeches, 
a sentence which had indubitably been pronounced, but which 
somehow or other had found its way—out of Hansard.” 

With that Mr. Sedley Taylor too had had enough, and the result 
of this whole professorial cobweb, spun out over two decades and 
two great countries, is that nobody has since dared to cast any 
other aspersion upon Marx’s literary honesty; whilst Mr. Sedley 
Taylor, no doubt, will hereafter put as little confidence in the 
literary war bulletins of Mr. Brentano as Mr. Brentano will in the 
papal infallibility of Hansard. 

London, June 25, 1890 
Frederick Engels 

No. 13. BRENTANO’S REPLY 

“My Polemic with Karl Marx”, Berlin, 1890, pp. 3-5 

On September 28, 1864, a public meeting was held in St. Martin’s Hall, Long 
Acre, London, at which Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Poles and Italians were 
represented. Karl Marx submitted to this meeting the Provisional Rules of an 
international workers’ organisation which was to be founded, together with the 
Inaugural Address he had drafted for the same. Both were adopted unanimously, 
and the Inaugural Address went round the world. It contained a quotation from 
Gladstone’s budget speech of April 16, 1863, which attracted more attention than 
all the other statements contained therein: 

“Dazzled by the ‘Progress of the Nation’ statistics dancing before his eyes, the . 
Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy: ‘From 1842 to 1852 the 
taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 
to 1861, it has increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so 
astonishing as to be almost incredible!... This intoxicating augmentation of wealth 
and power,’ adds Mr. Gladstone, ‘is entirely confined to classes of property.’” 

In the winter of 1871-72, while working on the second volume of my Die 
Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, I was obliged to investigate (cf. II, 241) to what extent 
the oft-heard objection—that a wage increase diminishes the future demand for 
labour—accords with the facts. In the previous decades this objection had 

a Ibid., p. 134.— Ed. 

170 In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx 

repeatedly been used against the English trade associations every time they called 
for wage increases. Here I recalled this quotation from Gladstone’s budget speech. 
However, it appeared to me to be unwise to quote as a source the Address of the 
International, as many others had, and the relevant passage in Marx’s Capital, 
Vol I, 1867, p. 639; I consulted the shorthand report of Gladstone’s budget speech 
and found that this in fact showed that the wage increases in the period 1842-1861 
had not limited the increase in the income of the possessing classes in any way 
which negatively affected their demand for labour; but that, on the contrary 
Gladstone had stated in direct opposition to Karl Marx’s claim: “The figures which 
I have quoted take little or no cognizance of the condition of those who do not pay 
income tax ... of the property of the labouring population, or of the increase of its 
income... But if we look to the average condition of the British labourer, whether 
peasant, or miner, or operative, or artisan, we know from varied and indubitable 
evidence that during the last twenty years such an addition has been made to his 
_means of subsistence as we may almost pronounce to be without example in the history 
of any country and of any age.” 

In view of the great importance of the Gladstone’s quotation for the Social 
Democratic claim that in the framework of the existing state and social order the 
rich would necessarily become ever richer and the poor ever poorer, I drew the 
attention of the editors of the Concordia, Zeitschrift für die Arbeiterfrage, at that time 
appearing in Berlin, to the forgery which had been committed here. They asked 
me to write an article on the subject, which was published in the Concordia of 
March 7, 1872.4 The article was not signed by me; this was done, on the one hand, 
at the request of the editors in the interests of the reputation of their paper, and, 
on the other hand, I had all the less objection, since following earlier literary 
controversies pursued by Marx it was to be expected that this time too he would 
heap personal insults upon his adversary, and that for this reason it could only be 
amusing to leave him in the dark as to the identity of his adversary. 

Three months later Marx replied in the Volksstaat. In the polemic which then 
developed it became clear that Marx had not undertaken the forgery himself, but 
had taken the forged quotation from a diatribe which had been published anony- 
mously in 1864. This work, entitled The Theory of the Exchanges. The Bank 
Charter Act of 1844. The abuse of the metallic principle to depreciation. Parliament 
mirrored in Debate, supplemental to “The Stock Exchange and the Repeal of Sir 
J. Barnard’s Act’, London: T. Cautley Newby, 30, Welbeck Street, 1864, is the work 
of a perverse Thersites> and consists largely of garbled quotations from writings 
and speeches on national economy, bestrewn with Latin, English and French verses 
and other comments, aimed at derision. Being of such a nature, this book has 
understandably remained in thorough obscurity. 

Had Marx simply admitted that he had been misled by this book, and from 
then on reproduced the quotation correctly, one might have been surprised that he 
had relied upon such a source, but the mistake would at least have been rectified. 
But for him there was no question of this. And given the wide circulation which 
had been attained by the Inaugural Address, the loss of this show-piece as the 
result of this correction, would have been very embarrassing for the agitation. One 
of the main agitational methods of Social Democracy is that its representatives 
proclaim themselves the sole proprietors of real science; and as the Party Congress 
in Halle !48 showed, they prefer to accuse themselves of having utilised the iron law 
of wages in deliberate untruthfulness simply as a means of agitation, rather than 

a See this volume, pp. 135-36.— Ed. 
6 The author is Henry Roy.— Ed. 

Documents.—IV. Engels and Brentano 17] 

confess that they have been shown to be in error. Instead of withdrawing, Marx 
therefore attempted to prove that Gladstone had subsequently tinkered with the 
shorthand report of his budget speech; the loutishnesses of his scurrilous polemics 
was now directed against the supposed manufacturer, who had attempted to tell 
him what to do with the help of an English business partner; when it was shown 
that The Times too, in its issue which appeared on the morning following the night 
in which Gladstone had made his speech, carried this speech in a sense according 
with the shorthand report, he acted, as the editors of the Concordia wrote ?: “like the 
cuttlefish, which dims the water with a dark fluid, in order to make pursuit by its 
enemy more difficult, i.e. he tries as hard as he can to hide the subject of 
controversy by clinging to completely inconsequential secondary matters; and 
finally he saves himself with the explanation that for ‘lack of time’ he cannot go 
into the matter any further.” And for all time he failed to reply to my analysis of 
his rejoinder published in the Concordia on August 22, 1872. 

The fact that I was the author of the articles in the Concordia of March 7, 
July 4 and 11, and August°22, 18725 was known to a number of people, and in the 
second edition of Mehring’s Geschichte der Sozialdemokratie, which was published 
while Marx was still alive, I was publicly named as such. Having his attention thus 
drawn to it, Mr. Sedley Taylor of Trinity College, Cambridge studied the polemic, 
and wrote a letter about it to The Times.4 This brought upon the scene Miss 
Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, who had died in the meantime, and in the 
socialist monthly To-Day of March 1884 she not only defended her father’s loyalty, 
but closed with the remark that her father had restored and rescued from oblivion 
a particular sentence from one of Gladstone’s speeches, a sentence which had 
indubitably been pronounced, but which somehow or other had found its way out 
of the shorthand report in Hansard.¢ 

Even at that time I considered replying to this obstinate clinging to the false 
quotation with the verbatim publication of the entire polemic. But editors often 
have their own judgement; the specialist journal which I regarded as suitable above 
all others refused to publish, on the grounds that the dispute lacked general 
interest. Engels was obviously of a different opinion. In the Preface to the fourth 

_edition of the first volume of Capital, which he undertook, he returned to the 
polemic, but reported upon it in such a manner that the dishonesty with which it 
had been conducted by Marx was, understandably, not made clear; in addition he 
left unchanged the passage in Capital, I, 4th edition, p. 617, in which Marx had 
Gladstone say the opposite of what he really said; and even more, while Marx in 
his first edition simply referred to “Gladstone in H.o.C., April 16, 1863”, the 4th 
edition added “The Morning Star, April 17, 1863”, as though the report in this 
newspaper really contained the quotation as given by Marx! But the report in The 
Morning Star too contains all those sentences omitted by The Theory of the Exchanges, 
and subsequently by Marx, sentences which show that where Gladstone refers in his 
budget speech to income tax revenue, he is only contrasting the incomes of those 
who pay this tax with the incomes of those who, because of lower incomes, are free 
of this tax; that he perceives from the income tax lists an intoxicating augmentation 
of wealth and power, and remarks at the same time that the increase in income 

a Concordia, No. 33, August 15, 1872.— Ed. 

5 See this volume, pp. 140-44, 152-54.— Ed. 

© See F. Mehring, Die Deutsche Soztaldemokratie. Ihre Geschichte und ihre Lehre, 
Bremen, 1878, p. 221.— Ed. 

d See this volume, p. 155.— Ed. 

€ See this volume, pp. 159-63.— Ed. 

172 In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx 

shown by these lists is confined to those in easy circumstances—quite naturally, 
since the incomes of the rest are not shown in these lists; but that he does not 
believe this augmentation is confined to these classes, since it is known from other 
sources that at the same time the condition of the British labourer has improved to 
a degree unexampled in any country and any age... 

(The remainder has nothing to do with the charge and is simply 
a “Contribution to the Question” etc.— F. Engels.) 

No. 14. FROM THE APPENDICES TO BRENTANO’S REPLY 

a) From [H. Roy,] The Theory of the Exchanges, London, 1864, p. 134. 

*“From 1842 to 1852, the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per 
cent ... in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it had increased from the basis taken 
in 1853, 20 per cent! My honourable friend says, it is owing to Australian gold. I 
am sorry to see that he is lost in the depths of heresy upon the subject of gold. 
This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes 
of property, but must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, because it 
cheapens the commodities of general consumption—while the rich have been 
growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor! at any rate, whether the 
extremes of poverty are less, I do not presume to say.” * 

“Voila Vhomme en effet. Il va du blanc au noir. 

Il condamne au matin ses sentiments du soir. 
Importun a tout autre, a lui méme incommode, 

Il change a tous moments d’esprit comme de mode.” 149 

*“The average condition of the British labourer has improved during the last 
twenty years in a degree we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the 
history of any country or any age, a matter of the greatest thankfulness, because, 
etc. ... hardly have earnings given a sufficiency of prime necessaries,...” * 

Noteworthy for the connection between The Theory of the Exchanges, and Marx’s 
remarks in Capital, I, Ist edition, p. 639 is also the following. Having advanced 
here the details, quoted from The Theory of the Exchanges, given by the LONDON 
ORPHAN ASYLUM, against Gladstone’s sentence ‘““WHETHER THE EXTREMES OF POVERTY 
ARE LESS EXTREME THAN THEY WERE, I DO NOT PRESUME TO SAY”, Marx turns against 
Gladstone’s budget speech of April 7, 1864; The Theory of the Exchanges has an 
APPENDIX, in which, as a supplement to the pages just printed here, there is also a 
gloss on the budget of 1864. The style in which this is done is the same as that 
which is familiar enough from the foregoing. This excursus contains the following 
passage (p. 234): 

*“But the Chancellor is eloquent upon ‘poverty’... “Think of those who are on 
the border of that region...’, upon ‘wages ... in others it is true not increased... 
human life is, but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for existence’.” * 

Now compare with this Marx, I, Ist ed., p. 640, 4th ed., p. 618. Here too again, 
instead of the reproduction of the actual budget speech verbatim, [we find] the 
same mosaic of sentences torn from their context as in The Theory of the Exchanges. 
And here too it is not this source which is referred to, but simply to Gladstone, 
H.o.C., April 7, 1864. And then the text continues: “The continual crying 
contradictions in Gladstone’s budget speeches of 1863 and 1864 were characterised 
by an English writer by the following quotation from Moliére” (followed by the 
verse from Moliére printed above). 

Documents.— IV. Engels and Brentano 

It becomes clear that Marx took not only this quotation, but also the “‘continual 
crying contradictions in Gladstone’s budget speeches of 1863 and 1864”, invented 
by the author of The Theory of the Exchanges, from this book. 

b) As was already remarked in the introduction to this reprint, Engels, in the 
fourth edition of the first volume of Marx’s Capital, p. 617, added “The Morning 
Star, April 17, 1863” to the now-as-ever falsely reproduced quotation from 
Gladstone’s budget speech. The relevant portions of this speech are given above on 
pp. 8 and 9 according to Hansard’s shorthand report. Although on p. 13 the 
Times report—completely coincident in sense, with its wording condensed only as 
is a newspaper’s wont, this report, together with that in The Morning Star quoted 
by Engels, and the wording of the quotation in Marx are presented parallel here: 

* The Times 
April 17, 1863 

“In ten years, from 
1842 to 1852 inclusive, 
the taxable income of the 
country, as nearly as we 
can make out, increased 
by 6 per cent; but in 
eight years, from 1853 to 
1861, the income of the 
country again increased 
from the basis taken by 
20 per cent. That is a fact 
so strange as to be almost 
incredible... I must say for 
one, I should look almost 
with apprehension and with 
pain upon this intoxicating 
augmentation of wealth and 
power, if it were my belief 
that it was confined to the 
classes who are in easy cir- 
cumstances. This takes no 
cognizance at all of the 
condition of the labour- 
ing population. The aug- 
mentation I have de- 
scribed, and which is 
founded, I think, upon 
accurate returns, is an 
augmentation entirely 
confined to classes of pro- 
perty. Now, the augmen- 
tation of capital is of in- 
direct benefit to the 
labourer, because it 
cheapens the commodity 

* The Morning Star 
April 17, 1863 

“IT must say, for one, I 
should look with apprehen- 
ston and with pain upon 
this intoxicating augmenta- 
tion of wealth and power, if 
it were my beltef that it was 
confined to the classes who 
are in easy circumstances. 
This great increase of 
wealth takes no cogni- 
zance at all of the condi- 
tion of the labouring 
population. The augmen- 
tation is an augmentation 
entirely confined to 
classes of property. But 
that augmentation must be 
of indirect benefit to the 
labouring population, be- 
cause it cheapens_ the 
commodities which go to 
the general consumption. 
So that we have this pro- 

Capital 
I, lst ed., p. 639, 
Note 103 

* “From 1842 to 1852 
the taxable income of 
the country 

increased by 6 per cent. 
In the eight years from 
1853 to 1861 it 

had in- 
creased from the basis 
taken in 1853, 20 per 
cent! The fact is so as- 
tonishing as to be al- 
most incredible .............. 

Peer rem ere asa r reer reccareeereenessnees 

nee meer reer erer eres eaceeeneanaeeeuees 

intoxicating augmenta- 
tion of wealth and pow- 
er 

“is entirely confined to 
classes of property, 
but must be of indirect 
benefit to the labouring 
population, because it 
cheapens the  com- 
modities of general con- 
sumption — 

which in the business of 
production comes into di- 
rect competition with labo- 
ur. (Hear, hear.) But we 
have this profound, and, 
I must say inestimable 
consolation, that while 
the rich have been grow- 
ing richer the poor have 
been growing less poor. 
Whether the extremes of 
poverty are less extreme 
than they were I do not 
presume to say, but the 
average condition of the 
British labourer, we have the 
happiness to know, has im- 
proved during the last twenty 
years in a degree which we 
know to be extraordinary, 
and which we may almost 
pronounce to be unexampl- 
ed in the history of any 
country and of any age. 
(Cheers.)” * 

found, and I almost say, 
inestimable consolation— 
while the rich have been 
growing richer, the poor 
have been growing less 
poor. (Hear, hear.) At 
any rate, whether the ex- 
tremes are less extreme 
than they were I do not 
presume to say, but the 
average condition of the 
British labourer, we have the 
happiness to know to be 
extraordinary, and that we 
may almost pronounce it to 
be unexampled in the history 
of any country or any age. 
(Cheers)” * 

In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx 

“while the rich have 
been growing richer, 
the poor have been 
growing less poor! At 
any rate, whether the 
extremes of poverty are 
less, I do not presume 
to say.” * 

Here, in the middle 
of a sentence, as the 
reprint above shows, 
The Theory of the Ex- 
changes breaks off to 
insert a quotation from 
Moliére; Marx who, as 
the comparison above 
shows, did not take the 
quotation from The Mor- 
ning Star but—omit- 
ting a passage marked 
by him with dots— 
verbatim from The 
Theory of the Exchanges, 
has Gladstone end in 
the middle of a sen- 
tence... 

The comparison above shows us that the arbitrarily thrown-together mosaic of 

sentences torn from their context, which Marx presents as Gladstone’s budget 
speech, can be found as little in The Morning Star as in The Times or Hansard; on 
the other hand, it can be found solely in The Theory of the Exchanges. The heavily 
leaded sentences* are those omitted by Henry Roy, and still more by Karl 
Marx—compare the last sentence—in order to have Gladstone say the opposite of 
what he really said. 

No. 15. FROM THE PARLIAMENTARY REPORTS 
OF THE LONDON PRESS OF APRIL 17, 1863 

* Morning Herald. 1 may say that I for one would look with fear and 
apprehension at this intoxicating increase of wealth if I were of opinion that it is 
confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This great increase of wealth which I 
have described, and which is founded on accurate returns is confined entirely to 
the augmentation of capital, and takes no account of the poorer classes. 

Morning Post. 1 may say, 1 for one, would look with fear and apprehension 
when I consider this great increase of wealth if I believed that its benefits were 
confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This augmentation of wealth which I 
have described, and which is founded on accurate returns is confined entirely to 
the augmentation of capital, and takes no account of the augmentation of wealth of 
the poorer classes. 

4 In italics in this edition.— Fd 

Documents.—IV. Engels and Brentano 175 

Daily Telegraph. I may say for one, that I should look almost with apprehension 
and alarm on this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if it were my 
belief that it was confined to the masses who are in easy circumstances. This 
question to wealth takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring 
population. The augmentation stated is an augmentation entirely confined to the 
classes possessed of property. 

Daily News. I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension 
when I consider this great increase of wealth if I believed that its benefits were 
confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This augmentation of wealth which I 
have described, and which is founded upon accurate returns, is confined entirely to 
the augmentation of capital, and takes no account of the augmentation of wealth of 
the poorer classes. 

Standard. I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension at 
this intoxicating increase of wealth if I were of the opinion that it was confined to 
the classes in easy circumstances. This great increase of wealth which I have 
described, and which is founded on the accurate returns is confined entirely to the 
augmentation of capital, and takes no account of the poorer classes.* 

No. 16. GLADSTONE TO BRENTANO 

DEUTSCHES WOCHENBLATT, No. 49, DECEMBER 4, 1890 

Message 

In number 45 of the Deutsches Wochenblatt Professor Lujo Brentano published 
an essay “My Polemic with Karl Marx”, which served at the same time as an 
introduction to a republication of this polemic as a pamphlet. This polemic dealt 
mainly with a parliamentary speech delivered by Gladstone in 1863, and which 
Marx reproduced in a distorted form in his Inaugural Address on the formation of 
the International Working Men’s Association. 

Obviously nobody is more qualified to settle this dispute about the wording of 
Gladstone’s speech than Gladstone himself. It is therefore of special interest that 
Gladstone, as a result of the republication of Brentano’s polemic with Marx, has 
addressed two letters to Brentano. On November 22 Gladstone wrote to Brentano: 
“You are completely correct, and Marx completely incorrect”, and on 
November 28: “I undertook no changes of any sort”. Thus the affair, which 
throws a revealing light on the Social Democratic line of argumentation, may finally 
be decided to the detriment of the Social Democratic standpoint. 

By uncovering this deceit Brentano has done a service, and it was very timely 
that he chose this precise moment to rekindle the memories of this dispute. 

O.A. 

No. 17. ENGELS’ REPLY TO No. 16 

DIE NEUE ZEIT, No. 13, 1891, P. 425 
In the Case of Brentano v. Marx'”° 

In my preface to the fourth edition of Marx’s Capital, Vol. I,* I 
was obliged to report upon the course of Mr. Lujo Brentano’s 

@ See present edition, Vol. 35; see also this volume, pp. 164-69. 

176 In the Case of Brentano Versus Marx 

favourite anonymous campaign against Marx, a campaign based 
upon the charge that Marx had forged a quotation from a speech 
by Gladstone. 

Mr. Brentano responded to this with a pamphlet My Polemic with 
Karl Marx by Lujo Brentano, Berlin, Walter und Apolant, 1890. I 
shall reply to this in his own coin. 

In the meantime, No. 49 of the Deutsches Wochenblatt, De- 
cember 4, 1890, carries a further note on this matter, which states: 

“Obviously nobody is more qualified to settle this dispute about the wording of 
Gladstone’s speech than Gladstone himself. It is therefore of special interest that 
Gladstone, as a result of the republication of Brentano’s polemic with Marx, has 
addressed two letters to Brentano. On November 22 Gladstone wrote to Brentano: 
‘You are completely correct, and Marx completely incorrect’, and on November 28: 
‘I undertook no changes of any sort’.’’4 

What is this supposed to mean? In what “are you completely 
correct” and Marx “completely incorrect”? In what “have I 
undertaken no changes of any sort’? Why is Mr. Brentano’s 
message confined to these two short sentences? 

Either Mr. Gladstone has not given his permission to publish the 
whole of the letters. This is then proof enough that they prove 
nothing. 

Or else Mr. Gladstone wrote the letters in the first place for the 
public, and permitted Mr. Brentano to make what use he would of 
them. Then the publication only of these meaningless extracts 
proves even more strongly that Mr. Gladstone’s testimony in its 
entirety is unusable for Mr. Brentano, and therefore “bodged 
together” as above. 

In order to know what the two sentences above are worth, we 
must have before us not only the two letters from Mr. Gladstone, 
but also the relevant letters from Mr. Brentano. And as long as 
the whole correspondence in this matter has not been published in 
the original language, the fragments above are completely 
insignificant to the question under dispute, and not worth the 
paper they are printed on. 

F. Engels 

4 See this volume, pp. 175.— Ed.