{Manchester,] Monday, 1 September [1851] 

Dear Marx, 

Once again you must excuse me. 

1. I still haven’t been able to make a start on the Proudhon,? 
having for the past 4 days been plagued by the most atrocious 
toothache, which has rendered me quite incapable of anything. On 
top of that my brother” (whom you know) is arriving this evening 
from London and will keep me from my work for heaven knows 
how long. Que le diable emporte l’exposition!‘ 

2. I can’t send the £5 I promised for today until tomorrow, 
since there is absolutely no money at all in the firm’s cash box, and 
so I won't be able to get it until tomorrow. 

The triumphant article in the Lithographische Correspondenz on 
the unity finally achieved by the honest émigrés is belied by 
another lament and the attacks by the ‘Prussians’ on the ‘South 
Germans’ and on Ruge the ‘Pomeranian’ in the very same number 
of the Lithographische Correspondenz. Sic transit gloria’—their joy 
was short-lived. It’s a good thing that, having so many friends in 
both the new societies,” we'll be molested by neither. 

@ Reference to Engels’ ‘Critical Review of Proudhon’s Book Idée générale de la 
Révolution au XIX¢ siécle’. - > probably Hermann - ¢ Confound the Exhibition! (i.e. 
the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.) - 4 Thus passes away the glory - © the 
German Agitation Society and the Refugee club 

Have you read the edifying article in today’s Daily News about 
that genuine whore and putative baroness Beck, who breathed her 
last in Birmingham, in the midst of her swindles, whilst in the 
hands of the English police*? A delightful business, the more so 
since it revealed that that importunate mendicant, ‘Dr’ Heinemann 
was also a spy in the direct pay of the ‘newly established foreign 
department of the British police’. You will remember how suspect 
that base creature has always seemed to us. Again, the handing 
over of documents ‘concerning a German communist association 
existing in London’ explains the chicanery of the police last 
summer, and I should like to know to what extent Mr Christian 
Joseph Esser is involved in this affair. Do you know the ‘Baron 
Soden’ who vouches for these stories and offers to provide proof? 
It would be a good thing if we could have this man secretly 
investigated. There would be no difficulty in finding a pretext and 
much would emerge about the rascally elements among the 
émigrés which might later come in useful. I shall get hold of this 
number of the Daily News and keep it; it’s a document that may 
be of use some time or other. 

In Liverpoo) and London the bankruptcies have already begun 
and The Economist, despite the evidence it adduces that the 
country’s Trade is exceptionally healthy, i.e. that most of the sur- 
plus capital is invested in soundly based production, has to admit 
that East India is again over-stocked and that the old story of 
consignment goods and cash advances is once again the rule 
rather than the exception in Indian trade.” Next week it proposes 
to tell us how to run the consignment business on a sound 
basis—to which I much look forward. In the meantime the 
spinners and weavers here are making an enormous amount of 
money—most of them are booked up until the New Year, and in 
the country they generally work until at Jeast 8 o'clock in the 
evening, that is, between 12 and 12'/y hours, and often longer. 
They are spinning yarn at 7-8d a pound from cotton at 3 *I4 to 
4'fed per pound; the cost of spinning these coarse counts is 
barely 1'/o-2d per pound, hence, with a weekly production of 
12 milhon pounds (with 600,000,000 pounds of raw cotton 
imports) and taking the coarse counts as the norm, English 
spinners as a whole are earning £75,000 a week, 3°/, million 

4 ‘Remarkable Case of Fraud by an Austrian Spy.—Sudden Death of the Impostor’, 
the Daily News, 1 September 1851. - > ‘Indigo’, The Economist, No. 417, 23 August 
1851. 

pounds a year net. The same holds good if, instead of Nos. 6-12, 
we take an average yarn count of 18-24 and many of those who 
can use inferior cotton on good machines earn, not 1 Ved per 
pound of yarn, but 2'/2d. All this dates back to the fall in cotton 
prices in April and May, and the people who buy relatively more 
twist than anyone else are the Germans. When the trouble 
starts—and the present state of trape will certainly not persist 
beyond March at the latest—and if at the same time the fun begins 
in France, it will be keenly felt by the Germans, with all that 
unsaleable yarn on their hands, and in this way, too, the country 
will be well prepared. 

Let us dedicate a silent tear to the shade of Briggemann.*” 
Never before, perhaps, has a worthy citizen met with more 
undeserved misfortune— sit illi terra levis.* 

Your 
F. E.