{London,] 21 October 1876 

My dear Friend, 

Enclosed a cutting from The Pall Mall Gazette. This extract from 
your leader (in No. 42 of Bnepedd! ”) is badly translated, even 
though it was done by Sir etc. Rawlinson. Kovalevsky informed me 
of it and also sent me the thing. He asked me to lend him No. 42 
of your journal, but not even the prettiest girl in France can give 
more than she’s got. I had already sent it to Utin (Liége). 

Kovalevsky also told me—you could make use of it in your 
journal?**—that a detestable Russian clique, which purports to 
represent the leading Russian men of letters, and has announced 
its venture in these terms to Rawlinson and other English notables, 
intends to publish a review in London for the purpose of 
acquainting the English with the true politico-social movement in 
Russia. Golokhvastov would be editor-in-chief, with other col- 

«fH. K. B.] von Moltke, Der russisch-tirkische Feldzug in der europdischen Türkei 
1828 und 1829.-» See this volume, p. 154. 

laborators from that disgusting journal Ipascdanuns* and also, so it 
is said, Prince Meshchersky. 

The Russian government has already given signs of its 
insolvency by ordering the Bank of Petersburg to announce that it 
would no longer pay foreign bills of exchange in gold (and/or 
silver). I had been expecting this, but what passes al] understand- 
ing is the fact that, for two or three weeks before settling on this 
‘disagreeable’ measure, the aforesaid government had again 
perpetrated the folly of seeking artificially to maintain the rate of 
exchange in the London market. This has cost it nearly twenty 
million roubles; it might just as well have thrown the money into 
the Thames. 

This absurd operation—the artificial maintenance of the rate of 
exchange at government expense—belongs to the eighteenth 
century. Today it is only the alchemists of Russia’s finances who 
can go in for such things. Since Nicholas’ death these grotesque, 
periodically repeated, manipulations have cost Russia at least 
120 million roubles. But it is typical of a government which still 
seriously believes in the omnipotence of the State. Other 
governments do at least know that ‘money has no master’. 

Yours ever, 
Karl Marx