Manchester, 26 January 1860

Dear Moor,

Tomorrow being Tribune day,'’ I’m sorry that there should again be no material to hand; the few notes on Morocco in The Times* don’t even run to the engagement at Cabo-Negro,"* nor has anything else happened. However, you'll have enough material with the parliamentary stuff.” I am still waiting to hear about the reform of the Prussian army as well.

Your opinion of the importance of the slave movement in America and Russia‘ is already being confirmed. The HarpersFerry affair,'? with its sequel in Missouri, is bearing fruit. Everywhere the free niccers“ in the South are being hounded out of the states, and I have just seen from the first New York cotton report (W. P. Wright & Co of 10 January 1860)° that the planters HURRIED their Cotton ON TO THE PORTS IN ORDER TO GUARD AGAINST ANY PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES ARISING OUT OF THE HARPERS-FERRY AFFAIR. In Russia, too, the confusion is growing admirably; the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung’s St. Petersburg correspondent is very good on this subject, though he pays more attention to the constitutional movement among the aristocracy,’ which, however, also provides a certain impetus for the peasants, of course.

In India we have the makings of a tremendous crisis. As far as the views of the local philistines on the subject are concerned, conrer the enclosed market reports. Now yarn prices are mostly so high, almost higher than the peak in 1857, and yet cotton is 93/5 to 2'/od cheaper. Twenty-six new mills are under construction in Burnley alone, and a proportionate number in other places.

4 ‘Spain and Morocco’, The Times, Nos. 23523, 23524 and 23526, 23, 24 and 26 January 1860. See Marx's article ‘English Politics’ in Vol. 17 of the present edition. © See this volume, p. 4. 4 Engels, who uses the English word, may have been unaware of its racist connotations. © ‘Commercial Matters’, New-York Daily Tribune, No. 5839, 11 January 1860. ' ‘Zur russischen Leibeigenschaftsfrage und die Finanz-Verhaltnisse des Staats’, Allgemeine Zeitung, Nos. 3 and 5 (supplement), 3 and 5 January 1860; ‘Die Bauern-Emancipation in Russland’, Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 16 (supplement), 16 January 1860; ‘Die russische Leibeigenschaft und der Adel’, Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 18 (supplement), 18 January 1860.

Everywhere, by degrees, the workers are getting a 10% rise in wages and will shortly receive even more. In my view, the practice of operating on fictitious capital is again just as rie in Indian business as it was in 1846/47, and most people are buying only because they have to, and cannot stop. But, even if that were not so, the increase in production alone will bring about a colossal collapse this autumn or in the spring of 1861 at the latest.

Already these idiotic English believe that they will shortly inundate, France.”” A jackass of a calico printer—onr or ‘THe sharpest—says that, with a 30% protective tariff in France, the business he could do there would be 15% more profitable than on any other market. The fool imagines that monopoly prices will continue to obtain in France, even if the monopoly is abolished. It has occurred to no one that the whole thing is a piece of sharp practice, the aim being to get at John Bull where he is notoriously vulnerable, and ultimately to fleece him good and proper.

Who, actually, is the Mr Fischel who wrote the Duke of Coburg’s* pamphlet for him*! and now writes for The Free Press? Even from the excerpts from his pamphlet I could see that the. Coburg chap has Urquhartite leanings. :

Dronke is now in Liverpool and holds a very good agency for a Franco-Spanish copper mining company—£500 guaranteed and the possibility of earning up to £1,000, or so I’m told. Garnier-Pagés got it for him. He comes here quite often, but always steers clear of me, sending me his regards post festum.

Lupus has had a bad bout of bronchitis but is better now though still very anxious about himself and not yet fully recovered. Once again he has so arranged matters as to be in a chronic state of strife with his company.

I have a great deal to do at the office just now, hence the irregularity of my correspondence. Nor, for the time being, do I see that anything can be done about this excessive drudgery unless, as I hope, there is a crisis.

Many regards to your wife and the younc tavis.”.

Your F. E.