MARX TO ENGELS” 

[London,] 9 February 1860 

Dear Engels, 

To have offered your pamphlet? at two louis d’or per sheet is 
shameful. Pamphlets of this kind ought to be sold, not by the sheet, 
but as a whole. Even 40 talers per sheet would be too little. 
Incidentally, Campe is better than Duncker. The publisher* who 
brings out the Darmstadt Militdr-Zeitung' would gladly take the 
pamphlet, too. Actually, the main thing is that it should come out 
quickly and, if I were you, I would settle this matter, at least, by 
telegraph with that louse, Duncker.™ 

I have been in a secrer and CONFIDENTIAL CORRESPONDENCE With ‘The 
Daily Telegraph’ since the day the shit appeared. For before 
making amende honorable, the fellow"—I was as rude as hell to him 

a ‘J’ in the manuscript. ‘Th’ is correct. - » Marx gives the document in English. - 
© Marx drew a circle round the words representing the stamp. - 4 F. Engels, Savoy, 
Nice and the Rhine. - © Eduard Zernin -f Allgemeine Militér-Zeitung - 8 [K. Abel,] 
‘The Journalistic Auxiliaries of Austria’, The Daily Telegraph, No. 1439, 6 February 
1860. See this volume, pp. 74-76. - » the Editor of The Daily Telegraph 

in my letter **—wants to await his correspondent’s reply, whereas I 
demanded the immediate insertion of at least a brief note. 
Whatever he does or does not insert, I shall now bring down a 
LIBEL action ON his head. The circumstances of the case being what 
they are, any lawyer would happily undertake the thing on spec., 
as did, for instance, Edwin James, who vo.unteerep in Ernest 
Jones’s tiger action against Reynolds.” I wrote to Ernest Jones 
about this yesterday. On the same Tuesday as the thing 
appeared, by the by, I wrote to the Eprror of Palmerston’s 
MOB-PAPER Saying, inter alia: “THat LETTER PURPORTING TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN 
FROM FRANKFORT-ON-THE-Main, BUT WHICH WAS IN FACT INDITED AT Beruin, Is 
NOTHING BUT A CLUMSY AMPLIFICATION OF TWO LEADERS ETC. ETC.” in the Berlin 
National-Zeitung‘ The writer, i.e. The Daily Telegraph's swine of a 
Berlin correspondent, is a Jew by the name of Meier,” a relative 
of the Crry-Proprieror’s who is an English Jew by the name of Levy. 
Hence, both these fellows rightly accuse Heine—juvante* Vogt— 
of beirig a baptised Jew. Herewith Izzy’s last letter, which you 
should retain as a curiosity. Calls himself objective, does he? 
Inimitable, the plasticity of this most unhellenic of all Wasser- 
polack’' Jews! My only reply to the fellow was an immediate 
announcement in the papers—including the Volks-Zeitung—to the 
effect that I was bringing a libel action against the N.-Z° (In each 
case I enclosed the circular about Blind,‘ although, according to 
the great Izzy, I ought ‘not to delude myself as to the force of that 
argument.) 

All this week, by the by, I’ve been prevented from writing 
anything for the Tribune. I have had to send out fifty letters at 
least,” running round to see Collet and God knows who else not 
considered. And on top of that there was the correspondence with 
the beastly Telegraph and the correspondence with the Star? to 
which I sent the whole of my correspondence with the Telegraph. 
The enclosed letter from the Star is to be put on your files. I have 
also written to Reynolds.*? Shall see what he does. Then there was 
the running in connection with Wiehe and going to the police. 
The result you will find below. Two replies so far to my letters to 
the Continent—in so far as they weren’t just to newspapers. One 
from Schily. Priceless. Contains the whole Brimstone Gang™ and 

4 In fact it appeared on Monday, 6 February 1860. - b K. Marx, ‘To the Editor of The 
Daily Telegraph’. - © ‘Karl Vogt und die Allgemeine Zeitung’ and ‘Wie man radikale 
Flugblatter macht’, National-Zeitung, Nos. 37 and 41, 22 and 25 January 1860 
respectively. - 4 with the help of - © K. Marx, ‘To the Editors of the Volks-Zeitung. 
Declaration’. - ! K. Marx, ‘Prosecution of the Augsburg Gazette’. - & The Morning 
Star 

Bristlers* story. Another letter from Szemere. Most valuable on 
account of disclosures about, the revolutionary Hungarians’ ‘own’ 
(excluding Bonapartist) funds out of which, so Vogt maintains, his 
money was received. A letter from Imandt, not so bad.” One or two 
points, at any rate. I am still awaiting an answer, notably from Mr 
Reinach in Neuchatel, who is said to be a walking chronique 
scandaleuse‘ on the subject of the imperial bailiff.”* (Apropos. What 
address did the spy Hafner give in the Augsburg Allgemeine 
Zeitung?" There’s a vost I want to verify with him.) Have also 
written to Borkheim* (whom I have never met personally). Was 
chief Of the Brimstone Gang in Geneva who hung out at the Café 
de la Couronne and with whom on your occasional excursions you 
sometimes used to get tipsy, or so Schily tells me in his letter. 

I have drawn up the indictment against the Nat.-Zeit. for the 
public prosecutor’s office at the Berlin municipal court. It will go 

_off before I come up to you. But I must wait until I have Fischel’s 
answer with regard to the commencement and conclusion, the 
prescribed form of address, etc. Should I send the package (since 
it has to include all manner of manuscripts, documents) to Berlin 
by post or by parce, company? It should at all events be recisreren. 

I have rummaged through everything I have here in London in 
the way of letters and newspapers for the period 1848-59, and 
sorted out and put in order what we need. Now you must get 
things ready so that I find everything that’s available in one ‘great 
pile’ when I get to Manchester. 

Well, on Monday there was the working-men’s banquet,‘ 
attended by eighty people. An indignant anti-Vogt resolution was 
unanimously adopted by ‘the proletarians’. The beastly Hermann 
asked me to report on it. This I refused to do, but told them to 
obtain a brief account from Papa Liebknecht. 

Apropos, to rerurn @ nos moutons,” i.e. Lassalle. Not knowing, 
when I got his first letter, whether you had written to him as we 
had originally agreed (when circumstances were otherwise), I told 
him in a couple of lines that I had thought the only explanation 
for his many-month-long silence must be annoyance at my last, 
somewhat rude (in fact excessively rude), letter. I said that I was 
glad this was not the case, and also that I had informed you of my 

a See this volume, pp. 70-71 and Marx’s Herr Vogt (present edition, Vol. 17, 
pp. 38-47). - > See Herr Vogt, present edition, Vol. 17, p. 41. - © gossip column - 
4 See this volume, p. 11. - © The phrase ‘revenons a nos moutons (literally, ‘to return 
to our sheep’) occurs in a mediaeval French farce about the lawyer Patelin. In a 
figurative sense it means ‘to return to the matter in question’. 

misgivings." Wei! What a russ the brute goes and makes about it! 
How presumptuous the moral attitude adopted by the chap 
towards Liebknecht!” And this is the fellow who resorted to the 
most impudent means and consorted with the most impudent 
individuals au service de la comtesse de Hatzfeldt! Has the brute 
forgotten that, though I wanted to have him admitted to the 
League, he was rejected on account of his ill-repute by the 
unanimous decision of the Central Authority in Cologne? In racr, I 
believe, delicacy impelled me to keep the fellow in the dark about 
all this, as also about the working men’s deputation sent over to 
see me a few years ago from Düsseldorf, which adduced the most 
scandalous and in part irrefutable allegations against him!’ And 
now just look at the pretentious ape! No sooner—looking through 
his Bonapartist-tinted spectacles—does he think to descry some 
weak point in us, than he puffs himself up, pontificates, and 
strikes an—absurd, need one say?—attitude! And contrariwise, 
how completely do his legal instincts desert him for fear that I 
should not, ‘ro THE BENEFIT OF My TENDER FRIEND Lassalle, allow myself 
without more ado to be pushed into the background by Vogt. 
How he contradicts himself! How mean he becomes! One 
shouldn’t ‘stir things up even more’. “They wouldn’t ‘take it 
kindly’. Not take it kindly! They! For the sake of his pale-ale 
Berlin philistines, I am to let myself be browbeaten by schoolmas- 
ter Squeers, alias Zabel! Now I know just what to think of Mr 
Lassalle. 

I immediately wrote to Blind—or perhaps, I should say, put into 
an envelope the circular, which affects him so very closely.” He has 
kept his trap shut, of course. Instead, the brute goes running 
around town in the hope that things can be sorted out by 
tittle-tattle (vide below how much good that will do him). For the 
past few weeks the man’s been indulging in feverish activity, 
publishing pamphlet after pamphlet, blowing his own trumpet in 
the Hermann for all he’s worth, sucking up, fore and aft, to the 
few bourgeois whose acquaintance he made on the Schiller 
committee,” pressing his own candidature as secretary of the 
recently conceived Schiller Association,” now denying his ‘Pat- 
riots’,”’” now making himself important in their eyes by means of 
semicovert, statesmanlike allusions, etc. Well, all this amounts to, 
as you will instantly realise, is a drowning man clutching at a 
straw. : 

No one has behaved so abjectly as that potbellied philistine 
Freiligrath. I sent him the circular.” He didn’t so much as 

4 See this volume, p. 11. - > K. Marx, ‘Prosecution of the Augsburg Gazette’. 

acknowledge its receipt. Does the brute believe that I couldn’t, if 
so minded, immerse him up to the eyebrows in the lake of 
brimstone*? Has he forgotten that I possess a hundred or more of 
his letters? Does he imagine that I don’t see him because he shows 
me his backside? Yesterday, I also sent the philistine the ensuing 
palliative, on THE express condition that he should not say a word 
about it to anyone, including his friend the crypto-democrat Kar] 
Blind. That will tickle him, and ere long he’ll begin to feel uneasy 
at the undue proximity of the felonious friend in whose company 
he appeared before the public (as I reminded him quire en passant 
in my last letter’) in the pages of the A. A. Z* Almost everyone, 
except for Freiligrath, even distant acquaintances, are behaving 
decently to me at this time of crisis. 

But to come to essentials. Firstly, I discovered through Juch that 
Wiehe once committed a theft in Bremen, which was why he had 
to come to London. Secondly, I learnt through Schapper that 
Wiehe introduced himself to him as a compositor on the Volk, and 
it was he who had obtained the fellow’s present job for him. I 
briefed Schapper, who quietly intimated to Wiehe that he knew 
about the Bremen affair, but then proceeded to read my circular 
aloud in the presence of his employer and to cross examine him. The 
fellow admitted everything. What the outcome was, you will see 
from the following document of which I possess an officially 
authenticated duplicate. One is going to Berlin. The other I shall 
keep here and employ in no uncertain manner against the 
nay-sayer.* One further point. This will show you the kind of 
people these ‘honest fellows’ consort with. I had, of course, let 
Wiehe know that I would compensate him for the loss of half a 
working day, the time he would have to spend with me at the 
police court. When all had been done, I gave him 2/6d. He 
remonstrated. Well, how much a day do you earn? I asked. Asout 
3/-, said he, but I want five from you. After all, I ought to get 
something for telling the truth. 

But the best is yet to come. [:* You have declined the money offer 
made by Blind and Hollinger in order to bribe you? He: Why 
decline! The rogues promised, but never gave me anything.* That’s 
compositor Wiehe for you. But Hollinger is a villain of far deeper 
dye. Végele, whom I had arranged to see yesterday, did not turn up. 
Doubtless Blind-Hollinger made it worth his while to keep away. But 

4 The word used is ‘Schwefelpfuhl’, perhaps by analogy with ‘Schwefelbande’— 
Brimstone Gang. Cf. Revelation, 20:10. - > See this volume, pp. 30-32. - © K. Marx, 
‘Declaration’; 15 November 1859. - 4 Karl Blind 

they’ll have thrown their money down the drain. For I know that this 
chap has still got a conscience, and so I shall work on him.”* My 
circular misled them into approaching the wrong man. They 
believed it meant that I wouldn’t be able to get at Wiehe himself. 
Well, now ad rem’: 

‘One of the first days of November last—I do not recollect the exact date—in 
the evening between 9 and 10 o’clock I was taken out of bed by Mr F. Hollinger, in 
whose house I then lived, and by whom I was employed as compositor. He 
presented to me a paper to the effect that during the preceding 11 months I had 
been continuously employed by him, and that during all that time a certain 
German flysheet “Zur Warnung” (A Warning) had not been composed and printed 
in Mr Hollinger’s Office, 3, Litchfield Street, Soho. In my perplexed state, and not 
aware of the importance of the transaction, I complied with his wish, and copied, 
and signed the document. Mr Hollinger promised me money, but I never received 
anything. During that transaction Mr. Charles Blind, as my wife informed me at 
the time, was waiting in Mr Hollinger’s room. A few days later, Mrs Hollinger 
called me down from dinner and led me into her husband’s room, where I found 
Mr Charles Blind alone. He presented me the same paper which Mr Hollinger had 
presented me before, and entreated me to write, and sign a second copy, as he 
wanted two, the one for himself, and the other for publication in the Press. He 
added that he would show himself grateful to me. I copied and signed again the 
paper. 

- herewith declare—upon my oath—the truth of the above statements and 
that: 

‘1. During the 11 months mentioned in the document I was for six months not 
employed by Mr Hollinger, but by a Mr Ermani. 

‘2. I did not work in Mr Hollinger’s Office just at that time when the flysheet 
“Zur Warnung” was published. 

‘3. I-heard at the time from Mr Voegele, who then worked for Mr Hollinger, 
that he, Voegele, had, together with Mr Hollinger himself, composed the flysheet 
in question, and that the manuscript was in Mr Blind’s handwriting. 

‘4. The types of the pamphlet were still standing when I returned to 
Mr Hollinger’s service. 1 myself broke them into columns for the reprint of the 
flysheet “Zur Warnung” in the German paper “Das Volk” published at London, by 
Mr Fidelio Hollinger, 3, Litchfield Street, Soho. The flysheet appeared in No. 7, 
d. d. 18th June, 1859, of “Das Volk”. 

‘5. I saw Mr Hollinger give to Mr William Liebknecht, of 14, Church Street, 
Soho, London, the proofsheet of the pamphlet “Zur Warnung”, on which 
proofsheet Mr Charles Blind with his own hand had corrected 4 or 5 mistakes. 
Mr Hollinger hesitated at first giving the proofsheet to Mr Liebknecht, and when 
Mr Liebknecht had withdrawn, he, F. Hollinger, expressed to me and my fellow 
workman Voegele his regret for having given the proofsheet out of his hands. 

Johann Friedrich Wiehe 
Police Court, Bow Street 

4 to the matter in hand - > The original of the letter says ‘six weeks’. See this volume, 
p- 31, and also p. 129 in Vol. 17 of the present edition. - © Marx drew a circle round 
the words representing the stamp. 

‘Declared and signed by the said Johann Friedrich Wiehe at the Police Court, 
Bow Street, this 8th day of February, 1860, before me Th.* Henry, Magistrate of the 
said court.’> 

I deliberately brought the matter before Henry, he being the 
GOVERNMENT'S MAGISTRATE Who attends to all the political cases. The - 
brand of English found in the above is not my responsibility, 
unlike the precise enumeration of the facts. Wuar po you say Now, Sir! 
‘The argument lacks force’, says Izzy. Vive° Izzy! For conspiracy 
against myself, combined with arrempr aT BRIBERY OF WITNESSES, SO the 
MAGISTRATE Says, I could now get Mr Blind run out of town. So much 
for petty bourgeois artfulness! 

Your 
K. M.