MARX TO FERDINAND LASSALLE”’ 

[London,] 11 June 1861 

Dear Lassalle, 

Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass on the enclosed letter 
to the countess.*”* 

Many thanks for your book,* which arrived here a day or two 
since (I immediately sent the other copies to their respective 
destinations in Manchester). I began at the end, namely with the 
Pelasgian affair, and then went back to the law of succession at the 
beginning, having now progressed as far as p. 215. It is an 
important work in every respect. However, I cannot send you a 
criticism, assessment, etc., until I have read right through the 

4 F, Lassalle, Das System der erworbenen Rechte. - > Sophie von Hatzfeldt - © What do 
you think about it? 

whole thing. Merely en passant, then: In India, adoption is the 
prevailing form. English law has taken a course diametrically 
opposed to that of French law. Complete testamentary freedom 
(whereby no Englishman or Yankee is compelled to leave his 
family a farthing) dates back to the bourgeois revolution of 1688 
and evolved in the same measure as ‘bourgeois’ property 
developed in England. Thus, it would seem after all that, aside 
from its specifically Roman origins, etc., complete testamentary 
freedom, indeed the making of wills generally, is a delusion, which, 
in bourgeois society too, must have roots of its own, Ine ependent 
of mythology, etc. 

I have, alas, had a letter from Germany saying that the £10 
cannot be remitted to you before the end of this month. Until then, I 
must trust to your diplomatic finesse. As you know, I was 
disagreeably surprised by the fact that my uncle,* who honoured 
the bills I currently owed, put off giving me the additional amount 
I asked for until some Monrus Later. All the same, I couldn’t help 
laughing at such a typically Dutch turn of events. 

Whether or not I am accorded Prussian nationality there might 
still be some question of myself and ramizy travelling to Berlin on 
my passport as a ‘foreigner’, and spending the winter there. 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M.