[London,] 27 May 1862 

Dear Frederick, 

The children and the whole family send you their best thanks for 
the spirituous hamper. 

In Eichhoff’s letter enclosed herewith, you will find, recaptured 
to the life, the kind of polemics beloved of Parson Kinkel. Where 
would Gottfried be without his piss-a-bed!* 

I may not have written to tell you yet that Dr Klein in Cologne 
has won 35,000 talers in the Prussian lottery; he will now probably 
marry Mrs Daniels, provided he hasn’t changed his mind. 

It’s quite true that Bernard, always very eccentric and having in 
any case overworked during the past few weeks, has become 
subject to ‘hallucinations’. The only unrare thing about it is that this 
was instantly seized upon as an opportunity to put him away, 
which was quite unnecessary since the family in Dorking to whom 
he was tutor was prepared to look after and assume responsibility 
for him. Ditto Allsop. But the presence of the latter, who had 
provided the money for Orsini’s assassination attempt,"? and his 
renewed intercourse with Bernard, had long been worrying 
Bonaparte’s police, at whose request the English police had long 
been keeping an eye on Bernard. 

Last Saturday” I received from my Gas Company a summary 
demand that I pay them £1 10/- before -next Saturday, failing which 
(it’s a final notice) I shall be ‘cut off. Since I am now sans sou,* I am 
forced in this mess to turn to you. 

The blowing up of the Merrimac seems to me a clear indication 
of cowardice on the part of the Confederate swine.” The curs 
might still have hazarded another throw. It’s truly marvellous how 
The Times (which backed all the anti-Irish Coercion Bills*! with 
such intense enthusiasm) is now lamenting that ‘liberty’ will be lost 
should the North tyrannise over the South. The Economist is no 
less pleasing. In the last issue, it declares that it finds the financial 

a Heinrich Beta, whose real surname was Bettziech, rendered here by Marx as 
“Bettseicher’. - > 24 May - © without a sou - ¢ Report by the Times correspondent of 
13 May 1862, The Times, No. 24256, 27 May 1862. 

money— incomprehensible (although the thing is as plain as a pike- 
staff).* Up till then it had, for week after week, consoled its readers 
with talk of such depreciation. Although it now admits to not 
understanding what it should know about ex officio and hence to 
having misled its readers on the subject, it presently consoles them 
with gloomy reflections on the ‘military operations’, of which it 
officially understands nothing. 

What made paper operations exceptionally easy for the Yan. 
xrrs*”? (given the main factor—confidence in their cause and 
hence in their government) was undoubtedly the circumstance 
that, as a result of secession, the West was virtually stripped of 
paper money, i.e. of a circulating Medium generally. All the banks 
whose principal securities consisted in bonds issued by the slave 
states, went bankrupt. In addition, there was a drain of currency 
amounting to millions which had circulated in the West in the form 
of actual bank notes issued by the southern sanxs. Then, partly as a 
result of the Morrill Tariff** and partly as a result of the war 
itself, which had largely put a stop to the import of luxury goods, 
throughout the whole period the Yankees had a favourable balance 
of trade, and hence rate of exchange, vis-a-vis Europe. An 
unfavourable rate of exchange might have gravely affected the 
philistines’ patriotic confidence in paper. 

How absurd, by the by, is John Bull’s concern over the interest 
Unciz Sam will have to pay on the national debt! As though it 
weren't a bagatelle by comparison with Bull’s national debt, besides 
which the Unrrep Srares is now undoubtedly richer than were the 
British in 1815, with their debt of a milliard. 

Hasn’t Pam got Bonaparte into a fine old mess in Mexico? *** 

I have now—if only out of desperation—really put my nose to 
the grindstone and am writing away for dear life—at the political 
economy I mean.*!” 

1 article a week is coming out in the Presse. That, in fact, is all I 
send them, in accordance with Mr Friedlander’s letter.” 

Salut. 

Your 
K. M. 
My regards to Mrs BortMan ano sister.*”