Manchester, 11 June 1863 

Dear Moor, 

Herewith £5 Bank of England note R/X 46271, 31 Jan. 1862, 

Manchester. 

v7 & "7 __""__” S/R 92394, 14 Oct. 1862, London, with 

which the butcher will, I hope, be placated. Since I cannot post 

the letter myself, it would be best if you would acknowledge its 
receipt. ‘ 

4 See this volume, p. 465. 

I was very worried by your long silence but have meanwhile 
heard that you were unwell and hope that that is now over. How 
is little Jenny’s cough? 

Latterly, things would not seem to have been going so well in 
Poland. The movement in Lithuania and Little Russia is evidently 
weak, nor do the insurgents in Poland seem to be making any 
headway. The leaders are all either killed in action or captured 
and shot, which would.seem to show that they have to expose 
themselves a great deal in order to egg on their men. Qualitatively 
the insurgents are no longer what they were in March and April, 
the best chaps having been expended. However, these Poles are 
always unknown quantities, and affairs might take a turn for the 
better, although the odds against it are worsening. If they hold 
out, they might yet become part of a general European movement 
which would be the saving of them; on the other hand, should 
things go wrong, it will be all up with Poland for the next 10 
years, for an insurrection like this exhausts a people’s fighting 
potential for many years to come. 

I should say that the chances of there being a European 
movement were good because the ordinary citizen has once more 
rid himself of all fear of the communists and might even, if need 
be, go into action with them. The French elections prove this no 
less plainly than do the goings-on in Prussia since the last 
elections.**’ However, I scarcely think that a movement of this 
kind would originate in France. The election results in Paris were 
altogether too bourgeois; wherever the workers put up candidates 
of their own, they lost, nor for that matter did they have the 
power to force the bourgeoisie to: put up radicals. Besides, 
Bonaparte knows how to keep large cities in check. 

In Prussia they would still be chattering away. if the good 
Bismarck hadn’t put a stop to it." Whatever turn things may take 
there, peaceful constitutional progress is now at an end and your 
philistine must get ready for the fray. And that’s enough to be 
going on with. Little though I esteem the valour of our old friends 
the democrats, it is, nevertheless, here more than anywhere else, I 
should say, that combustible material is accumulating and, since it 
is scarcely possible that the Hohenzollerns will fail to perpetrate 
the worst blunders in foreign policy, it might well happen that, with 
half the troops deployed at the Polish frontier and the other half 
on the Rhine, Berlin would be left free and a coup would result. It 
would be a poor enough outlook for Germany and Europe were 
Berlin to find itself in the van of the movement. 

What surprises me most is that a peasants’ movement should not 

19* 

have arisen in Greater Russia. In this instance, the Polish uprising 
would seem to have had a positively unfavourable effect. 

In America things are in a pretty pickle. Fighting Jor’s* 
rodomontade has made him look a frightful ass,’ Rosecrans 
slumbers and Grant alone is performing well. His move on 
Vicksburg from the south-west to the north-east, his isolation of 
the relief army, his repulse of the same, then the rapid advance on 
Vicksburg and even the energetic if fruitless assaults, are all 
first-class. I do not believe it will be possible to muster enough 
relief troops on time. On the other hand, we have so often seen 
American generals suddenly perform well for a couple of weeks 
and then revert to the most dreadful bungling, that it’s quite 
impossible to tell what their future moves will be. 

I was already familiar with Lassalle’s poem (genitivus objectivus’) 
from a pamphlet Siebel sent me and which you presumably have 
as well. Very jolly. The chap’s now operating purely in the service 
of Bismarck and, one of these days, when Monsieur B. tires of 
him, he might well find himself under lock and key, making the 
acquaintance of Prussian common Jaw, which he always seems to 
confuse with the Code.™ It’s nice, by the way, that, after the stand 
he took in Vogtibus,” he should now find himself under the aegis, 
not only of the Augsburger, but also of the Kreuz-Zeitung. 

I am now reading Kinglake“ and am becoming more convinced 
than ever that somewhere in every Englishman’s brain a board is 
nailed up beyond which nothing penetrates. 

Your 
F. E.