{London,] 10 December 1864 

Dear Frep, 

My compliment To Mrs Lizzy.* 

You had already given me your private address some time ago, but 
not the ‘rirm’ to which to write. I am very glad to have it now, as I 
sometimes find it desirable to drop you a few lines on Saturdays. 

The £5 for Wilhelm” is already on its way to Berlin today. 

You have not sent me back the Becker.’* However cunningly 
‘the Red’ fancies he has extricated himself from the matter, his 
letter is a DOCUMENT WHICH ONE FINE MORNING HE MAY FIND TO TURN UP for 
unforeseen purposes. The old Hatzfeldt woman will, incidentally, 
ensure that the statement‘ gets to the right person.™ 

What About SHERMAN'S EXPEDITION? © 

Apropos. Your Poor-House Purdy is said to have published an 
absolutely disgraceful document during the cotton-famine,*”” recom- 
mending reducing support to a minimum, on the grounds that the 
HEALTH Of THE COTTON-operatives Was Said to have improved; as a result 
of this, FAMINE DISEASES are said to have broken out in the East or 
Lancashire. (That was in the early days of the cotton-famine.) Do you 
know anything about it? And, in general, can you obtain for me 
the official papers in Manchester (of the Committee,“ etc.) relating to 
the corton-FAMINE? 

Lothario Bucher, whom Lassalle appointed executor to his will 
and to whom he left £150 a year pension, has, as you probably 
already know, gone over to Bismarck’s camp. Baron Izzy* would 
pai have done the same himself as ‘Minister of Labour’, 

Marquis Posa to Philipp II of the Uckermark,’ but not tn THE small 
way or Lothario, with whom the Hatzfeldt woman has fallen out 
and who can now shake hands with Edgar Bauer and the Prussian 
consul in Milan, Mr R. Schramm. The Prussians were looking for 
a post for Mr Schramm ‘where yer don’t need no exam’.* I also 

“ Lizzy Burns - © Wilhelm Liebknecht - © K. Marx, ‘To the Editor of the Stuttgart 
Beobachter’. - 4 See this volume, p. 27. - € Lassalle - f Marquis Posa and Philipp 
{i are characters from Schiller’s Don Karlos. By ‘Philipp Hi of the Uckermark’ Marx 
means William I. - 8 Berlin dialect in the original here: ‘wo ken Examen nicht 
netig.” 

fancy Mr Rodbertus’ intentions are ‘none too ’onourable’ because he 
is claiming to ‘have entirely divorced the social question from politics’,* 
sure sign that he has got the ministerial itch. What a contempt- 
ible gang, all that riff-raff from Berlin, Brandenburg and Pome- 
rania! 

I fancy there is a secret understanding between Prussia, Russia and 
France for the war against Austria IN NEXT spring. Venetia will, 
course, provide the warcry. The Austrians are behaving with 
abysmal cowardice and stupidity. This ensues from Francis Joseph 
himself interfering personally in Austrian _ politics. Buol- 
Schauenstein, etc., all the sensible hommes d-état? are obliged to 
keep their traps shut, and the Russian agents, such notorious 
fellows as the present Austrian Foreign Minister“ are giving all the 
orders. For all that, the Austrians’ behaviour would be inexplica- 
ble, unless these fellows either have faith in Prussia’s perfidious 
promises or are determined to accept the long-standing promise of 
compensation in Turkey. 

What do you say to Collet’s profound discoveries—based on 
Urquhart—about Nebuchadnezzar and the Russians’ Assyrian 
ancestry, and the further discovery, which is cited as ‘Urquhart’s’ 
that iw Tracy THE Pope 1s THE ONLY REAL THING?4 

Today’s The Miner and Workman’s Advocate—the Moniteur of 
the mineworkers in England and Wales—is printing the whole of 
my ‘Address’! The London ‘bricklayers’ (over 3,000 men) have 
announced they are joining the International Association, and 
they are fellows who have never before joined a movement. 

There was a sus-commirree”’ meeting last Tuesday, at which Mr 
Peter Fox (his real name is P. Fox André) presented his address 
on Poland” to us. (This kind of thing is always dealt with 
beforehand in the suscommrrrer before going to the Genera. 
Committee.) The piece is not badly written and Fox has en- 
deavoured to apply the concept of ‘class’, at least a semblance of it, 
although it is normally alien to him. His real forte is Foreign Policy, 
and it is only as a propagandist of atheism that he has had 
dealings with the Working Classes as such. 

But easy though it is to get the English workers to accept a 
rational approach, one has to be all the more careful the moment 

a Marx quotes almost literally Liebknecht’s letter to him of 2 December 
1864. - > statesmen - © Alexander Mensdorff-Pouilly - 4 [C.D. Collet,] ‘Russia’s De- 
signs on the Pope’, The Free Press, No. 12, 7 December 1864. - © mouthpiece - 
f K. Marx, ‘Inaugural Address of the Working Men’s International Association’, The 
Miner and Workman’s Advocate, No. 93, 10 December 1864. - 8 6 December 

men of letters, members of the bourgeoisie or semi-literary people 
become involved in the movement. Fox, like his friend Beesly 
(Professor of Political Economy at the University of London, he 
took the chair at the founding meeting in St Martin’s Hall*) and 
other ‘democrats’, have a fanatical ‘love’ of France, which, as far as 
Foreign Policy is concerned, they extend not only to Napoleon I but 
even to Boustrapa,”” as opposed to what they call, not without 
justice, the English aristocratic tradition, and as a continuation of 
what they call the English democratic tradition of 1791/92. Wet! 
Not content in his address (which, incidentally, is not to appear as 
an address from the whole Association but as an address from the 
English section concerning the Pouish Question, endorsed by the 
whole Committee) with telling the Poles, which is true, that the 
French people has been traditionally more sympathetic towards 
them than the English, Mr Fox winds up is address mainly by 
consoling the Poles with the passionate friendship that tHe Encusi 
Working Classes have conceived for THE Frencu Democrats. [ opposed 
this and unfolded a historically irrefutable tableau of the constant 
French betrayal of Poland from Louis XV to Bonaparte HI. At the 
same time, I pointed out how thoroughly inappropriate it was that 
the Ancio-Frencu-A.alliance should appear as the ‘core’ of the 
International Association, albeit in a democratic version. To cut 
matters short, Fox’s address was accepted by the suscommrrrer on 
condition that he altered the ‘ram’ in accordance with my 
suggestions. Jung, the Swiss Secretary (from French Switzerland), 
declared that, as a sorry on the Generar Counc, he would move 
that the address be rejected as avrocerner ‘bourgeois’.”” 

Our Major Wolff has been locked up by the Piedmontese for the 
moment in the fortress of Alexandria. 

Louis Blanc has written to the General Secretary Cremer that he 
approves the ‘Address’ and regrets not having been able to attend 
the St Martin’s Hall meeting, etc. Avrocerner, the sole purpose of his 
letter is to get him co-opted an Honorary member. Foreseeing that 
attempts of this kind would be made, I had, however, fortunately 
got the npy-.aw accepted that no one (except workers’ societies) could 
be invited to join and that nobody at all could be an honorary 
member.” 

Salut. 

Your 

@ See this volume, pp. 15-16. 

Gumpert will get the photograph as soon as he sends me the 
long-promised one of his wife.