B[armen,] 25 April 1848 

Dear Marx, 

I have just received the prospectus* along with your letter. 
There’s damned little prospect for the shares here. Blank,” to 
whom I had already written about it**' and who is still the best of 
the lot, has become practically a bourgeois; the others even more 
so since they became established and came into conflict with the 
workers. All these folk shun the discussion of social questions like 
the plague, calling it seditious talk. I have lavished on them the 
finest rhetoric, and resorted to every imaginable diplomatic ploy, 
but always hesitant answers. I am now going to make one final 
effort; if it fails, that will be the end of everything. In 2-3 days 
you'll have definite news about how things have gone. The fact is, 
au fond, that even these radical bourgeois here see us as their 
future main enemies and have no intention of putting into our 
hands weapons which we would very shortly turn against 
themselves. 

a H. Burgers, ‘Prospectus for the Founding of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung’.- 
> Wilhelm Blank - © after all 

Nothing whatever is to be got out of my old man. To him even 
the Kolner Zeitung is a hotbed of agitation and, sooner than 
present us with 1,000 talers, he would pepper us with a thousand 
balls of grape. 

The most advanced of the bourgeois here find their party 
represented pretty much to their satisfaction by the Kéln. Zeitung. 
Que veux-tu qu’on fasse, alors?? 

Moses’? agent, Schnaake, who was here last week, would seem to 
have been calumniating us too.?”” 

I have no address for Dronke except: Adolf Dominicus, 
merchant, Coblenz (his uncle). His old man is living in Fulda, a 
grammar school headmaster, I think. It’s a little backwater: Dr 
E. Dronke junior, Fulda, would probably reach him if he’s there. 
But it’s foolish of him not to write, if only to let us know his 
whereabouts. 

I have had a letter from Ewerbeck asking whether we have 
received a supposedly important letter which he sent to the agreed 
address in Mainz. If you haven’t had it, write and inform Mainz 
(Philipp Neubeck, teacher candidate, Rentengasse (Heiliger Geist), 
Mainz). 

Ewerbeck is having the Manifesto translated into Italian and 
Spanish in Paris and to that end wants us to send him 60 fr. which 
he has undertaken to pay. Yet another of those schemes of his. 
They will be splendid translations.” 

I am working on the English translation, which presents more 
difficulties than I thought. However, I’m over half way through, 
and before long the whole thing will be finished.?* 

If even a single copy of our 17 points“ were to circulate here, all 
would be lost for us. The mood of the bourgeoisie is really ugly. 
The workers are beginning to bestir themselves a little, still in a 
very crude way, but as a mass. They at once formed coalitions. But 
to us that can only be a hindrance. The Elberfeld political club?* 
issues addresses to the Italians, advocates direct election but 
resolutely eschews any discussion of social questions, although in 
private these gentlemen admit that such questions are now coming 
to be the order of the day, always with the proviso that we should 
not take precipitate action! 

a So what do you want us to do? - > Hess - © K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the 
Communist Party. - 4 K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Demands of the Communist Party in 
Germany’. 

Adios. Write soon in greater detail. Has the letter been sent to 
Paris, and did it have any results? ?”° 

Your 
FE.