([Manchester,] Saturday [25 January 1851] 

Dear Marx, 

Je te trouve joli en me disant que je suis taciturne comme la mort: 
However, [ll refrain from making any further riposte. 

The perfidy of that Pomeranian blackguard, Ruge, is crude 
beyond all measure.* It would be the simplest if you were to draft 

4 It’s a bit too much. The words quoted are from Ruge’s article. - & Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung. Politisch-dkonomische Revue -<¢ Sisters Mary and Lizzy Burns - 4 Mary - 
© Goethe, ‘Der Fischer’.-f You’re a fine one to tell me I’m silent as the 
grave. - 8 See this volume, p. 265. 

a statement to be signed by us both.* A few personal remarks 
could, if necessary, be appended in the form of notes and signed 
separately by each of us. I don’t know whether I should add 
something on my own account, if only to say that, in my 
commercial employment, I have maintained complete indepen- 
dence and hence do not have to let myself be ordered by my 
‘principals’, as Mr Ruge was by his superior Mazzini, despite all his 
earlier atheistic boasting,**? to append my signature to moving 
appeals to the bon dieu”; and that I have adopted this une so as not 
to fall into the necessity, congenial enough to other worthy gents 
held up to us as an example by Mr Ruge, namely, of living on 
democratic charity—or some such. Tell me if you think this is 
necessary. 

The article, by the way, with its moral indignation and_ its 
monumental lies, provides splendid stuff for ridicule. It im- 
mediately puts one on the track of Ruge’s intrigues. It’s very 
natural that Mr Ruge and Mazzini’s European Committee should 
be as incense in the nostrils of the worthy Reverend Dulon, and 
that Mazzini’s sublime manifestos should find their only fertile soil 
in Germany among those wailing North German, Lower-Saxon 
democrats swimming in Bremen-concocted, belletristic, drivel- 
sauce. These gentlemen’s Friendship of Light**° was bound to find 
desirable allies in Ronge-Mazzini and in the now once more 
god-fearing Ruge, while the honour of officially corresponding as 
the ‘German Committee’ with the greatest men of respectable 
European democracy must inevitably have made that malleable 
parson Dulon receptive to the worst scurrilities levelled against the 
‘frivolous’ and godless folk of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Ruge, 
too, has only plucked up courage since coming to believe that the 
Revue is dead. But I think he is mistaken and will shortly bring 
down a pretty thunderstorm upon his ludicrous cranium. 

Would it not be a good idea—since we cannot possibly raise a 
real shindy about this article or reply to it anywhere save in the 
Tages-Chronik°—to have the aforesaid Dulon secretly worked 
upon by his friend, red Becker*? After these scurrilities we can’t 
even be sure that our reply will be accepted. 

But it is clear as day that it was only Schramm’s* fatuous 
manner and the ill-considered prating which, to judge by this 
article, he indulged in at his brother’s,’ that inspired these 

aK. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Statement. 27 January 1851.’ - © Good Lord - © Bremer 
Tages-Chronik - 4 Hermann Becker - © Conrad Schramm -‘! Rudolf Schramm 

jackasses with sufficient courage to vent themselves so vulgarly 
against us, the ‘isolated and forsaken by all’. The fellow will now 
himself realise how base are the machinations whose tool he has 
become, and he must also realise that his stupidity harms himself 
more than others. The great Ruge doesn’t even pay him the 
half-hearted court he pays to Tellering. ‘C. Schramm, not to be 
confused!’* What's the fellow up to now? Cette affaire est de peu 
d’importance. Trumped-up and misconstrued tittle-tattle, clumsy 
and incomprehensible insinuations and moral bombast— nous 
avons soutenu, Dieu merci, de bien autres charges!© The only 
unpleasantness is that the thing ‘will upset your wife so much, 
which, as things are now, is undesirable.*” 

Next week in The Friend of the People 1 shall duly take the 
European Committee to task and have already notified Harney.*” 
I must stop now, as the office is just closing and it’s nearly time 
for the post. More anon. 

Your 
F. E.