ENGELS TO MARX?” 

(Manchester,] Wednesday evening, 
29 January {1851] 

Dear Marx, 

Your silence and your astonishment at my silence became 
suddenly explicable to me when today my old witch of a landlady, 
AFTER SOME SHARP CROSS-EXAMINATION hunted out your letter of 7 inst. 
from among a pile of books in my room where it had been 
peacefully slumbering since 8 January.” I happened to be out that 
evening, and this person had simply placed the letter on top of the 
books; later, when tidying up, she had in her haste put another 
book on top of it, and as that pile of books has remained un- 
touched all this while, the letter might, without your reminder, 
have gone on slumbering there till Doomsday. Had I been study- 
ing Russian this month instead of physiology, this wouldn’t have 
happened. . 

Anyhow, your new thing about land rent is absolutely right. The 

a After all, one cannot live with you alone. - » See this volume, pp. 258-63. 

increasing infertility of the land concomitant with an_ ever- 
increasing population in Ricardo has always seemed to me 
implausible, nor have I ever been able to discover any evidence in 
support of his ever-rising price of corn, but with my notorious 
sloth en fait de théorie, I have silenced the inward grumbling of my 
better self and have never gone to the root of the matter. There 
can be no doubt that you have hit on the right solution, thereby 
entitling yourself afresh to the title of economist of land rent. If 
there were stil] right and justice on this earth, al] land rents for at 
least a year would now be yours, and that would be the least which 
you could claim. 

1 have never really been able to accept Ricardo’s simple 
proposition in which he represents land rent as the difference in 
the productivity of various types of land and, seeking to prove this 
proposition, 1) acknowledges no other factor than the bringing 
under cultivation of ever poorer types of soil, 2) completely 
ignores advances in agriculture and 3) finally abandons almost 
entirely the bringing under cultivation of poorer types of soil, 
and instead continually proceeds from the assumption that capital, 
employed successively on a particular field, contributes less and 
Jess to the increase in the yield. Convincing as was the proposition 
to be proved, the factors adduced in proof of that same 
proposition were wholly alien to it. You will remember that, in the 
Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher, 1 already invoked the progress 
made by scientific agriculture as against the theory of increasing 
infertility’—of course very cruve and not at all closely argued. 
You have now cleared up the matter, which is yet another reason 
why you must make haste to finish the Economy and get it 
published. If we could somehow get an article of yours on land 
rent into an English periodical, it would create a tremendous stir. 
Think it over. Je me charge de la traduction“ 

Enclosed I return Mr Great-Gross.* In my next I shall include a 
line or two for the delectable Dronke, but tonight I’m too sleepy to 
do any more work. A fine band of scallywags, Gross, Wilhelmi, 
and the progressive pamphleteer from Cincinnati! The fellows 
must really imagine that we’re on our physical, moral and 
intellectual beam ends to ask such things of us.*** C’est amusant, 
cependant, and I laughed heartily at these backwoods saviours of 
society and their proposals, including fee for Dronke. Dr Siegfried 

a in matters of theory - > F. Engels, ‘Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy’. - 
¢ [ will attend to the translation. - 4 See this volume, pp. 262-63. - © L. A. Hine - 
{ It's amusing, however 

Weiss’ ‘sharp and spicy” is ourpone by the ‘red, piquant, sarcastic 
and versatile’ of the ‘Adonis of a long-forgotten Beauty’. Que Dieu 
le bénisse!* 

Tomorrow the statements will go off to Bremen together with 
the necessary instructions.” Mr Schramm‘ might really have 
rewritten his; it’s so wretchedly scrawled that it will probably give 
rise to misunderstanding. 

The O’Connor conference here has turned out to be sheer 
humbug.°”* Ostensibly representing the whole of English Chartism, 
it consists of 8 men who represent 4 towns: Manchester, 
Bradford, Warrington and Sowerby. Of these, Warrington and 
Bradford belong to the opposition and see eye to eye with the 
Executive. Mantle, the Warrington representative, who doesn’t 
give a fig for the majority, opened the proceepincs with the motion 
that the conference, seeing THEIR UTTER INSIGNIFICANCE AND CONTEMPTIBILITY, 
should resolve to go home forthwith, and tomorrow he will extort 
from them a vote of confidence for the Executive, ie. for Harney 
and Jones, from which O’Connor will be unable to abstain. On the 
question of union with the Financia rerormers*** 3 voted for and 2 
against, 3 abstaining, among them O’Connor, whom Mantle had 
unfortunately intimidated by his insolent conduct; otherwise the 
fellow would have voted in favour, thereby making a colossal and 
irretrievable fool of himself. At the conference O’Connor, Leach, 
McGrath, Clark and a certain Hurst formed the majority. At a din- 
ner given for O'Connor on Monday, Mr Thomas Clark proposed 
the following toast: THe Queen: HER RIGHTS AND NO MORE; THE PEOPLE: THEIR 
RIGHTS AND NO Less. Here again Mantle, a fiery, undiplomatic hot- 
head, stopped O’Connor from getting up and drinking the toast. 

The letter to Weerth has gone off and should be in his hands 
within a few days, provided he isn’t buried in the heart of 
Morocco. 

No more for today. 

Your 
F. E.