{London,] 28 May 1851 

Dear Engels, 

The reasons for Daniels’ failure to reply (I shall, by the way, 
send him another letter tomorrow if I get none today),*” are most 
disturbing. Nothjung has been arrested in Leipzig, at the station. I 
don’t know, of course, what papers were found on him. 
Thereupon (or simultaneously, I don’t know) Becker and Réser 
were arrested in Cologne and their houses searched, as was that of 
Burgers, too. The latter isin Berlin with a warrant out against 
him; no doubt he will soon turn up here.**° 

The measures adopted by the police against the emissaries, etc., 
can be attributed purely and simply to the wretched braying of the 
jackasses in London. These gasbags know that they are neither 
conspiring, nor pursuing any real goal, and that they have no 
organisation behind them in Germany. All they want is to seem 
dangerous and set the treadmill of the press turning. In this way 
the canaille hamper and imperil the real movement and put the 
police on the qui vive. Has there ever been a party like this, whose 
avowed aim is simply to show off? 

Freiligrath instinctively chose the right moment to leave and 
thereby avoid capture. No sooner was he here than snares were set 

for him by all the émigré cliques, philanthropic Kinkel-lovers, 
aestheticising Howitts, etc., in order to lure him into their coterie. 
To all these attempts he replied very rudely, saying that he 
belonged to the Rheinische Zeitung, had nothing to do with 
cosmopolitan offal, and would consort only with ‘Dr Marx and his 
most intimate friends’. 

Presently I shall have something to tell you about the Kosmos. 
But first one more moi? about the situation in France. 

I am becoming de plus en plus’ convinced that, in spite of 
everything, Napoleon’s chances are, for the present, better than 
those of any other candidate. They will en principe decide on a 
revision but en pratique’ will confine themselves to a revision of the 
Article relating to the President.*”? Should the minority kick up 
too much fuss, a simple majority [resolution]* will be taken 
whereby the National Assembly will be dissolved and a new one 
convoked, which will then function under auspiciis Faucheri,' of the 
telegraph and of the law of 31 May.**'! The bourgeoisie would 
prefer Cavaignac; but the threat to the status que of a radical 
change of choice seems to them too grave. Already a great many 
manufacturers have compelled their Hanps to sign petitions for a 
revision of the Constitution and the prolongation of presidential 
rule. En tout cas* the thing must soon be decided and nous verrons"! 

The Kosmos, then, has made a prize ass of itself. 

Under the heading Kinkel’s Lectures, and signed ‘A Worker’, it 
carries the following: 

‘While looking once at Dobler’s misty images I was surprised by the whimsical 
question of whether it was possible to produce such chaotic creations in “words”, 
whether it was possible to utter misty images. It is no doubt unpleasant for the 
critic to have to confess, at the very outset, that in this case his critical autonomy 
will vibrate against the galvanised nerves of a stimulating reminiscence, as the 
fading sound of a dying note echoes in the strings. Nevertheless I would prefer to 
renounce any attempt at a bewigged and boring analysis of pedantic insensitivity 
than to deny that tone which the charming muse of the German refugee caused to 
resonate in my receptive imagination. This keynote of Kinkel’s paintings, this 
sounding board of his chords is the sonorous, creative, formative and gradually 
shaping “word”— modern thought. The human “judgment” of this thought leads 
truth out of the chaos of mendacious traditions, and places it, as the inviolable 
property of mankind, under the protection of spiritually active, logical minorities 
who will lead mankind from a credulous ignorance to a state of more sceptical 
science. It is the task of the science of doubt to profane the mysticism of pious 
deceit, to undermine the absolutism of a stupefied tradition; through scepticism, 

a Neue Rheinische Zeitung - » word - © more and more - 4 in principle, in practice - 
¢ an ink blot in the original - f the auspices of Faucher - 8 In any case - we shall 
see 

that ceaselessly labouring guillotine of philosophy, to decapitate accepted authority 
and to lead the nations out of the misty regions of theocracy by means of 
revolution into the luscious meadows of democracy’ (of nonsense). ‘The sustained, 
unflagging search in the annals of mankind, and the understanding of man 
himself, is the great task of all revolutionaries and this had been understood by 
that proscribed poet-rebel who on three recent Monday evenings uttered his 
“DISSOLVING VIEWS” before a bourgeois audience in the course of his lectures on the 
history of the modern theatre.’ 

‘A Worker’432 

If that’s not champion drivel, 
Then I really don’t know what is.* 

Vale faveque!” 

Your 
K. M.