in London

Manchester, 14 January 1852

Dear Mrs Marx,

I would have answered your pleasant letter long ago had I not been totally prevented from doing so by a mass of business — especially by the presence of my brother-in-law whom I had to amuse for a week, which here in Manchester is certainly no trifle. Of work there was naturally no thought during this period, and only now can I begin to consider what can be achieved by the next Friday steamer. This evening or tomorrow evening something will in any case be made ready for the Tribune and father Weidemeyer shall not go empty-handed either. Meanwhile I hear and see nothing of the latter — hopefully today a letter from him has dropped in at your house, announcing the prospects for the new year, since the letters that arrived by yesterday’s steamer reach only up to the 1st of January.

I hope the pater familias has in the meantime risen from his bed of punishment and pain, and I wish only that over the bibliothèque he does not quite forget the Tribune. The news about Ehren-Lüders was immediately communicated to Weerth, likewise what was necessary about the noble Kinkel.

The thrashings the great Willich has received are very agreeable for us and open up for him a brilliant prospect of frequent repetition. Once the spell of inviolability and invincibility in which the great warrior enshrouded himself has been broken by a bonne volée, every emigrant rogue down to the last Conrad will not rest until he repeats the experiment and procures himself tangible revenge for his private grievances upon the noble one. The courage malheureux of the great man may then console himself with the fact that it was none but “men of principle” who thrashed him. He has indeed received a thrashing, but all the same it was a “thrashing on principle”.

Inclosed, Cluss’s letter back. The fellow is an invaluable agent. When the story of the Willich mystification comes out, it will cause a merry hullabaloo. The honest souls will no longer dare to write letters at all, for fear they might be delivered into our hands. What vile hypocrisy on Kinkel’s part to assert he had written to London that people should get in touch with us! This fact merely proves that with regard to us in America he has been very frequently and very unpleasantly “interpellated” and that among the democratic mob there we also have a set of adherents who swear by us just as the others do by Kinkel or Heinzen or Hecker, no one knows why; these will be adherents à la Magnus Groß, Wilhelmi, etc., people who would need only a brief association with us to be enlightened as to themselves and us, and to return to the general sheepfold where they belong.

Louis Napoleon is becoming more amusing every day, though. While not a single one of those great measures for the eradication of pauperism, etc., can yet see the light of day, the little man contrives to stir up the whole philistine world by measures intended solely to secure the momentary consolidation of his authority. No non-French paper dares any longer to speak for him; even the Sun and the Kölnische remain silent, and only the vagabond correspondent of the Globe still daily deposits his vulgarities in the corner granted him for the purpose. On top of this, L. N. has already made all the world suspicious; the whole of Europe resounds with war and war cries, and even the peaceable Daily News must nolens volens join in the call for national defences. The fellow is gradually beginning, alongside that one side of his character which has mostly come to the fore since the 2nd of December, the gambler, to develop the second side too, that of the mad pretender who considers himself a predestined world-redeemer and swears by his star. And when the time was fulfilled, God sent the nephew that he might redeem all the world from the bondage of the Devil and from the hell of socialism. Fortunately Parliament will soon be assembling, and that always provides some variation in the political humbug.

Many greetings to Marx and the little ones from your

F. Engels

M. 14 Jan. 1852.