ENGELS TO MARX” 

{[Manchester,] 18 March 1852 

Dear Marx, 

I return herewith Pixie’s* letter. I am pour le moment entiérement 
dépourvu and would not be able to raise the £2—at least this 
month; moreover, his letter is dated the 5th and there is absolutely 
no knowing whether the money would still reach him. And then 
it’s always a ticklish business sending money to Ewerbeck; the 
fellow is capable of making superannuated claims for God only 
knows what old postal expenses, and of pocketing the whole 
amount or the best part of it. For all these reasons I am unable 
just now to help the little sprite,* doubtful though I am that he 
will be able to extract more than five sous at one go from 
Monsieur Ewerbeck. Meanwhile, the piccolo* has left Geneva for 
Paris and thus will no doubt also come to London, if at the cost of 
some ‘toil and trouble’; and then we shall know just how much his 
dunning letters mean. 

a Ernst Dronke - > At the moment I am completely penniless 

If the little man* does come, you will have some difficulty in 
restraining his pugnacious temperament, surely much exacerbated 
by prolonged ‘toil and trouble’; in this country fisticuffs and 
brawls cost too much money for him to be permitted to indulge in 
them.” It would be best if you entrusted him to Pieper so that the 
latter could instruct him in political economy. What you told me 
about Massol” is very interesting, and if he stays over there I 
should very much like to meet him. 

I am delighted by what you tell me about Jones‘—just now I 
have damnably little time, otherwise I would send him more 
articles. But Charles? is not yet back from Germany and then, 
after toiling all day in the office, it would really be too much to 
write a regular weekly article for him and/or Weydemeyer on top 
of the article for the Tribune and the weekly report for my old 
man. Moreover, I must at long last get to grips with the Slav 
business.” In my previous dilettante fashion, I achieved nothing 
for a whole year and, having at least made a start and got too far 
to abandon the thing, I must now regularly devote some time to it. 
For the past fortnight I have been swotting hard at Russian and 
have now got the grammar pretty well licked; in another 2-3 
months I shall have acquired the necessary vocabulary, and then I 
shall be able to tackle something else. I must be done with the 
Slavonic languages this year and au fond they are not so very 
difficult. Apart from the linguistic interest I derive from the thing, 
there is the further consideration that, come the next big political 
drama, at least one of us should be familiar with the languages, 
history, literature and the minutiae of the social institutions of 
those particular nations with which we shall immediately find 
ourselves in conflict. In effect, Bakunin only came to anything 
because no one knew Russian. And a great deal is going to be 
made of the old pan-Slavic power of transmogrifying the old Slav 
system of communal property into communism and depicting the 
Russian peasants as born communists. 

Now that old O’Connor has definitely gone mad, Jones is 
perfectly right to crowd on all sail. This is his chance and if, in 
addition, Crtzen Hip-hip-hurrah ‘ gives up, his cause is won. From 
all that I see, the Chartists are in such a state of complete 
dissolution and disintegration, and at the same time are so lacking 
in able people, that either they must disband altogether and break 
up into cliques, i.e. in effect become a mere appendage of the 

a Ernst Dronke - > See this volume, pp. 31-32. - © ibid., p. 59. - 4 Roesgen - © at 
bottom - f Harney 

FINANCIALS, © or else be reconstructed on a new basis by some 

competent fellow. Jones is moving in quite the right direction and 
we may well say that, without our doctrine, he would not have 
taken the right path and would never have discovered how, on the 
one hand, one can not only maintain the only possible basis for 
the reconstruction of the Chartist party—the instinctive class 
hatred of the workers for the industrial bourgeoisie—but also 
enlarge and develop it, so laying the foundations for enlightening 
propaganda, and how, on the other, one can still be progressive 
and resist the workers’ reactionary appetites and their prejudices. 
Master Harney, by the way, is in for a surprise if he continues as 
he is; the group of enthusiasts which supports him will very soon 
kick him out, and not even the portraits of Kosciuszko and other 
‘patriots’ * that adorn his bumf will save him. 

Quoad Napoleonem,* did the man not tell L. Blanc when he went 
to France: ‘Quand je serai président, je mettrai en pratique vos idées’”? 
And now we see how a financial predicament may drive even a 
true socialist like L. N. to financial measures of an impeccably 
bourgeois kind, such as the conversion of bonds. Your 
SHOPKEEPER and small industrialist is prepared to overlook twenty 
socialist capers in return for this one saving of 18 millions, and 
The Daily News admires the measure. Anything more stupid or 
more abject than the Débats’ comments on this topic would be 
hard to imagine.‘ The same old story: postal reform=socialism! 
Conversion of bonds=socialism! Free Trape=socialism! My only fear 
is that Mynheer Napoleon who, for all that he proceeds very 
diffidently when it comes to his genuinely socialist undertakings and 
goes no further in the matter of mortgages than the bourgeois 
Prussian credit institutions, may, in the end, be compelled, by force 
of circumstances, to transform all his socialist inclinations into simple 
bourgeois reforms, and then nothing can deliver us but the 
inevitable financial predicament. The Daily News is right, conversion 
of bonds is a mesure éminemment pacifique as well as being a most 
ominous indication that L. N. is tending to fall into the ways of 
bourgeois common sense, But when, I ask you, has it ever been possible 
to rule France with common sense, and what a hotch-potch of 
circumstances would be required to bring together a L. N. and 
common sense! At all events the climate on the Continent does not seem 

2 As regards Napoleon -> When I am President, I shall put your ideas into 
practice. - © This refers to the article by Armand Bertin ‘Paris, 14 mars’, Journal des 
Débats politiques et littéraires, 15 March 1852. - 4 eminently peaceable measure 

very revolutionary to me, although the little sprite will bring quite 
different news. 

I do not think that Derby will obtain a majority although this 
place, where unanimity reigns when it comes to the Corn Laws,” 
is a poor point d’observation. However, I should like him to obtain 
one, for then things must come about as you say. He is, by the 
way, a fool for not dissolving Parliament at once. The longer he 
procrastinates, the greater the risk of the election coinciding with a 
commercial crisis, and then he’ll get fanatical Tories in Parliament 
who are too rabid even for him, and determined, rapacious 
Mancuester Men under threat of bankruptcy, these latter probably 
in the majority and hence the determining element. 

Our concern here seems likely to collapse within the year. In 
which case, while the liquidation is under way, I shall at first enjoy 
far more liberty and be less tied down by the regular routine of 
the office. Later, my old man writes, he might be able to find me a 
betier position—I suspect that he will fall in with my old plan to 
remove to Liverpool and buy cotton for him there. That would be 
splendid and, if it comes off ,and you have completed your 
preliminary work on economics,” you and your whole family must 
come up for 6 months—we would live by the sea at New 
Brighton, and you would, besides, save money. At all events, I 
shall get myself a rise—there’s no doubt about that. 

Today, unfortunately, I shall not have a quiet moment in which 
to do the Tribune article, but an American steamer sails next 
Wednesday, so you shall have it by Monday or Tuesday, and then 
I'll do another one for Friday’s steamer. 

Many regards. 

Your 
F. E. 

This is the first time the seal on your letter has been intact and 
undamaged.