London, 30 March 1852 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Frederic, 

Just received your article.“ Enclosed you will find a whole 
bundle of new stuff from America which would have reached you 
sooner, had it not been necessary to make copies of some of it for 
communication to League’ members. 

@ Republik der Arbeiter - > Presumably Max Joseph Becker. - © Notes to the People - 
@ Hochstuhl - ¢ Presumably, XIII for the series Revolution and Counter-Revolution in 
Germany. - £ the Communist League, see also this volume, pp. 71-72 

All sorts of things have been happening here. Gottfried Christ 
Kinkel is dispatching, or rather has dispatched, the student Schurz 
and Schimmelpfennig to drum together people from Switzerland, 
Paris, Germany and Belgium for a congress to be held in London 
in mid-April, the purpose being to guarantee the revolutionary 
loan” and to lay down definitive regulations for the administra- 
tion of this exchequer and of the democratic government in 
partibus. But you must let me have the trash back by Saturday. 

Kossuth, exposed in America by Szemere ‘ and completely at 
odds with the committee he left behind him in London,’” will be 
surprised to learn by what schisms the democratic clerics has 
meanwhile been rent. 

For Mr Mazzini, who for the past 2 years has been pope of the 
democratic church in partibus, thought the time at last ripe to 
discharge his venom in the French tongue against socialism and 
France, to wit in the Brussels Nation which, with Ledru’s 
connivance,he had acquired for 10,000 fr. drawn from the Italian 
fund. In it he blamed the socialists for the 2nd December, the 
capture of Rome,'™ in short for the counter-revolution generally 
and, in his high-flown Dominican style, thundered against heretics, 
sects, materialism, scepticism, the Romance Babylon, with the same 
single-mindedness he displays when licking the arse of the English 
liberal bourgeoisie. France, he said, had lost the revolutionary 
initiative. The peuple-rov* no longer existed. Now it was the turn of 
other nations, etc. In short a veritable bull of excommunication 
which was done the honour of being taken up by the Patrie and 
the Constitutionnel. This was altogether too much for the French. 
Little L. Blanc, who further saw in it an opportunity to rehabilitate 
himself and thrust himself to the fore, drummed up Cabet, Pierre 
Leroux, Bianchi, Nadaud and Vasbenter (Proudhonian). In The 
Morning Advertiser they attacked Mr Mazzini in crudest fashion. 
The theoretical part of their retort is almost as weak as Mazzini’s 
attack. The personal part, for which Massol gave Leroux the 
material, annihilates the arrogant theopompos.” 

Ledru, for his part, felt it incumbent upon him to resign from 
the European Central Committee in order not to lose all influence. 
He too has replied in the Nation to the attacks on France. Pitiful. 
An article with neither head nor tail. Upholds ‘France’s revolution- 
ary initiative’, but in what fashion! C'est pour faire pitié!’ Ledru, it 
is said, now intends to go to the United States. 

Thus, on the one hand, the idiot Ruge forfeits his European 

4 regal nation - © divine envoy - © It’s pitiful. 
8 y Pp 

Central Committee. On the other, Kinkel—who, in America, 
fawned Jike a dog on his rival Kossuth—sees the general 
‘confusion’, i.e. fusion of all democratic pretenders under the 
banner of the now stale catchwords of 1848, e.g. ‘democratic 
republic’, ‘universal franchise’, etc., dissipating. Thus the worthy 
Willich is drawn into the conflict as a ‘communist’. 

Meanwhile each week the English government is shipping the 
French émigré mob in crowds out to America at public expense. 
The wretched ttre Blanc proposes to exploit a quite fortuitous 
general demonstration against Mazzini to set himself up as the 
visible head of the ecclesia pressa.* In order to thwart his little 
intrigues, I shall get Massol to egg on Pierre Leroux. Finally, to 
complete the confusion, Proudhon is coming here 

How low the official bigwigs sink, you may see from the fact 
that the delectable Félix Pyat, cet homme artiste-—an expression 
used by the French to gloss over an individual’s every weakness, 
his Jack of character and intelligence—has written a melodrama 
on the December days. He has found an English impresario and 
together they will put on the trash in New York, etc., the murder 
scenes, expulsions, deportations, etc., etc. Could anyone seek to 
profit by the misfortunes of his country in a more despicable 
manner? And the jackass regards this prostitution of France’s 
misfortune as a patriotic act. 

Tripotage is the secret key to the historical drama staged by 
émigré politicians here; thus Siegwart*-Kinkel has acted as 
procurer between the student Schurz and Mrs Ronge’s sister, who 
is said to be rich. 

The only misfortune is that by their boastful intrigues these 
jackasses provide the police with a continuous supply of fresh 
material and make things worse for our friends in Germany. 

Your 
K. M.