Manchester, 25 April 1852 
Dear Marx, 

Yesterday evening I received a note from Hain which I sent you 
together with my reply to it. After this, I think, Mr Hain will pay. 

Herewith the stamps, more to follow shortly. Also returning the 
other stuff. Ewerbeck’s letter is a worthy pendant to his book.* 
‘Pray help me oppose Ribbentrop! I shall denounce him to 
Democracy as a hypocrite and débaucheur.’” The man must be in 
his dotage. 

Nor has friend Bruno increased in wisdom or divine knowl- 
edge.* Il valait bien la peine* to set the American press in motion 
from Berlin thus, by this most roundabout route, proclaiming to 
an astonished world that the continental armies are there to 
maintain internal peace. Mr Bruno still represents the Hegelian 
dialectic in its deepest stagnation. At this stage of development, his 
concept of history goes no deeper than providing circumstantial 
proof of the most banal platitudes by an ample display of 
solemnity and pseudo-logical development, and then dishing them 
up as the brand-new findings of zealous research. All this is 
tolerable in the case of the distant past, but to be thus bamboozled 
about the immediate present is really too much and any fool 
should be able to see that there’s nothing at all at the bottom of it. 
And as for the profound truth that governments are right vis-a- 
vis revolutions because the Jatter are still immature, but 
revolutions are also right vis-a-vis governments because 
they represent the ideas of the future, admittedly in embryonic 
and immature form, but nevertheless [...] to a substantial 
degree—that is an old Hegelian joke whose novelty has certainly 
worn off even in America! And then the eternal ‘ill-temper’, 
‘peevishness’, ‘fundamental indifference’ of the ‘bourgeois’. ‘In 
some countries, classes war against classes, in others nations 
against nations.’ Strictly speaking, this prodigiously clever sentence 
is all that Bruno has learnt from the revolution. 

Mr Tellering has apparently been chased out of France as being 

aH. Ewerbeck, L’Allemagne et les Allemands. - > Ewerbeck to Marx, 21 April 
1852. - © See previous letter. - 4 It was well worth while 

88 44, Engels to Marx. 27 April 1852 

a homeless, vagrant member of the lumpenproletariat and of no use 
even to the Société du 10 Décembre.' 

Unless you know positively that Dronke went to Germany of his 
own free will, I would think it more probable that, having been 
already once expelled from France, he was this time transported 
not to any frontier but to the German frontier. But once safely in 
Nassau, why did the silly fool go to Coblenz when he’d have done 
far better to go to Hamburg, where no one knows him and he 
would have found Weerth and Strohn, hence also cash, and from 
there to England! But Coblenz being so close, he was obviously 
drawn there from Nassau by the prospect of money, and if he had 
managed to get through safely, would certainly have gone on to 
Cologne. At all events, it is fortunate for the Cologne people that 
they have already been dealt with by the Board of indicting 
magistrates, otherwise Dronke’s arrest would have provided 
occasion for another six months’ examination. But very soon 
they'll take him to Cologne and maybe attempt to produce him as 
a witness before the Court of Assizes. This time it serves him 
perfectly right. He could certainly have found such money as he 
needed in Frankfurt, or have got Lassalle to send it to him 
somewhere, but no, the little chap must needs go to Coblenz 
where he’s known to every gendarme and every dog in town. En 
attendant il est stirement logé.* 

Your 
F, E.