Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels 
in Manchester 
London, 26 September 1856 

26 September 1856. 
28, Deanstreet, Soho. London. 

Dear Frederick, 

I have first with thanks to acknowledge the receipt of the money. It would have happened yesterday, but we are in a veritable hurly-burly with moving out. It is even doubtful whether we can get out by Monday, since with your money and the pawning at the pawnshop we haven’t quite raised the necessary sum. The present crisis on the continental exchanges comes at an inconvenient time for us personally. 

Nothing new, except what you may already know, that Stirner has died. Also, as I hear from Freiligrath, a letter from his ‘ex-sweetheart’ from Australia has arrived here in London, in which she reports that she had married again, but at the same time become religious, and by pointing to the ‘higher life beyond’ she has succeeded in driving her novum hominem ‘into the madhouse’. The latter is to be understood verbatim. 

So I had a supper with the Putnam man. Apart from myself, only Freiligrath and an old Yankee were present. The Putnam man was a quiet, genial soul, but the other Yankee a jaunty and witty fellow. Putnam wants, after Bazancourt, if possible to resume the question ‘Ships against Walls’ as being of particular interest for America, with reference to the last war. Then also about floating batteries and gunboats; light or heavy artillery, etc. All that seems to be intended with a view to a nearer or more distant war by America against England. Besides these militaribus, I am then to write about Heine. In short, we can now enter into regular intercourse with this very ‘good’ house. 

The house I have rented is very nice for the price and would scarcely be let so cheaply if its immediate surroundings, roads, etc., were not somewhat unfinished. When you come to London, you will now find || a complete home. 

What do you think of the aspect of the money-market? The rises in the discount rate on the Continent are unquestionably connected, in part, with the fact that, in consequence of Californian and Australian gold, silver has risen against gold. (The Belgian Bank now gives only 19 fr. 40 c. (silver) for a Napoleond’or.) The bullion dealers therefore, wherever gold and silver are legal standard, withdraw the latter from the banks. But whatever the reason for the discount increases, they in any case accelerate the downfall of the enormous swindling transactions and especially also of the grand pawningshop at Paris. I do not believe that the great monetary crisis will outlast the year ’57. The stupid asses of Britishers imagine that this time everything is sound with them, in contrast to the Continent. Apart from the intimate connection between the Old Lady of Threadneedlestreet and the Parisian concern, the asses overlook that a great part of English capital is stuck in continental credits and that their ‘sound’ overtrading (exports are supposed to reach £110 million this year) rests on the ‘unsound’ speculation of the Continent, quite as much as their civilising propaganda of 1854-6 rested on the coup d’état of 1851. In contrast to earlier crises, France has this time indeed found the form in which the swindle could be, and was, propagated over the whole of Europe. In contrast to the Welsh refinement of St.-Simonism, stockjobbery and imperialism, domestic English speculation seems to have returned to the primitive form of simple and unmitigated fraud. So Strahan, Paul and Bates; the Tipperary Bank of Sadleir memory; the Great City frauds of Davidson, Cole and Co.; now the Royal British Bank; and finally the Crystal Palace affair. (4,000 false shares thrown into circulation.) This now, that the Britishers speculate abroad under continental colours and at home relapse into simple fraud, is what the fellows call: ‘sound state of commerce’. 

The thing this time, moreover, has European dimensions as never before, and I do not think we can remain mere spectators here much longer. Even the fact that I have finally got so far as to set up house again and have my books sent for proves to me that the ‘mobilisation’ of our persons is at hand. 

Salut. 

Yours, 
K. M.