[London,] 8 December 1857
Dear Frederick,
While I was upstairs busy writing my last letter to you,3 my wife 
down below was besieged by hungry wolves all of whom used the 
pretext of the heavy times’ to dun her for money which she had not 
got. (Luckily £15 arrived from Germany a few days afterwards, 
thus enabling us то shift off the evil day for a week or a fortnight.) 
W ell, in the above-mentioned circumstances I may have been a 
rather confused correspondent, but not too confused to recall my 
confusion that self-same evening, after posting the letter, and 
remark to my wife what a wry face you would pull at my bit about 
debtors receiving money on bills payable by themselves, etc. Ever 
since I have been keeping up her spirits, which have been much 
depressed by this ‘petite guerre’b with sundry scoundrels, by 
reflecting on how you would break it to me in the most gracious 
possible way. But I could hardly go so far as to expect that you 
would tone down the ridiculous blunder to a slight mistake ,cMy best
THANKS FOR THIS GRACE, SlR.
But to return to the matter in hand. According to The Economist 
it is true that the chaps in Mincing Lane and Mark Laned had 
again been receiving loans on their produce, but this move ceased last 
Wednesday or thereabouts. Corn, in particular, even showed an 
upward tendency for a day or two, but (flour actually) then dropped 
3/- per 280 lbs as a result of the F rench decrees permitting the 
free export of corn and flour, and significantly so yesterday as a 
result of the downbreak of corn prices in the Baltic. (Nota bene: In 
France, Bonaparte’s measure had no more than a transient effect; 
though prices rose a little there, the rise immediately resulted in 
increased supplies, which have still to find their way on to the French 
market.) A few corn merchants have failed here, but as yet only 
insignificant houses and then only operators upon grain for distant 
delivery. The big American shipments arrive in the spring; the French 
will bombard England with corn at any price as soon as pressure over
a See 
this 
volume, 
pp. 
208-10. - b guerrilla warfare - c See 
this volume, 
p. 211. - d Mincing Lane—a street in London, centre of wholesale trade in colonial 
goods; Mark Lane—a London street where the Corn Exchange is situated.

215
there grows more serious. In my opinion—and always supposing 
that, in accordance with the old adage, there are several good 
autumns in succession— only now will the effects of the repeal of 
the C orn L aws 150 begin to tell on landlords and farmers in England 
and the antiquated agricultural distress recur in no mean fashion. 
The satisfactory state of the home trade resulting from industrial 
prosperity, and the succession of bad autumns have combined to 
make the experiment of 1847-57 inoperative and turn repeal to a
DEAD LETTER.248
I’ve had a gratifying experience with the Tribune. On 6 
November I wrote an exposé for them of the 1844 Bank Act,132 in 
which I said that the next few days would see the farce of 
suspension, but that not too much should be made of this monetary 
panic, the real affaire being the impending industrial crash a The 
Tribune published this as a leader. 3 days later The New-York Times 
(which has entered into a feudal relationship with the London 
Times) replied to the Tribune to the effect that, firstly, the Bank 
Act would not be suspended, extolled the Act after the manner of 
the money-article writers of Printing House Square,8 and declared 
the talk of an ‘industrial crash’ in England to he ‘simply absurd’. This 
was on the 24th. The following day the N.Y.T. received a 
telegram from the Atlantic with the news that the Bank Act had 
been suspended, and likewise news of ‘industrial distress’. It’s nice, by 
the by, to see Loyd-Overstone coming out with the true reason for 
his fanatical advocacy of the 1844 legislation—because it permitted the ‘hard calculators’ to squeeze 20-30% out of the commercial
WORLD0
Nice, too, that the capitalists, who so vociferously opposed the 
‘droit au travail’,d are now everywhere demanding ‘public support’ 
from their governments and hence advocating the ‘droit au profite 
at public expense in Hamburg, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen 
and even England (in the form of suspension of the Acts). Also, that 
the philistines of Hamburg should have refused to hand out any 
more alms to the capitalists.
The astonishing thing about the whole business is the affaire in 
France and the attitude adopted towards it by most of the English 
press. Just as, after the American 
collapse, John Bull was 
represented as the calm, self-possessed merchant vis-à-vis his brother
a K. Marx, ‘The English Bank Act of 1844 and the Monetary Crisis in England’. 
b Square in London where the offices of The Times are situated. - c S. J. Loyd’s 
speech in the House of Lords on 3 December 1857 (The Times, No. 22855, 4 
December 1857). - d right to work - e right to profit

216
Jonathan, so now Jacques Bonhomme vis-à-vis John Bull. The 
Paris correspondent of the London Economist comments most 
ingenuously:
* ‘There has been not the slightest disposition to have a panic, though 
circumstances certainly appeared to justify one, and though the French have 
heretofore been extremely ready to rush into panics on the smallest pretexts.’ * 3
The panic now felt by the French bourgeoisie, despite their 
sanguine temperament, at the very notion of panic, is surely the 
best indication of what panic means in France on this occasion. 
The virtuous disposition of the Parisian bourgeois will, however, 
prove no more effective than the Hamburg 
association for 
discounting th e panic.249 Last Sunday’s Observer relates how the 
dissemination of horrible rumours about the Crédit mobilier45 sent 
everyone rushing to the Bourse to rid themselves à tout prixb of 
their shares. French capital, despite the cosmopolitan nature therein 
descried by Mr Péreire, is still timid, niggardly and cautious in 
actual commerce as it has always been. Crooked dealing (which, to 
be sure, has in its turn become the sine qua non of respectable trade 
and industry) actually exists only in branches in which the State is 
the real employer, whether directly or indirectly. But there is no 
doubt that even an inherently—or, as Hegel would say, ‘in 
himself’—bankrupt capitalist of the magnitude of the French 
government can make shift for rather longer than a private capitalist. 
The police measures against bullion exports, now pretty well in full 
vigor in France, and to an even greater extent the export, at which 
prices whatever, of the products of the corn, silk and wine harvests, 
etc., have put off for a week or two the drain of bullion from the 
Bank of France. Nevertheless, the drain will set in and even if, as in 
1856 (October), it gets no further than the gutter, the catastrophe 
will be complete. Meanwhile French manufacturers are treating 
their workers as ruthlessly as though there had never been a 
revolution. T his will do good. On the other hand Mr Bonaparte is 
using the bank as an entrepreneur for the construction of 
railways, now at a standstill. Doubtless the next step will be the 
issue of assignats'1 as soon as the drain begins. If the fellow has the 
courage, and always providing he can pay the army properly, we 
may yet witness a pretty prologue.
Your information about conditions in Manchester is of the 
greatest interest to me, the newspapers having chosen to draw a 
veil over them.
3 Quoted from a report in The Economist, No. 744, 28 November 1857. - b at any 
price - c Paper money issued by the French revolutionary government in 1789; 
withdrawn in 1797.