Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels  
in Manchester  
London, Friday, 21 January 1859  

21 January.  
Dear Engels,  

The unfortunate manuscript is finished, but cannot be despatched, since I haven’t a farthing to pay for its registration and insurance. The latter is necessary, as I have no copy of it. I must therefore ask you to send me some money by Monday (post office at Tottenham Court Road corner). If you can send £2, it would be very welcome, as I have put off till Monday some small debts that I absolutely cannot defer any longer. You will understand that it is by no means pleasant for me to come down on you again just now, when you have paid, or have to pay, the bill of exchange to Freiligrath. But iron necessity. Next week I shall see – since I am taking a week’s holiday quoad continuation of the manuscript – whether I can somehow bring off some financial coup. I do not believe that anyone has ever written about “money” in such a state of impecuniosity. Most writers on the subject were at peace with the subject of their researches.  

If the thing goes well in Berlin, it is possible that I shall get out of all this muck. It is high time for that.  
Salut  
D  
KM  

If the thing goes well in Berlin, perhaps a coup might be brought off with a London bookseller for an English translation. For they pay quite differently here than in Berlin. Moreover such an event would bore to death our worthy enemies. Those blackguards believed that we were both dead – and now this, just when Mr Clown “Edgar Bauer” has, as Gottfried Kinkel tells everyone in the City, “supplanted” us “among the workers”. The blackguards who, with every word they publish, issue their own death certificates, shall wonder what “sort of life” we have conserved.  

I am wavering whether to put on the muck: “The Author reserves to himself the right of translation.” (You know the cartel agreement between Prussia and England concerning reprinting.) My aversion to all humbug and semblance of vanity or pretension says No. On the other hand, my interest says Yes, since nearly every week some scribble on this money shit appears in England. What do you think, Sir? You must answer on this point by return of post, since I must decide myself on Monday.