ENGELS TO MARX” 

Manchester, 5 February 1851 

Dear Marx, 

Herewith the remaining £1 for the atlas,* which I was 
unfortunately not able to send you sooner. 

Tell Harney when you see him that by the end of this week he 
will receive at the very least the Ist half of a series of articles on 

Continentat Democracy ***—the articles so arranged that each one of 

2 Historischer und geographischer Atlas von Europa (see this volume, pp. 263, 301). 

them will not fill more than 2-2'/, columns in his Friend of the 
People. I shall use the above as a pretext for crying down the whole 
democratic establishment and rendering it suspect to the English 
proletariat by putting it—Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, etc. included— 
on the same footing as the Financial REFORMERS“! The European 
Committee witt catcu it nicety. These gentry will be dealt with one 
by one, Mazzini’s writings, Ledru-Rollin’s splendid acts of heroism 
in February-June 1848—not, of course, forgetting Mr Ruge. I 
shall make it quite plain to the Italians, Poles and Hungarians that 
they are to keep their traps shut on all current issues. This 
business of the hoax Harney is perpetrating with Mazzini & Co.’s 
begging letters is really going too far and, since there’s no other 
way of reforming him, I shall be obliged to expose in his own 
journal the fatuity and baseness of these fellows and to unveil the 
mysteries of continental democracy for the benefit of the English 
Chartists. A detailed polemical article is always more salutary in 
Harney’s case than any amount of debate. Unfortunately I have 
damned little material here. 

What I have at the moment is Sarrans jeune, Lafayette et la 
révolution de Juillet. Lf 1 could find a few more sources, I could do 
an article for our Revue on the July Revolution and subsequent 
events up till the February Revolution, at the same time subjecting 
the Histoire de dix ans? to a friendly criticism. These ‘10 ans’ have 
remained largely unchallenged by advanced opinion and, in 
Germany as in France, constitute a very important formative 
element in the revolutionary party as a whole. It would do no 
harm, I think, to reduce the influence of this book to the 
appropriate limits; hitherto it has been an uncontested authority. 

Mr Russell, the craven cur, has made a splendid fool of himself 
yet again. First he breathes fire and brimstone against para 
acoression,*** then, realising that the Mancuesrer MEN have absolutely 
no intention of getting embroiled in the mummery, he is brought 
to bed of an heroic measure, namely wanting to ban the use of 
English titles by Catholic bishops. And then the nice hint, dropped 
at his behest by Mr Peto, that it would indeed have been desirable 
to extend the franchise during the present session, but since 
LAW-REFORM Came next on the agenda, the franchise would have to 
be postponed till next year! A prime example of Whig logic. The 
MPs, by the way, are very captious and unsure of themselves, with 

* the Younger - > L. Blanc, Histoire de dix ans. 1830-1840. 

elections in the offing; they have to make liberal or protectionist 
flourishes and, but for the fact that the Exsisirion* happens to 
coincide with the most lively period of the session’s grande 
politique, things might go ill with the little manikin.‘ And even so, 
qui saite 

In general the daily political bread is growing ever drier. The 
happy situation in which la belle France now delights is, indeed, 
edifying. For there is no denying that Messieurs the Burgraves *” are 
becoming less and less representative of the bourgeois fraction or 
rather, that the bourgeoisie is moving further and further away 
from its erstwhile Legitimist and Orleanist leaders. First, the 
important minority in favour of Baroche at the session in which he 
was unseated by the coalition, a minority which also consisted of a 
great many non-Bonapartists, former Orleanists, etc., etc.; next the 
unmistakable mood of the conservative bourgeoisie en masse, which 
is far more favourable to Napoleon than hitherto. The mass of 
these fellows are now resolutely opposed to Orleanist no less than 
to Legitimist plots for a restoration; les solutions les embétent, and 
what they want is the daily round of the presidential present. The 
fellows are neither royalist, nor republican, nor imperialist, but 
presidential; but the best thing about it is that such delicious 
indecision is possible only in the mass, and that anyone who 
wished to make his mark as official representative of this tendency 
would, within six months, find himself compelled to abandon his 
neutrality in favour of a definite royalist or imperialist fraction. By 
the way, the only French papers I have here are the Débats and 
the Charivari which, sad to say, grace a Uesprit exquis du peuple dans 
ces parages, is coming to seem almost witty again. 

From a stupid Hungarian refugee whom I recently happened 
upon, I heard that this noble breed are once again jabbering 
about murder plots and riots on the occasion of the creat 
Exuiition. Amidst the din I seemed almost to detect the heroic 
voices of those London hotspurs, Willich and Barthélemy. There’s 
really no getting away from the creatures; recently a fellow 
accosted me in the street and Jo, it was a Great Windmill Street 
refugee *' now employed in Liverpool. ‘If I take the wings of the 
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea’,* I shall not 
escape that band. 

a The Great Exhibition held in London in May-October 1851. - > high politics - 
¢ John Russell - 4 who knows - © the solutions annoy them -f thanks to the 
exquisite wit of the people hereabouts - & Psalms 139:9 

The rree travers here are exploiting the prosperity or semi- 
prosperity to buy the proletariat, with John Watts for broker. You 
will be familiar with Cobden’s new plan: a Nartionat Free ScHoo. 
Association for the purpose of putting through a sit by which the 
townships would be authorised to impose local taxes for the 
building of schools. The thing is being splendidly promoted. In 
addition, Salford already has a Free Lisrary and museum—lending 
library and reading room gratis. In Manchester the Hall of Science 
was purchased—and here, as the Lord Mayor of Manchester most 
graciously acknowledged, Watts really was the broker—by a 
committee out of the proceeds of public collections (some £7,000 
in all) and is to be turned into a Free Lisrary. The thing is to be 
opened at the end of July—with 14,000 volumes ro Becin witu. All 
the meetings and assemblies held for this purpose resound with 
praise for the workers, and in particular for the good, modest, 
helpful Watts who is now on the best of terms with the Bishop of 
Manchester. I am already looking forward to the indignant uproar 
over the workers’ ingratitude which will break out on all sides 
when the first shock makes itself felt. 

Not long ago my worthy pater wrote me a pleasant letter 
expressing the wish that I remain here indefinitely, that is, for as 
long as the trouble with the Ermens lasts (and that might mean 
until 1854). Very agreeable to me, of course, sil me pate bien mon 
ennui.* Of this, naturally, I give no hint, but ‘sacrifice’ myself for 
the ‘firm’ and express my readiness ‘to remain here for the time 
being and see how circumstances develop’. He’s coming over next 
summer, and I shall then try to make myself so indispensable to 
him that he will have to agree to anything. 

Kind regards to your wife and children. 

Your 
F. E. 
Particucars on the Posr Orrice Orper as before.