MARX TO JOSEPH WEYDEMEYER”” 

{London,] 11 September [1851] 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Weydemeyer, 

Lupus has written to his acquaintance on the Staatszeitung about 
your affairs. The only cause for regret is that Mr Kinkel has 

4 F, Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany. Article I. - > F. Engels, 
‘Critical Review of Proudhon’s Book Idée générale de la Révolution au XIX€ siécle’. - 
¢ Waiting to hear from you. 

recently ensconced himself there. On the other hand, there is 
cause for rejoicing that Mr Heinzen’s paper, the New-York 
Schnellpost, has been compelled to declare itself insolvent. Messrs 
Hoff and Kapp are now trying to found a new paper by issuing 
shares. At any rate, this is a favourable moment for speculating in 
newspapers. 

Our local great men are now completely at loggerheads. They are 
behaving as though they were Alexander's successors and were 
having to share out the Macedonian-Asiatic Empire between 
them, les dréles.* 

If only I knew more people here, 1 would have tried to get you 
a post as an engineer, railroad surveyor or the like. Unfortunately 
I have no contacts whatever. Otherwise I feel sure that employ- 
ment is to be found here in that usr. The pity of it is that we are 
all so short or Money and that you haven’t the means to spend some 
time here and take a look around. But if you really succeed in 
carrying out your plans in New York, you will at all events find it 
easier, in case of revolution, to return to Europe from there than 
we from here. 

And yet I rack my brains trying to think of ways for you to 
settle here, for once over there, who can say that you won’t lose 
yourself in the Far West! And we have so few people and have to 
be so sparing of the talent we have. 

Besides, you are choosing a bad and uncomfortable time to 
travel. However, il n’y a rien a faire contre la nécessité des choses.” And 
if there is one thing of which I am convinced, it is that, once you 
are over there, you will not have to go through the same misére as 
all of us here. And that prospect, at least, has to be taken into 
account, 

That this is a time of dissolution for ‘democratic’ provisional 
governments, Mr Mazzini, too, has had to learn. After some 
violent clashes the minority has resigned from the Italian 
Committee. It is said that they are the more advanced 
ones. 

I regard Mazzini’s policy as basically wrong. He is working 
wholly in the Austrian interest by inciting Italy to the present 
secession. On the other hand, by failing to turn to the part of Italy 
that has been repressed for centuries, to the peasants, he is laying 
up fresh resources for the counter-revolution. Mr Mazzini knows 
only the towns with their liberal nobility and their citoyens éclairés“ 

a the queer fellows - > needs must when the devil drives - © enlightened citizens 

The material needs of the Italian country folk—bled white and 
systematically enervated and stultified just like their Irish counter- 
parts—are, of course, too lowly for the platitudinous paradise of 
his cosmopolitan-neo-catholic-ideological manifestos. But admitted- 
ly it required some courage to tell the bourgeoisie and the nobility 
that the first step towards gaining Italy’s independence was the 
complete emancipation of the peasants and the transformation of 
their métayage system into bourgeois freeholdings. Mazzini would 
seem to regard a loan of 10 million francs as more revolutionary 
than a gain of 10 million human beings. I very much fear that, if 
the worst comes to the worst, the Austrian Government itself 
will alter the state of. tenure in Italy and effect ‘Galician’ 
reforms.*"! 

Tell Dronke that I shall write to him in a few days’ time. Warm 
regards to you and your wife from my wife and myself. Consider 
once again whether you mightn’t give it a try here. 

Your 
K. Marx