London, 11 September 1855 
28 Dean Street, Soho” 

Dear Elsner, 

It was impossible for me to write last week because of legal 
proceedings taken against me by the worthy Dr Freund. He has 
actually compelled me to leave London for a week or so. During 

2 F. Engels, “The Fall of Sevastopol’. - > The letter is written in Camberwell but 
datelined London. 

Moritz Elsner 

the parliamentary recess this does not, of course, impair my 
efficiency as a correspondent. This month, therefore, you should 
not put me on your books until 11 September. 

It goes without saying that, should your paper cease to pay yet 
still remain viable, my contributions will be at your disposal then as 
now, 

Considering the difficult circumstances and the limited space at 
your disposal, your paper is, in my opinion, edited with great skill 
and tact, and in such a way that the intelligent reader may read 
between the lines. Nothing can be more fatuous than to censure 
you for receiving ‘constitutional’ money. Some very ‘constitutional’ 
citizens paid in shares for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. If these 
gentlemen subsequently came to regret it, they were at least never 
forbidden by the editorial board to go on paying. 

If I were not so afraid of compromising this or that 
acquaintance by the mere fact of corresponding with him, I should 
long since have written to the Rhine Province in the interests of 
your paper. At all events, Lassalle did wrong in failing to draw 
attention to the Neue Oder-Zeitung in Cologne, etc. Circumstances 
would have allowed him to do so. © 

Should the N. O.-Z. go under, we shall have to console ourselves 
with the thought that all our present doings, activities and 
beginnings are purely provisional and no more than a pis aller. 

With kindest regards. 

Yours 
K. M. 

A German weekly rag has been started in London, its founder 
being the French ex(?)-policeman and Viennese refugee, Sigmund 
Englander. Contributors: the Russian Herzen, Johannes Ronge 
and a drunkard by the name of Korn, allegedly a capitaine.™