[London,] 30 October 1856 

9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 

Dear Frederic, 

I am at this moment dictating an article on Persia.* Hence no 
more than a line or two. Your £5 received. Could you possibly 
send me some military stuff on Switzerland before the week is 
out, for that is what’s holding me up and preventing me from 

getting on with my articles. Will write at greater length very 
shortly. 

Your 
K. M. 

Ruge is publishing: 

1. Stories of the Chase for Children. 

2. Philosophical considerations on the religion of Ancient 
Egypt. He told this to Blind, who on the same occasion discovered 
that Papa Ruge hadn’t so much as heard of R6th’s book. 

First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, 3 : 7 
eae Peaerne Ha in English for the first 

a K. Marx, ‘The Anglo-Persian War’. - b A, Ruge, Jagden und Tiergeschichte für 
Kinder. - © E. Roth, Geschichte umserer abendländischen Philosophie. Bd. 1: Die 
Ägyptische und zoroastrische Glaubenslehre als die ältesten Quellen unserer speculativen 
Ideen. 

36 

MARX TO ENGELS!” 

[London,] 30 October 1856 
9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 

Dear Engels, 

The article on Bazancourt™ is splendid. Enclosed the last bit of 
the Mieroslawski.* If I have seemed lazy about writing it is largely 
because my wife has been ill these past few months. 

As you will yourself observe in the Mieroslawski, 1. the very 
man who holds un royaume diplomatique” in Poland to be 
impossible, wanted to bring about une révolution diplomatique there, 
i.e. under the auspices oF Louis Bonaparte and Palmerston; 2. the 
fate of the ‘democratic’ gmina of the Lechites in Poland is an 
inevitable one; the actual dominium is usurped by the Crown, 
aristocracy, etc.,; the patriarchal relations between dominium and 
peasant communities lead to serfdom; optional land-division 
creates a kind of peasant middle estate, the ordre équestre,""' to which 
the peasant can rise only so long as wars of conquest and 
colonisation are still in progress, though both these necessarily 
tend to accelerate his pownratt. As soon as the borderline is 
reached, this ordre équestre, incapable of sustaining the role of a 
true middle estate, turns into the lumpenproletariat of the 
aristocracy. A similar fate overtakes dominium and peasant among 
the Romanic population of Moldavia, Wallachia, etc. This type of 
development is interesting in that it shows how serfdom comes 
into being as a result of purely economic factors, without the 
intermediate link of conquest or racial dualism. 

Your Manchester Guardian has the singular distinction of being 
regarded as the immediate cause of Bonaparte’s statement against 
the English press. Please send me X* from time to time. Having 
discovered that Bonaparte’s 1847 is approaching, Palmerston is 

a Excerpts from L. Mieroslawski’s book De la nationalité polonaise dans l'équilibre 
européen. - > diplomatic kingdom - © See this volume, p. 75. - 4 landed property - 
¢ Presumably the sign of the correspondent who wrote the anti-Bonapartist articles in 
The Manchester Guardian. 

bending every effort to jockey him into precisely the same position 
as he jockeyed Louis Philippe during the Sonderbund War '?— 
into an alliance with Russia against England. Whereas on the one 
hand he takes him in tow against Austria in the filthy Neapolitan 
affair, in Turkey he sides against him with Austria.’ Once again 
the French newspapers are full of misgivings about the machina- 
tions of perfidious Albion. The commercial crisis would certainly 
seem to have reached its consummation in the Russian railways. 
The bankruptcy of the contracrors to the ‘palace of international 
industry’'™* affords a cumpse into the participation of English 
capitalists in continental enterprises. In Germany the setting-up of 
industrial and banking undertakings goes on briskly. The Berlin 
National-Zeitung contains whole columns devoted solely to 
enumerating the names of these concerns, 

I learnt from Putnam’s man, Olmsted, and an American 
travelling companion who was with him that Gurowski (the Pole) 
had acquired much influence with Dana. At the same time these 
gentlemen told me that the said worthy fellow received regular 
cash grants direct from the Russian ambassade* in Washington. 
This Gurowski advocated Pan-Slavism in opposition to ourselves, 
which was the only reason why your article '' was rejected. When 
returning my manuscript on the Danubian Principalities,? Mr Dana 
forgot To Lor our a comment written in French by this self-same 
Gurowski, who remarks on my statistical data relating to the 
Romanian population: 

‘Tous ces chiffres sont exagérés pour faire mousser lidée de nationalité 
Roumaine. Ils sont démentis par les faits, "histoire et la logique.’> 

‘So we can boast of having, or rather of having had, our articles 
inspected and censored directly by the Russian embassy. In the 
end Dana appears also to have seen through Gurowski. ; 

Today a letter from Collet to whom I had sent some new stuff.”' 
The fellow agrees to everything, except that he doesn’t say 
anything about MONETARY TERMS although I expressly asked him 
about this point in my last letter. So I shall have to put ON THE screw 
all over again, since this is the only point of interest to me in my 
INTERCOURSE WITH THOSE CALIBANS.“ 

2 embassy - > ‘All these figures are exaggerated for the purpose of inflating the 
idea of Romanian nationality. They are contradicted by the facts, by history and by 
logic.’ - ¢ Caliban is a character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. 

Write to me soon concerning yourself and those about you. 
With kindest regards from my wife and children. 
Children very well. 

Your 
K. M.