London, [not before 2 October 1859] 
9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, 
Haverstock Hill 

Dear Lassalle, 

It is very good of you to be the first to take up the pen again, 
and this in a matter touching my interests, despite the fact that 
appearances speak against me. 

As for my silence, let me say briefly: 

First, I didn’t get either of your letters until weeks after their 
despatch, namely on my return to London from a journey to 
Scotland via Manchester, made for business reasons.*“* Meanwhile 

events had moved so fast that they had, as it were, removed the 

point of our debate.* For the rot in question did not relate—nor, 
between you and me, could it have related—to the nationalities 
issue, but rather to the most suitable policy to be pursued by the 
German revolutionaries towards their own governments and other 
countries. Now I would nevertheless have sent a reply, if a belated 
one, had there not been fresh grounds for delay. In one of your 
letters you asked for evidence relating to Vogt. That evidence was 
in the hands of Karl Blind. The ‘worthy democrat’, however, 
though privately inclined to play at moral indignation as well as 
stir up scandal, resisted all expostulations ro come our. Consequently 
I broke with him. (He even denied authorship of Zur Warnung, 
the anonymous pamphlet published in London *" and reproduced 
in the Augsburger.” However, I have succeeded in obtaining 
documentary evidence against him (Blind) in this matter, to 
which I shall revert ‘at the right time and the right place’.) This 
provided a fresh occasion for prolonging my silence. And, since 
‘the evil deed is accursed in that it must constantly engender evil’‘ 
my silence itself became an obstacle to my breaking it. On top of 
that—and I beg you not to regard this simply as a figure of 
speech—there was a whole series of domestic complications, as yet 
by no means eliminated, which in fact robbed me of all desire to 
write. So much for my silence, which, however, and despite all 
APPEARANCES TO THE CONTRARY, WaS in no way motivated by ill-will. 

Now as to Duncker, 

on my return to London I found a letter from him which 
apparently rendered it impossible for me to make any further 
direct approach to the man regarding the sequel.*” On the other 
hand, not having written to you for so long, I couldn’t possibly 
start off by suddenly writing to you about my own concerns. So I 
let the matter prop, on the tacit assumption that, if I hadn’t heard 
from Duncker by a certain date, I should have to approach 
another publisher. 

However, one of your earlier letters led me to suppose that 
Duncker had undertaken to publish 2 instalments, or rather the 
first section (‘Capital in General’) in its entirety. But on the other 
hand the first instalment* was much more compendious than had 

4 See this volume, p. 460. - > [K. Blind.] Zur Warnung, Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 173 
(supplement), 22 June 1859. -< An allusion to the following lines from Schiller’s 
drama Wallenstein. Die Piccolomini, V, 1: ‘Das eben ist der Fluch der bésen That,/Daß 
sie, fortzeugend, immer Boses mu gebaren’ (‘This is the curse of every evil 
deed,/That, propagating still, it brings forth evil’). - 4 See this volume, pp. 270 and 
368. -¢ K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 

been originally planned, nor, for that matter, did I want him to be 
a ‘publisher malgré lui”. However, since the first 2 instalments 
form a whole, it would be desirable for them at least to appear 
under the same imprint. 

I shall now be obliged to remodel the thing completely, as the 
manuscript for this second instalment is already a year old”; and, 
since my circumstances do not permit me to devote much time to 
the matter just now, I hardly think I shall be able to finish it 
before the end of December. That, however, would be at the very 
outside. 

I am busy with an English rendering of the first instalment and 
this, too, has been disrupted by a bad domestic spell. At any rate I 
am assured of a better reception in England than in Germany 
where, so far as I am aware, nobody inquires after the thing or 
gives a straw for it. All I want is to place the whole of this first 
section, at least, before the German public. Should the latter 
continue to pay no heed to the work, I intend to put all 
subsequent sections straight into English and no longer concern 
myself with the German philistines. 

Vale faveque. 

K. M.