{London,] 2 June 1860 

My dear Sir, 

My protracted silence was owed to two circumstances. On my 
return from Manchester I was overwhelmed with business. 
Afterward, I fell sick. I am still under medical treatment and little 
apt for writing. 

As to your affair with Mr Engels, the delay was caused by a 
second sudden departure for Germany having become necessary 
on his part.’ On his return for Manchester he passed through 
London and told me that he would immediately settle the little 
bill. He regretted not having been able to prove more useful to 
you, but had not thought of charging you with the expenses 
incurred by the sending back of the wines.° 

I have read your book* with much pleasure and profit. I concur 
in the main views you take of the conditions necessary for the 
restoration of Hungary, but I dissent from the apology passed ‘on 
Bonaparte and Palmerston. The latter has, in 1848-9, betrayed 
Hungary, as well as Italy. He had before acted in the same way in 
regard to Poland; he, afterwards, treated in the same way 
Circassia. He is still what he was since 1829—a Russian agent, 
bound to the Petersburg cabinet by ties it is not in his power to cut 
through. Russia, of course, wants the destruction of the Austrian 

4 Moses Hess - See this volume, p. 134. - © La Question hongroise (1848-1860), Paris, 
1860. 

Empire, but what she not wants is the formation of the constituent 
elements of that empire into independent and _ self-sustaining 
states. A true reconstitution of Hungary would even more stand in 
the way of Russian Eastern diplomacy than tottering, vacillating 
and frightened Austria. I should have wished, in your own 
interest, and that of your country, that you had not reprinted the 
memorial to Palmerston,'*! not spoken of the true interest of 
Russia, and avoided even alluding to the dismemberment of 
Turkey. As it is, you have estranged exactly that. portion of 
English politicians which was most willing to do you justice, and 
was least influenced by Kossuth’s sycophants. (Kossuth has in these 
latter times given out—through his agents—and even succeeded 
in forcing the opinion into some weekly papers, that you were 
intriguing against him, because he was a Republican, in principle 
at least, while you belonged to the ‘Constitutional and Aristocratic 
party’.) 

You excuse the liberty I have taken in frankly stating the points 
on which I cannot but dissent from you. The interest I take in 
your writings and your doings will, I hope, serve as a sufficient 
excuse. When will you come again over to London? 

Yours truly 
A. Williams * 

A propos. Perczel answered me in a letter in which he 
acknowledges the truth of the somewhat eccentric compliments I 
showered upon him, but at the same time very politely declines 
giving the explanations asked for.’ His letter seems written in 
a rather melancholic, melodramatic, and depressed mood of 
mind. 

As a curiosity I may still tell you that a Professor at the 
University of Moscow has held, during the past winter, a lecture 
on the first part of the ‘criticism of political economy’ published by 
myself.'*?