MARX TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE*” 

London, 29 November 1871 

My dear Sorge, 

I hope you have at last received at New York the Resolutions of 
the Conference and the different letters I sent you.* I send 
together with this letter the 3 last Eastern Post reports on the 
sittings of the General Council. They contain, of course, only what 
is meant for public use. 

In regard to financial matters I have only to remark: 

1) the New York Committee’ has nothing to pay but 2d per 
piece for the pamphlets on the Civil War it has received. It will 

4 See this volume, p. 241. 

pay Id per piece for the Statutes and Regulations a fur et mesure 
that they are sold. But you ought to write us how many French 
and German editions of the Statutes etc. you are in want of. 
Besides what you want immediately, you will perhaps find useful 
to have a certain stock in reserve. 

2) With regard to the money sent us for the refugees, the 
General Council wants an express written declaration that the 
General Council alone is responsible for its distribution amongst 
the French refugees, and that the so-called ‘Society of French 
refugees at London’*” has no right of control over the Council. 

This is necessary, because, although the mass of the above- 
named society are honest people, the committee at their head are 
ruffians, so that a great part—and the most meritorious part of 
the refugees—does not want to have anything to do with the 
‘Society’ but to be relieved directly by the Council. We, therefore, 
give a weekly sum for distribution to the Society, and distribute 
another sum directly. 

It is the above said ruffians who have spread the most atrocious 
calumnies against the General Council without whose aid (and 
many of its members have not only given their time, but paid out 
of their own purse) the French refugees would have ‘crevé de 
faim’*. 

I come now to the question of MacDonnel 

Before admitting him, the Council instituted a most searching 
inquiry as to his integrity, he, like all other Irish politicians, being 
much calumniated by his own country-men. 

The Council—after most incontrovertible evidence on_ his 
private character—chose him because the mass of the Irish workmen 
in England have more confidence in him than in any other person. 
He is a man quite superior to religious prejudices and as to his 
general views, it is absurd to say that he has any ‘bourgeois’ 
predilections. He is a proletarian, by his circumstances of life and 
by his ideas. 

If any accusation is to be brought forward against him, let it be 
done in exact terms, and not by vague insinuation. My opinion is 
that the Irishmen, removed for long time by imprisonment, are 
not competent judges. The best proof is—their relations with The 
Irishman whose editor, Pigott, is a mere speculator, and whose 
manager, Murphy, is a ruffian. That paper—despite the exertions 
of the General Council for the Irish cause—has always intrigued 
against us. MacDonnel was constantly attacked in that paper by an 

l 379 

a starved to death 

Irishman (O'Donnell) connected with Campbell (an officer of the 
London Police) and an habitual drunkard who for a glass of gin 
will tell the first constable all the secrets he may have to dispose of. 

After the nomination of MacDonnell, Murphy attacked and 
calumniated the International (not only MacDonnell) in The 
Irishman, and, at the same time, secretly, asked us to nominate him 
secretary for Ireland. 

As to O’Donovan Rossa, I wonder that you quote him still as an 
authority after what you have written me about him. If any man 
was obliged, personally, to the International and the French 
Communards, it was he, and you have seen what thanks we have 
received at his hands. 

Let the Irish members of the New York Committee not forget 
that to be useful to them, we want above all influence on the Irish in 
England, and that for that purpose there exists, as far as we have 
been able to ascertain, no better man than MacDonnell. 

Yours fraternally, 
Karl Marx 

Train has never received credentials on the part of the General 
Council.