[London,] 18 September 1878 

Dear Frep, 

ALL RIGHT. 

Herewith a letter from Kaub, which please be good enough to 
return as I have not yet answered it. Hirsch has behaved like a 
fool during his stay in Paris and seems to be intent on achieving 
martyrdom. Incidentally, the goings-on in Paris patently show how 
right you were to warn me against making a pilgrimage to that 
city. 

A fine republic, to let itself be ordered about by Messrs 
Bismarck and Stieber! Last night Barry came to see me. The 
Lausanne congress did not take place, as he learnt while still in 
Paris where he therefore remained. It was simply as reporters that 
Hirsch and he went to the meeting, but the latter had already 
been dispersed, and those attending it taken into custody; Hirsch 
was not arrested until later that night, in his own house.*” The 
next day the rrrepressiniE Barry presented himself at the police 
headquarters (with the moral support of documents showing him 
to be correspondent of The Standard and a contributor to The 
Whitehall Review). There he saw a subordinate official to whom he 
applied for permission to see ‘his friends’, Hirsch and Guesde. At 
this he was given the addresses of the two police officers who had 
arrested Hirsch and Guesde. Both were outraged by the cheek of 
this Encuisn bifteck, and ended up by pushing him out of the office. 

Barry, undismayed, returned to the police headquarters where he 
managed to penetrate as far as the great Gigot. After exchanging 
a few words with big Barry, this ‘rorre’ policeman asserted that he 
didn’t speak enough English or Barry sufficient French; so rang 
for an interpreter. Substance of the conversation: that what Barry 
said about Hirsch’s non-participation should be told to the 
examining magistrate, not the Prefect of Police; that the arrest was 
‘legal’, etc. At which Barry: It might BE LEGAL IN FRANCE FOR OUGHT HE 
KNEW, BUT IT WOULD NOT BE SO IN England. At which Gigot, with solemn 
pathos: Les étrangers qui viennent chez nous, etc., doivent se soumeitre 
aux lois de la Ré-pu-bli-que frrrangaise. Whereat THE Brazen Barry, 
SHAKING HIS HAT, rejoined: ‘Vive la République!’ This last 
exclamation brought the blood to Gigot’s face, and he gave Barry 
to understand that he had no wish to exchange political ideas with 
him, etc. This time, however, Barry was merely bowed politely out 
of the room. 

He has—vis-a-vis myself--put the lid on what was, on that 
occasion, amusing effrontery on his part. For he told me that he 
was going to spend another week at Hastings with his family and 
now I would doubtless have the time to get together for him 
material for articles (in The Nineteenth Century). He might well, in 
making this fresh onslaught, have fared worse than in the dens of 
the two French police officers. 

Once again, Levy’s paper” has shown itself to be the most 
shameless in London. In today’s leading article he tells his readers 
that Reichensperger, speaking for the ‘Centre’,*”? came out in favour 
of the Bill *”° (for such was the interpretation put by Levy on the news 
sent him by his reptile ane correspondent in Berlin), and Bismarck’s 
majority was assured. By the by, even Levy, whatever his admiration 
for the GREAT CHANCELLOR, must needs confess that the great man HAD 
RATHER THE WORSE Of it in his verbal encounter with the ‘brilliant’ 
Bebel.** 

The only one of Utin’s pamphlets I have yet looked at is that by 
Adolph Samter (Die Reform des Geldwesens); the following is a SAMPLE 
of how he quotes (he often quotes me, but paraphrases more often 
still; all the pamphlet boils down to is the silly notion of 
introducing, in place of the bank note, a ‘commodity note’, something 
which had, to all intents and purposes, been introduced in 1848 
with the Prussian government’s loan bank notes). I say: ‘Although 
gold and silver are not by Nature money, money is by Nature gold 

4 Foreigners who visit our country, etc., must submit to the laws of the Frrrench 
Re-pu-blic. - > The Daily Telegraph 

and silver, etc.’*; he, citing the correct page number, gives as a 
quotation: ‘Gold and silver is by its nature money. Marx, etc.” The 
art of reading would appear to be increasingly on the wane among 
the ‘educated’ estates in Germany. In the case of the said Samter, 
the nonsensical and ungrammatical quotation doesn’t even conceal 
an evil intent. Thus he gives as a quotation from Petty, ‘Labour is 
the father, nature the mother of material wealth’, because when 
speaking of ‘material’ wealth, I said that in this case Petty’s words 
were appropriate, etc.*”° 

Apropos. Our rat soy, Kovalevsky, came across Ralston again in 
Switzerland and was immediately asked whether he knew the 
Russian socialist who had described him (Ralston) in the feuilleton 
of the Frankfurter Zeitung as a HUMBUG, Coward, etc. (The article was 
written by my wife‘). Kovalevsky, though he had some inkling of 
its provenance, answered truthfully that he knew of no such 
Russian. However, since that time Ralston (with whom he is again 
saddled over here) has become far less confiding. (The article in 
the above-mentioned feuilleton referred to a nasty piece of 
twaddle Ralston wrote on the subject of ‘Russian Revolutionary 
Literature’.“) 

Yesterday Mr Montefiore jun. came to see me; is going to 
Berlin; and, in a manner altogether typical of a young English 
man of letters, especially in London, said to Tussy: ‘If only the 
Prussians would do me the kindness of arresting me for a day or 
two! What splendid material it would provide for an article in a 
review or a LETTER TO The Times!’ 

I went to your house and have sent off to you the letter I found 
there. 

Adio. 

Your 
Moor