[Draft] 
[London,] 16 June 1879 

I beg to acknowledge receipt of your esteemed letter of 29 May 
and regret that under present circumstances I cannot comply with 

a Marx is presumably referring to the tenth instalment of the French edition of his 
Capital. -» R. Meyer, Politische Gründer und die Corruption in Deutschland. 

the wish expressed in the same that I deliver a lecture to your 
Society.*” 

The organ of that Society, the Fretheit, has thought fit publicly 
to attack the attitude of Social-Democratic deputies in the 
Reichstag.**° Now even though statements have been made in the 
Reichstag by certain of our members which I, too, regard as inept 
(and about which I have not hesitated to express my views 
privately and in an appropriate place),**’ I can in no way declare 
myself in agreement with the kind of criticism chosen by the 
Freiheit and still less with its having felt obliged to pursue this kind 
of criticism in public. 

You will understand that if I were willing to deliver a lecture to 
the Society under these circumstances, this would inevitably give 
rise to the view in Germany and elsewhere that I condoned the 
attitude adopted by the Fretheit.