ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN !'% 
London, 3 May 1882 
Dear Mr Bernstein, 

Could you not send me some additional offprints of the article on 
early Christianity’ or further copies of the relevant issue? I should 
like to have them very much and they would come in useful for prop- 

* Jean, Edgar and Marcel -” F. Engels, ‘Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity’. 

aganda purposes. I should send them to people who don’t otherwise 
see the Sozialdemokrat; 3 or 4 would suffice. 

Encl. a note which is of interest in that it gives evidence of the co- 
lossal speed with which the concentration of capitals is taking place in 
America. United States Bonds are Staatsschuldscheine der Vereinigten Staa- 
ten. N.Y.C. and H.R. Stock are the shares of the New York Central 
and Hudson River Railroad; rear estate = Grundbesitz. 

A dollar is slightly more than 4 marks = roughly 4 marks = 5 frs. 

Delighted to see that people everywhere are supporting the Sozial- 
demokrat against the whines of the milksops. 

Darwin’s letter was of course addressed to Marx and was an ex- 
tremely kind one.?°’ But beware of the article by Lafargue in the 
Citoyen of 28 April on ‘La sélection darwinienne et les classes régnantes’ 
which he concludes with the discovery of a new Amphioxus; it’s too 
funny for words. Lafargue is in Paris and I have just written to 
him ?°* pouring frightful scorn on his Amphioxus Lafargit. 

Best wishes. 

Yours, 

F. E. 

Don’t let the Society here mislead you about the Democratic Fep- 
eration.'58 So far, the latter has been of no importance at all. Its 
leader is an ambitious parliamentary candidate by the name of 
Hyndman, a former Conservative; only with the help of the Irish and 
with specifically Irish aims in view can he succeed in staging a big 
meeting, and when he does he plays third fiddle; otherwise the Irish 
would tell him where to get off. 

Gladstone has made a dreadful ass of himself— his Irish policy has 
failed utterly; is having to drop Forster and the Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland, Cowper Temple (whose father was a Palmerston on his moth- 
er’s side),* and say pater peccavi’; the Irish Members of Parliament 
have been released, the Coercion Bill has not been extended, part of 
the farmers’ rent arrears are to be cancelled, another part to be taken 
over by the state against fair amortisation.?°* On the other hand, the 
Tories have now got to the stage of wanting to salvage whatever there 
is to be salvaged; thus, before the farmers take possession of the land, 

* Engels confuses Francis Thomas Cowper with William Cowper-Temple, who was 
the son of the 5th Earl Cowper. After the latter’s death his widow married, as her sec- 
ond husband, Lord Palmerston.-> Father, I have sinned (Luke 15:18). 

they are to discharge their rents with state assistance on the Prussian 
mode so that the landlords do actually get something! The Irish have 
really made dawdling John Bull get a move on. That’s what comes of 

shooting! 3°°