London, 30 March 1890 

Dear Friend, 

Herewith the letter to Labriola you asked for.* 

As to his terra libera,! it is in fact altogether too much to expect of the 
present Italian government that it will allocate property in the colonies to 
small farmers for themselves to cultivate and not to monopolists, whether 
companies or individuals. Small-scale farming is the natural and best 
system for the colonies presently being founded by bourgeois govern- 
ments, on which point cf Marx, Capital, Volume I, last chapter, “The 
Modern Theory of Colonisation’.’ So we socialists can, with a good 
conscience, support the introduction of the system of small farms into 
colonies that have already been founded. But whether this will be done is 
another question. All governments today are so much the creatures and 
hirelings of financiers and the stock exchange that there’s nothing to stop 
the speculators themselves from gaining control of the colonies in order to 
exploit them, and no doubt that will also apply in Eritrea. But one can, 
after all, hit back, even if it’s in the shape of a demand that the government 
should give the emigrant Italian farmers an assurance that they will enjoy 
the same advantages there as they seek and generally find in Buenos Aires. 

I can’t discover from the Messaggero’s article’*? whether Labriola 
combines his demand with still further requirements, namely govern- 
ment loans for emigrants to Eritrea, co-operatively run settlements, etc. 

Unfortunately I have absolutely no time to spare for revising the 
translation of Wage Labour and Capital.?*? I have had some urgent jobs 
to do, and must now get back at once to Volume III of Capital before 
events in Germany take a revolutionary turn, as is very possible. 

Yours sincerely, 

F. Engels