TO MESSRS. ADAM, BARTHÉLÉMY AND VIDIL
Gentlemen,
We have the honour of informing you that we have, long since, considered the association you speak of as dissolved by fact. The only thing remaining to be done would be the destruction of the fundamental contract.[3] Perhaps Mr. Adam or Mr. Vidil will have the kindness to call on Sunday next October 13th at noon, on Mr. Engels at Nr. 6, Macclesfield Street Soho, in order to witness the burning of the same.
We have the honour to be, Gentlemen,
your most obedient servants,
London, October 9th, 1850 EnZds> Ma™> Harm?
See this volume, pp. 614-15.— Ed.
Endnotes
[344] Following the split in the Communist League, the Blanquist refugees in London supported the sectarian adventurist faction headed by Willich and Schapper. In view of this Marx and Engels, backed by the spokesmen of revolutionary Chartists, decided to cancel the agreement to found the Universal Society of Revolutionary Cqmmunists concluded with the Blanquists and signed in mid-April 1850 (see Note 277). The letter published in this volume was written on this occasion. A rough copy of it in Engels' handwriting is extant.
[3] In May 1849, when the counter-revolution was on the upsurge, the Prussian Government issued an order expelling Marx and the other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from Prussia. This measure, prepared well in advance, was applied when the main uprisings in the Rhine Province had been virtually suppressed. On his return to Cologne in April 1848, Marx applied for Prussian citizenship which he had been forced to renounce in 1845 when he was living in Belgium as an emigrant. Despite the Cologne Magistrate's favourable reply to his application, however, the Cologne royal district authorities and the Minister of the Interior refused to grant it, and Marx remained a "foreigner", who could at any moment be accused of abusing hospitality and expelled. The royal district authorities' note to this effect followed on May 11, 1849, and on May 16 Marx was given 24 hours to leave Prussia. Weerth and Dronke, who did not enjoy Prussian citizenship either, received similar orders. Legal proceedings were instituted against Engels for his part in the Elberfeld uprising. The last issue, No. 301, of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung appeared on May 19, 1849.