Letters of Marx and Engels 1852
Written: [Manchester], 24 September, 1852;
Published: Gesamtausgabe, International Publishers, 1942;
Transcribed: Sally Ryan.
The crapauds* are doing well. With the temporary prosperity, and prospects of the glory of an empire, the workers seem to have become completely bourgeois after all. It will take a severe chastisement by crises if they are to become good for anything again soon. If the next crisis is a mild one Bonaparte may be able to steer through it. But it looks as if it was going to be damned serious. No crisis is worse than one in which over-speculation in production is slowly developing, for it requires as many years to develop its results as a crisis in the trade in products and stocks an shares requires months. And with old Wellington has been buried not only the common sense of old England but old England itself, in the person of its sole surviving representative. What remains are inconsequent sporting characters like Derby and Jewish swindlers like Disraeli--who are as much caricatures of the old Tories as Monsieur Bonaparte is of his uncle.
* Literally toads, but used as a slang nickname by Marx and Engels for the French bourgeois.