| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 10 January 1889 |
Dear Kugelmann,
May I reciprocate with best wishes for a very Happy New Year to yourself, your wife and daughter.[1] I should be amused to see Soetbeer's piece of sagacity[2] if you would be so good as to send it to me; the post office here would be unlikely to take exception to the marginal notes; all it bans is anything in the nature of a letter.
As regards the French peasants, the thing should be taken cum grano salis.)[3] The cultivation of parcels of land was the rule in France as it was in Germany and Eastern Europe while, so far as acreage is concerned, farming on a large scale with corvée labour was relatively rare. As a result of the Revolution,[4] the peasant gradually came into possession of his parcel of land, but he often for some time at least remained a nominal tenant (without as a rule having to pay rent). What happened to state-owned land (much of which Napoleon and the Restoration[5] returned to the aristocracy, the other part of it being purchased after 1826 by the aristocracy with the help of the émigré milliard[6], and how, by 1830, small peasant landownership had reached its highest degree of development, is to be found in Avenel's Lundis Révolutionnaires and Balzac's novel, Les Paysans. Taine isn't up to much.[7] I haven't read the Schweichel article.[8]
The third volume[9] is going ahead slowly.
My health was given a tremendous fillip by my American jaunt, but my eyesight is still not all it might be—slight but chronic conjunctivitis and increasing myopia in the left eye due to the displacement of the rear wall of the sclerotic as a result of strain. The first duty of a citizen is rest.[10]
Your
F. Engels