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Title: Kossuth, Mazzini, and Louis Napoleon (1852)
Description: Letter of Marx to the New-York Tribune on the outcry raised by his revelations about Kossuth and Mazzini: it was a warning and not an attack, and the Democratic press that yells the loudest cannot do without kings, gods and popes.
Author: Karl Marx
Date: 1852-11-16
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1852%20Kossuth%2C%20Mazzini%2C%20and%20Louis%20Napoleon
---


*Published as a letter to the editor dated London, November 16, 1852, under the heading “Kossuth, Mazzini, and Louis Napoleon” and signed “Your Private Correspondent”, in the* New-York Daily Tribune*, No. 3627, December 1, 1852, p. 6; attributed to Karl Marx by MEGA² (I/11). Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1852%20Kossuth%2C%20Mazzini%20y%20Luis%20Napole%C3%B3n).*

*To the Editor of The N. Y. Tribune:*

Sir: My letter of 28th of September last, containing revelations as to the movements of Kossuth and Mazzini, has, I perceive, elicited considerable animadversion, and given the Democratic press occasion for a vast amount of superfluous declamation, abuse and bluster.

I have ascertained that Kossuth has no part in this clamor. If he had himself ventured a denial of my assertions, I should have returned to the subject, and given incontestible evidence for the facts adduced.

However, my letter was not intended as an attack on Kossuth, but rather as a *warning*. In politics a man may ally himself, for a given object, with the devil himself—only he must be sure that he is cheating the devil, instead of the devil cheating him.

As to the gentleman who has taken upon himself *authoritatively* to refute me, I beg to remind him of an old proverb: *Americus incommodus ab inimico non differt.*

To the gentlemen of the Democratic press, and especially of the German Democratic press, who, as usual, have yelled the loudest, I say they are all bigoted Crypto-Royalists. These gentlemen cannot do without kings, gods and popes. Scarcely got out of the leading strings of their old rulers, they manufacture new ones for themselves, and grow indignant at those “infidels and rebels” who render themselves obnoxious by publishing unpleasant truths, revealing compromising facts and thus committing *lese*-majesty and sacrilege against the newly-elevated Democratic gods and kings.

Your Private Correspondent.

*London, November 16, 1852.*