Page:Marx - Revolution and Counter-revolution.djvu/8

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4
NOTE BY THE EDITOR

his expulsion was demanded by the Prussian Government—it is said that Alexander von Humboldt acted as the agent of Prussia on this occasion—and M. Guizot was, of course, too polite to refuse the request. Marx was expelled, and betook himself to Brussels. Again the Prussian Government requested his expulsion, and where the French Government had complied it was not likely the Belgian would refuse. Marx received marching orders.

But at this same time the French Government that had expelled Marx had gone the way of French Governments, and the new Provisional Government through Ferdinand Flocon invited the “brave et loyal Marx” to return to the country whence “tyranny had banished him, and where he, like all fighting in the sacred cause, the cause of the fraternity of all peoples,” would be welcome. The invitation was accepted, and for some months he lived in Paris. Then he returned to Germany in order to start the New Rhenish Gazette in Cologne. And the Rhenish Gazette writers had very lively times. Marx was twice prosecuted, but as the juries would not convict, the Prussian Government took the nearer way and suppressed the paper.

Again Marx and his family returned to the country whose “doors” had only a few short months before been “thrown open” to him. The sky had changed—and the Government. “We remained in Paris,” my mother says in some biographical notes I have found, “a month. Here also there was to be no resting-place for us. One