ritings,"[146] and the summary of the rare
little work which he gives amply justifies the description. Gray
published other works of note, two of which, "The Social System, a
Treatise on the Principle of Exchange," 1831, and "Lectures on the
Nature and Use of Money," 1848, Marx subjects to a rigorous criticism in
"A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." Thomas Hodgskin's
best-known works are "Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital,"
1825, and "The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted,"
1832. The former, which Marx calls "an admirable work," is only a small
tract of thirty-four pages, but its influence in England and America was
very great. Hodgskin was a man of great culture and erudition, with a
genius for popular writing upon difficult topics. It is interesting to
know that in a letter to his friend, Francis Place, he sketched a book
which he proposed writing, "curiously like Marx's 'Capital,'" according
to Place's biographer, Mr. Wallas,[147] and from which the conservative
old reformer dissuaded him. John Francis Bray was a journeyman printer
about whom very little is known. His "Labour's Wrongs and Labour's
Remedy," published in Leeds in 1839, Marx calls "a remarkable work," and
in his attack upon Proudhon he quotes from it extensively to show that
Bray had anticipated the French writer's theories.[148]

The justification for this lengthy digression from the main theme of the
present chapter lies in the fact that so many critics have sought to
fasten the charge of dishonesty upon Marx, and claimed that the ideas
with which his name is associated were taken by him, without
acknowledgment, from these English Ricardians. As a matter of fact, no
economist of note ever quoted his authorities, or acknowledged his
indebtedness to others, more generously than did Marx, and it is
exceedingly doubtful whether even the names of the precursors whose
ideas he is accused of stealing would be known to his critics but for
his frank recognition of them. No candid reader of Marx can fail to
notice that he is most careful to show how nearly these writers
approached the truth as he conceived it.

II

When the February revolution of 1848 broke out, Marx was in Brussels.
The authorities there compelling him to leave Belgian soil, at the
request of the Prussian government, he returned to Paris, but not for a
long stay. The revolutionary struggle in Germany stirred his blood, and
with Engels, Wilhe