290 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNISTleader refused to permit the use of his name, even by such a group
of friends and fellow propagandists. In a letter dated February
12,1868, addressed to the gentlemen of the committee, he wrote:
"My circumstances do not make it possible for me to attend your
deliberations, so please fill my place with another choice. In any
case, my thirty years' activity have proved to me that means and
ends of a good cause are never achieved by parliamentary pro
cedures, but are actually injured thereby."
The party polled several thousand votes in New York but of
course made little impression on the state of the nation. Yet it
addressed eloquent appeals to sympathizers in Chicago, Vienna,
Brussels, and Geneva, and gratefully acknowledged the receipt
from abroad of replies equally eloquent, addressed to the "breth
ren in the West."^3
(^3) Weitling's letter of declination is reprinted in F. A. Sorge et al., Briefe und
Auszüge aus Brief en, 5. See also Franz Mehring, "Der Sorgesche Briefwechsel,"
Die Neue Zeit, I (1907), 15.