ADDENDA.

No. VII.

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA.

By her spontaneous and unanimous outburst of generous sympathy with the unutterable agony of the Jews of Russia and Poland, Christian England has increased her honour, presented a glorious example to civilised Europe, and won the great heart and everlasting gratitude of the Jewish people throughout the world. Christian Russia has outraged humanity, and has earned the execration of mankind. Christian England is ashamed of "Holy Russia," who has dishonoured their common Christianity by her savage treatment of the Czar's unoffending Jewish subjects. "In the moral and religious protests of a great and free people on behalf of justice and humanity there is a real and effective force," says the venerable Earl of Shaftesbury, "that will reach, no doubt, the ears of even the Emperor himself, and his responsible ministers. At any rate, it will be a relief and a comfort to show the whole world that the Christianity of this kingdom is a very different kind of thing from the, so-called, Christianity of Russia, and from that of some parts of Germany also." We read, upon incontestable and independent testimony, among other horrors almost too fearful for transcription, that at one

place thirty Jewesses were outraged, and that through dread of a similar fate, young girls precipitated themselves from the windows. Meanwhile the military had been called out, but only to act at first as spectators, and afterwards as passive participators. We also read :— "After a week's pause, a whole series of riots broke out, commencing on May 7th, at Smielo, near Czergassy, where 13 men were killed and 20 wounded, and 1,600 were left without homes. Next day, Sunday, May 8th, a most serious riot broke out at Kiew, once the capital of Russia, and still an important town, containing 20,000 Jews in a population of 140,000. Here the riot had been definitely announced for the Sunday, and the Jews sent a deputation to the Governor, requesting him to call out his soldiers to prevent disturbance. He bluntly refused, saying he would not 'trouble his soldiers for the sake of a pack of Jews.' During the riot which broke out on the day fixed, the police and the soldiers again acted the same part that that they had done at Elizabethgrad. The first procedure of the mob had been to storm the dram-shops, and, staving in the brandy casks, to wallow in the spirit. During the period of licence that followed, four Jews were killed, 25 women and girls were violated, of whom five died in consequence, as was proved at the subsequent trials. At the house of Mordecai Wienarski, the mob, disappointed in the search for plunder, caught up his little child three years old and brutally threw it out of the window. The child fell dead at the feet of a company of Cossacks who were drawn up outside, yet no attempt was made to arrest the murderers."

We must search the darkest pages of mediaval history to find a parallel to such enormities as the foregoing graphically and truly describes. And when we reflect that they have been tacitly permitted to be enacted by a nation in such intimate alliance with the British Empire, at a distance of only three or four days journey from our own shores, it is impossible to find a limit to our horror, disgust, and wholesale condemnation. “The municipalities, with the connivance of the local governments, have taken every means in their power to add to the misery of the situation. With rough logic, they argued that, as these riots were directed against the Jews, if there had been no Jews, there would have been no riots. They accordingly petitioned the governors of their provinces to issue orders for the expulsion of the Jews from towns in which they had no legal right of domicile."

"It is certain," says the Times correspondent, "that the direct cause of the objection of the Russians to their Jewish fellow-citizens is the natural result of the Russian laws which restrict their rights and mark them off from the rest of the nation. It is the lesson taught by all experience, that the only solution of the Jewish question is the granting of full equality. It is absolutely certain that the whole body of Jews, forming one-eighth of the population amid which they dwell, cannot be accused of 'exploitation' or 'usury,' as imputed by the Rescript, the fact being that the chief industries of Russia are in the hands of the thrifty and hard-working Jews. Again, objection to innkeeping by Jews is clearly a gross injustice, seeing that statistics show drunkenness to be more prevalent

in provinces where Jews do not reside. But, waiving all this, surely the poor women who had been violated, the little children who had been murdered, the farmers who had been robbed of their cattle and implements, could not be accused of these charges, and it was accordingly a refinement of cruelty to issue this document, teeming with animus, at a time when the passions of the mob had been raised against all Jews, without distinction of person, occupation, age, or sex. The Jewish question at the present moment is not whether the Jews should be prevented from competing with the Russians in certain trades, but whether the lives of three millions and a half of Jews shall be left at the mercy of the passions of the mob. A document like this, far from helping to solve the question, rather adds to its complexity, by showing clearly to the populace that the authorities share their prejudices. The appointments to commissions showed the same bias: at the head of the Kiew Commission was placed General Drudkoff, the Governor of Kiew, who initiated the proceedings of the first meeting by declaring either I or the Jews must go.' On another Commission was placed M. Chigaryne, whose only claim to be considered an expert on the Jewish question was that he had written a pamphlet entitled 'The annihilation of the Jews.""

"At Odessa, the first Commission was dismissed because it had recommended the only true solution of the questions put by the Minister for the Interior, the granting to the Jews full equality of rights and equal liberty of settlement with their fellow-citizens of other creeds. A second Commission was thereupon