THE JEWS OF RUSSIA.
MADAME NOVIKOFF'S argument, that there ought to be no meeting in London to plead for Russian Jews because the Czar disposes of two millions of soldiers, is as foolish as it is offensive. The very reason for such a meeting, the only excuse for it, is that Russia is so strong that no concrete pressure can be put on her ; that the Czar is unassailable by material means ; and that, consequently, the only remaining hope of securing justice for an oppressed people is in the impalpable but all-penetrating force called " public opinion." We ourselves are of those who believe that the potency of this force is often exaggerated in Europe ; that there are men as well as nations on whom it may be expended in vain—it is useless, for example, to address the Pope on the evils of the monastic system, or China on the monstrous criminality of in- fanticide—but most Englishmen think otherwise, and so thinking, they have a right to employ the only instrument, strong or feeble, which is at their com- mand. And if they have the right, they have also the obligation, for they, of all men, have learned by painful experience the futility of the kind of persecution to which Russian Jews are now subjected,—persecution which is a, mere infructuous addition to the sum of human misery. It is in principle, and in many of its details, exactly identical with the persecution of Catholics formerly carriedt on by ourselves through the medium of the Penal Laws. The Russians not only detest but distrust Jews, exactly as we detested and distrusted Irish Romanists, and they try to subjugate or extinguish them in precisely the same manner. They shrink, as we shrank, from the only form of religious persecution which ever succeeds, namely, the offer of instant conformity or a painful death as the only alternatives—that succeeded in Charlemagne's " Saxony," in Spain, in Bohemia, and in Japan—and have tried to secure the same result by ruining members of the abhorred creed. A Jew in Russia may own no land, may hold no- office, may for the most part enter no school, may practise no profession, and may reside only in specified towns, now frequently so crowded with Hebrews that they are practi- cally turned into vast and most insanitary Ghettos. These laws are strictly enforced against all who cannot bribe, and are often made more oppressive by direct injustice, the Jews of Russia, like the Catholics of Ireland in the last century, being objects at once of dislike and suspicion to the whole- official class, and exposed, moreover, to a torture which the Irish Catholics were spared,—the unsleeping hatred of the mass of the lower population, whose enmity adds to all other evils the permanent chance of mob-outbreaks, in which houses are burnt, women insulted, and men beaten nearly to death. We all know what our persecution came to. The Irish Catholics were not as stubborn as Jews, or- fortified by the same undying pride of race. They bad not " seen and survived the Pharaohs," or outlived a general " Captivity," or raised against Rome the only popular insurrection which ever alarmed the Caesars, or taxed the arms of the mistress of the world. The Catholics were comparatively a feeble folk, but they beat us utterly. The single result of the persecution was a hatred which has sur- - vived the oppression, which has proved incurable even by justice, and which on every continent weakens the arm and thwarts the enterprises of the most successful nation on the globe. But for the Irish, the flag which will one day mark the alliance of the English-speaking peoples might even now be flying, and all earth be one safe drawing-room for the English and Americans. We, of all people, can best tell the Czar, for we speak from experience, what the result of Penal Laws against a creed like the Jewish must always be. Let him and his successors keep them up for centuries, and still those laws will be sterile of all but human misery. The Czars will make no converts ; they will remove• no obstacle from their path ; they will earn no fresh • devotion from their own subjects ; but down through the ages they will be harassed, as England has been harassed, by the hostility of a people which cannot die, and which, while it, lives, will be the enemy of the House of Romanoff. The Jews are, of course, even more powerless than the- Irish Catholics were ; but a nation is a dangerous foe, and even to Russia, though, as Madame Novikoff says, she has two million soldiers, it is no light thing that every Jew financier—and they are the princes of finance,—every Jew journalist—and in France, Germany, and Austria half the journalists are Jews,—and every Jew statesman who gains power, welcomes with delight any evil which may befall the great Slav State. Take the Jew out of finance, and Russia would enjoy the credit due at once to her resources and her unbroken financial faith. Take the Jew out of diplomacy, and the Conference of Berlin might have ended in stretching Russia to the 1Egean ; for it was, as Prince Bismarck himself records, Lord Beaconsfield who captured the Iron Chancellor, and so made the larger Bulgaria impossible. Take the Jew out of Nihilism, and the enduring energy, the inner thought, which gives strength to that strange and evil association, would be gone, and in a few years a Russian Emperor might again be safe in strolling along the Neva, or in riding without a guard through the streets of Moscow. Nothing but mischief to Russia can come from per- secuting the Jews, and we confess to a certain perplexity as to the reasons which induce the governing men of• Russia to uphold the system. The hatred of the populace is explicable enough. Every European populace distrusts Asiatic strangers living in their midst, marked out by a special dress and a peculiar language, and keeping them- selves and their children aloof from intermarriage, or even friendly association. The English would hate a million of Chinese if they were settled here, and still retained their oblique eyes, their blue blouses, and their pigtails to dis- tinguish them from all fellow-citizens. The Russians, moreover, retain the old feeling that Jews are infidels, responsible in some way for the murder of Christ, and cannot bear to see them grow prosperous, or even compete with themselves in ordinary avocations. They hate them for their history, they hate them for their separateness, and they hate them for the skill in minute bargaining which is the only decent method left them of gaining a subsistence. That is natural enough ; but why ruling men should either pander to this hatred or share it is to us inexplicable. What does it matter to the Czar or his Ministers if a certain number of subjects choose to keep themselves a separate caste, with a mono- theistic creed and a ritual differing from that of the Orthodox Church? They are not bad subjects, but par- ticularly submissive ones, serve like the rest in the Army, pay taxes with timorous punctuality, ask and receive no alms from anybody, and are about as likely to rise in insurrection as the household cats. We understand the motive for not admitting them to office, for if they were admitted they would rise, and the majority in Russia is not yet civilised enough to bear with them in high places. And we can see the argument, cruelly unjust as we consider it, for keeping them out of the professions, lest, like the Jews in Germany, they should swarm into them, and practically ex- clude from some of them the slower and less adroit natives of the soil. In Germany, Germans say, every pleasant post that is not filled by a " Von" is occupied by a Jew. The Russian Government, already at war with its educated class, may shrink from adding to its dislike by permitting such a competition ; but what is the object of carrying persecution further ? Why not let any Jew who will wear the national costume, to which, we believe, Jews raise no objection, live where he likes, and, within the limits of the law, by the trade for which he has most aptitude ? Why forbid him to own land, or to go to a school of his own, or to become a convert if he pleases ?—for practically, if not theoretically, even conversion is now forbidden, lest it should be a trick. Above all, why not make the bureaucracy understand that they are not to inquire about creeds, but to treat all taxpaying and law-abiding subjects in precisely the same way, punishing all alike, and protecting all alike from any oppression not enjoined by official order ? Nothing would be lost by that toleration, which is extended to Mahom- medans in half the Southern Provinces of the Empire, without any resentment from the people, whose jealousy of Jews is greatly increased by the fact that it seems to them to be shared by all the highest circle. If it is desired to expel the Jews, why root them to the soil, and deprive them all of the habit of locomotion, which might in the end take them out of Russia ? If it is desired to convert the Jews, why not facilitate their conversion by removing all differences between them and the rest of the people, a process so successful, that in Germany, France, and England, Jewish families are every day absorbed in the population. It is as statesmen as well as Christians that the governing men of Russia are mis- guided, and yield to impulses which the remainder of Europe has for many years discarded, with the result that, in France and England, where the Jews are treated best, they are least to be distinguished from the remainder of the population. Be it observed, we raise no question as to the charges brought by Russians against the Jews' way of life. An oppressed race generally becomes a demoralised race ; and we think it very likely that the Jews, being shut out from all reputable trades, do keep drinking-shops and brothels, do lend silver loans at exorbitant interest, and do take advantage of their orthodox persecutors in every way they can. Jews have a strong objection either to starve or to break the law, and naturally, when no other alternatives remain, betake them- selves to trades which are exactly on the border-land between legal and criminal occupations. The way to drive them off that line is to throw better lines open to their industry, and then leave them to starve or to prosper according to their industry and skill. They ask no better, and we fail utterly to see where the sound motive—we mean sound from the Russian point of view—for refusing them can conceivably be. Is it possible that in Russia, where at least half of the educated classes believe nothing at all, the most educated still feel that the creed of a Jew, that simplest of monotheisms, is too unendurable to be borne ? We cannot believe it ; yet if it is not believable, we are driven to the conclusion that the Jews in Russia are per- secuted out of sheer stupidity, and an incapacity to under- stand the first principles of civilisation. Even our Norman Kings were wiser ; for though they persecuted the Jews pretty savagely, treating them as their own chattels, they would not let any one else hurt them, or allow such good property to be spoiled by any wasteful mob.
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