It really seems as if the Russian Government had a
secret design of expelling its Jewish subjects, probably five millions in number, from its dominions. Decree comes out after decree, and the object of all is to concentrate the Jews within the old Polish provinces, where no doubt most of them were settled before the Russian conquests enabled them to spread over the Empire. By the latest decree, all Jewish artisans in Moscow —fourteen thousand in number—are to be "gradually ex- pelled," and transferred to the Polish provinces, already too full of their co-religionists. The idea at present is clearly to compel emigration, which has already commenced; but masses of men are so difficult to uproot, that if the policy is main- tained, Spanish measures must in the end be adopted. The expulsion of the whole nation at the point of the bayonet would be one of the most extraordinary acts of despotism in modern history, but, backed as the Russian Government is by the people, it is by no means outside possibility. Even as it is, the situation of the Russian Jews is only endurable because the lower officials, when properly bribed, affect not to see them. A Jew in Russia is an outlaw who buys permission to live, and who is too weak even to threaten resistance.
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