Mr. Cohen, M.P. for Southwark, in a letter to Mr.
MacColl, published in Wednesday's Daily News, complains of the Spectator- for saying that various representatives of Jewish opinion were disposed to attenuate and excuse the Bulgarian outrages. of 1876, and instances his own manly conduct in the opposite- sense. We believe we did full justice to Mr. Cohen at the- time, and since, for his courage and humanity ; but it was, of course, true that, in spite of such exceptions, there was a, very strong Jewish party which, headed by Lord Beaconsfield,. treated those outrages as mere coffee-house babble. We sym- pathise heartily with that party in the effort they are now very rightly and honestly making to move public opinion against the disgraceful Jew-baiting in Russia ; but we confess that we do. not believe in the authenticity of all the asserted outrages at Odessa, Warsaw, and elsewhere, because the evidence of residents. has never been produced for some of the worst of them, while the evidence of respectable residents does in effect disprove some of the most disgraceful of these, as the long and careful letter from Odessa in the Daily News of Wednesday sufficiently shows.. Still, that there has been outrage enough to call for the warmest. and most energetic protest, we are ready to maintain. None the leas, we are not willing to forego the opportunity for impress- ing on the Jews the folly of the excuses which so many of them urged in 1876, even after official proof had been furnished of the' enormities committed and rewarded by the Turkish Government in Bulgaria.. We are more than pained, —we are indignant,— at the dreadful retribution which their countrymen in Russia. haverecently been suffering; but surely there is nothing un- reasonable in reminding them that every word of their former indifference to cruelty and injustice, should now be felt by them as something like treachery to their own just cause.
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