Earl Russell to the Jewish Board of Deputies.
Foreign Office,
February 1st, 1864.
Sir,—I am directed by Earl Russell to acknowledge the receipt of your two letters of the 29th of December and 22nd inst., in the former of which you enclose a Memorial to His Lordship from the Jews of Safed and Tiberias, praying that they may again be placed under British protection, of which they assert that they were deprived by Mr. Consul Finn under the circumstances stated by them.
I am now to state to you in reply for the information of the Memorialists that Her Majesty's Government have every disposition to give effect to the arrangements which were made with the Russian Consul General in 1849, namely to afford British protection to those Jews who, having declined to return to Russia, have divested themselves of their Russian Nationality, and so forfeited the protection to which primâ facie they were entitled to look. But I am to add that it must be distinctly understood that this can only be done by the production on the part of the individual seeking British protection of the formal letter of Dismissal from the Russian Consulate, shewing that he has been cast off from Russian protection, and would thus be left otherwise unprotected. If he can produce no such letter, Her Majesty's Consular Officers will not be entitled to grant to such individual British protection.
Mr. Finn acted erroneously in originally supposing that British protection could be granted to Russian Jews without the production of formal letters of dismissal, and it was in consequence of instructions from Her Majesty's Government that he withdrew British Consular protection from those persons who could not produce such letters. Lord Russell, however, is of opinion that Mr. Finn has shewn satisfactorily that his good offices have nevertheless not unfrequently been extended to the Jewish Communities at Safed and Tiberias, and that they have no just reason to complain of him.
A delay has been occasioned in answering your first letter by the necessity of communicating with Mr. Finn and of making other inquiries with regard to the statements contained in the Memorial.
I am, Sir,
Your most obedient humble Servant,
I. Hammond.
J. M. Montefiore, Esq.,
4 Gt. Stanhope St., Mayfair.
(Minute Books of Board of Deputies, 1864.)