"It is now my momentous task in compliance with your Excellency's benign suggestion, to report to your Excellency the result of my visit to His Majesty's Hebrew subjects, and I feel confident that your Excellency will deign to regard my communication with the indulgent attention and consideration which the cause of philanthropy has ever received from your Excellency, the more so as I have the gratifying promise of your Excellency to place my representation in the hands of His Majesty, whose great object it has ever been to adopt every suitable measure for securing the moral and physical welfare of every subject under His Imperial sway.
"From the information which I gathered during my sojourn among the various Hebrew congregations in Russia, confirmed by my own personal observation, I am enabled to affirm that my brethren in His Majesty's empire are fully sensible of the good intentions of His Majesty's Government, that they speak with enthusiasm of the magnanimity of their mighty Sovereign; and declare their readiness at all times and under all circumstances to serve their country to their latest breath.
"It did not, however, escape my notice that there exist some obstacles which prevent the benign rays of His Majesty's mercy from imparting to His Hebrew subjects the full measure of comfort to which the wise and just general laws of the Russian Government would entitle them; I therefore, with your Excellency's permission, will now briefly repeat the advantages granted to them by their excellent Monarch, and venture to describe briefly to what extent and by what measures they are administered to the Israelites. I shall, at the same time, not withhold from your Excellency some observations upon the charges preferred against them, which I will leave to the wise and profound judgment and candid and indulgent consideration of your Excellency.
"In the document your Excellency was pleased to hand me it is stated to the effect—That the union of the Polish Provinces with Russia was for the Israelites a new epoch; that the Imperial Government not only allowed them, like its other subjects, to partake of all civil rights, and granted them permission to be received in the corporation of the body of town merchants, but also accorded them the privilege of taking part in the elections, and of being themselves eligible to become members of common councils, and to fill other local offices. Besides this, they were permitted to acquire immoveable property, and to settle as agriculturists, either on their own estates or on the lands of the crown, in which latter case Government also granted them support and freedom from all taxes, the Israelites also enjoying the right of settling in seventeen Governments (a superficies of 17,000 square miles) among a population of twenty millions of inhabitants, in countries where, by means of the harbours of the Black Sea (and in part through those of the Baltic), a lively commercial intercourse is kept up both in Russia and with foreign countries, have had, it is stated, all possible means in their hands of turning their activity to useful objects, and of establishing their prosperity upon a safe basis.
"The knowledge that such privileges have been accorded cannot but excite a deep and universal gratitude towards His Imperial Majesty for the paternal care which has thus been taken of his Hebrew subjects. But on a careful examination into the condition of the Israelites in some places situated within the above named 17,000 square miles, causes appear to prevail owing to which they do not actually derive from these enlightened measures the advantages they were intended to confer.
"I would respectfully invite your Excellency's attention to the circumstance that in the entire Government of Livonia there is only the city of Riga in which the Israelites are permitted to dwell, and there only to the number of about one hundred families. In Courland only those Israelites who were present in the year 1799 and their families are permitted to remain, but even those who have acquired the rights of citizenship are greatly restricted in their respective trades, for a Ukase, dated in April 1835, declares the Israelites in Mitau, in consequence of a privilege granted to the Christians of that city in the year 1785, disqualified to be received into the Christian corporations of the body of tradesmen or mechanics. The result of such a restriction is that the Israelite is never regarded as a master tradesman, and therefore cannot employ in his service either a journeyman professing the Christian religion or one who adheres to the principles of his own religion. He is likewise prohibited from keeping apprentices even of his own creed. Thus the Israelite is prevented from following any trade that requires particular assistants; he cannot with any prospect of success become a joiner, locksmith, blacksmith, or bricklayer, nor can he do the work of any mechanic where the aid of other persons is absolutely requisite. The disadvantages which he must labour under are indeed numerous. Where there is a large family, and the children are of tender ages, it becomes scarcely possible for the parent to maintain them, and it must be evident that when men become enfeebled by old age, or afflicted by bodily infirmity, they can no longer exert personally the labour which their business requires, and thus they become utterly destitute; and when a parent dies his children, if not sufficiently advanced in years to have acquired from him a knowledge of his trade (to which he dared not apprentice them), must relinquish it altogether.
"Your Excellency may perhaps think me wrong in this assertion, the former Governor General, the Marquis Paulucci, having in the year 1820 interceded in the Israelites' behalf, and obtained permission that they should in future enjoy the privilege of teaching their children their respective trades. This privilege has, however, again been taken away from them. In the course of time most of the operative class thus naturally became poor, to such a frightful degree that the community is obliged to furnish them with the necessaries of life. It may be said that Israelites who cannot follow the trade of their parents need not become a burthen on the congregation; an imperial Ukase having been issued in April 1835 to the effect that the Israelites in Courland should enjoy the right of keeping, either by rent or obrok, farms, inns, or baiting stables; but your Excellency will please to remember that this privilege was soon recalled. And, moreover, for some cause the Hebrews were ordered to quit the frontiers of Courland, as well as all the other places situated near the sea shores; and to withdraw fifty wersts into the interior of the country, which latter decree deprives them of the right to inhabit nearly one-third of that Gubernium. In the same province the Israelites are not only prohibited from settling with their families, but are prevented by the law from becoming contractors to the Crown and undertaking the erection of any government building, even though they might be merchants of the first or second guild. Neither are they suffered to sell goods by wholesale under their own firm.
"Your Excellency will give me leave also to advert to the expulsion of my brethren from the city of Kiew, where they are at present not allowed to remain even a single night; from the city of Nicolaiew, in the Gubernium of Kherson; the city of Swart-opol, in the Gubernium of Ekat-erinaslow; and all the villages situated in the Gubernium of Whitebsk, Moghilew, Tchornigow, and Voltawa, as well as all the other villages of those Guberniums situated within fifty wersts along the frontiers.
"If in consequence of the last Ukases the Israelites are also to be removed from all the towns and villages situate within fifty wersts of the Austrian and Prussian frontiers, and must quit every house where the sale of spirituous liquors is offered to the peasant, the number of exiles would surely equal the number of those who are already settled in the interior, and their fate cannot be any other than epidemic, disease, destitution, and starvation. This, as I had the honour of hearing personally from your Excellency, is not and never can be the intention of that great and most benevolent Monarch whose anxiety for the welfare of all his faithful subjects is so well known to all the world.
"With respect to commerce, the above-named space of land of seventeen thousand square miles, if available to the Israelites, as was originally intended, would, in the opinion of most of them, afford sufficient scope for securing a flourishing state of commerce amongst them. There are, however, some disadvantages against which the Hebrew merchants have daily to contend, and unless these be removed, the mere extent of land constituting the field for their exertions would not insure to them those advantages which they might have expected to realise from the benevolent intentions of their illustrious monarch. Merchants professing any other faith, either purchase their stock in the interior of Russia, or proceed to foreign countries and import it from them. But the Hebrew merchants have no permission to travel into the interior of Russia, with the exception only of those of the first and second guilds, whose privilege is restricted to making one journey for goods in the course of the year to Moscow; their sojourn in that city being limited—as respects the former to six months, and the latter to three months. Were they permitted to visit Moscow and other places at such times as their business might require, they would thus have sufficient opportunity for the necessary replenishment of their warehouses with the newest fashions in proper season during the year, which they cannot do if they are bound to lay in at once a stock for the whole year; and it is often the case that the purchases they have made in Moscow by the time they arrive at their destination are out of fashion. The Hebrew merchant is obliged to appear personally at Moscow, and dares not send his agent there to transact his business.