"7th. Permission to Israelites to avail themselves of the assistance of Christians in the various occupations of life—a measure which would tend strongly to soften down those feelings of difference which now exist between these two classes of His Majesty's subjects, and to obliterate that line of demarcation which His Majesty and his Government justly regard with so much regret.
"8th. Permission to the Israelites to live as agriculturists in the vicinity of their Christian neighbours.
"9th. The right of keeping brewhouses.
"10th. Promotion from the ranks of Hebrew soldiers or sailors who distinguish themselves in the Imperial army or navy.
"11th. And, in fine, the removal from the Israelites of all such taxes and restrictions as at present they are made to bear in a greater number and to a greater extent than other classes of His Majesty's subjects, and in particular that of the Sabbath Light, which presses so heavily on the poor.
"Such are the general details of the request that I most respectfully solicit your Excellency to lay before His Majesty the Emperor. I most humbly and earnestly pray, that in the great opportunity which Divine Providence has opened to His Majesty, he will raise the fallen, relieve the oppressed, cheer the desolate, and by a high and magnanimous measure of policy set an example which the whole world, and especially my brethren, will never cease to remember with gratitude and admiration.
"Your Excellency will observe that what I here entreat in the name of my brethren, as well as in that of every friend of humanity, amounts in fact to nothing more than that which your Excellency's most enlightened and benevolent Sovereign has already accorded to His Hebrew subjects, by the declaration contained in the document with which your Excellency obligingly furnished me.
"Under existing circumstances, deprived as they are of the means adverted to in that declaration, of turning their activity to useful objects, and of establishing their prosperity upon a safe basis, poverty, distress, and the annihilation of all hope must be the fate of His Imperial Majesty's most faithful and loyal Hebrew subjects, and indeed they appear already reduced to the lowest depth of distress.
"I therefore most humbly approach His Majesty's philanthropic Government with my fervent prayer, that it will be pleased to carry out without delay the good and humane intentions of His Most Gracious Majesty the Emperor, manifested in his decrees.
"With respect to the real disposition of my brethren, I feel it right to mention that from communications which I held with the Russian authorities during my permitted visit to the Israelites in His Majesty's dominions, I have reason to think that my co-religionists have been generally exempt from the commission of capital crimes, and that even in regard to ordinary morality and the greater proportion of minor offences, their conduct is of a very exemplary kind. I sincerely hope that this statement will accord with the reports in the possession of His Majesty's Government. I feel confident that His Majesty's Government will reflect upon another pleasing fact of which I was also informed, that the Israelites have never been connected with the formation of any plot or scheme against those in authority, but on the contrary have endeavoured on all occasions to serve their country with earnest zeal, and with most unanimous sacrifices of life and property. As an instance, I shall only mention their exertions in favour of the Empire which they have the happiness to inhabit, during the presence of the French in Russia, in the year 1812, and more particularly in the revolt of the year 1830. On the latter occasion the Israelites were highly gratified by a proclamation, which their magnanimous Monarch caused to be issued in his name, by the Adjutant General Prince Nikolai Andrewitz Dolgarukow, in which His Majesty condescended to express his great satisfaction with my brethren, and, moreover, renewed his assurance to them that they should find in Russia, under the glorious sceptre of their exalted Monarch, a fatherland and security of their property and privileges.