PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 33, 9 February 1891, Page 2

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS.

The European telegram which tells us that the Great Powers are about to approach the Czar of Russia, in connection with his ill. treatment of his Jewish subjects, seems verymuch like Satan reproving sin. All the Great Powers, bar Britain, appear to be tarred with the same brush, as regards Jewish persecution. A work by a Jew has recently appeared, entitled " The Regeneration of Israel in the Land of his Forefathers." The author's name is Lilianblum. lb contains a terrible record of the present sufferings of the Jews. The pamphlet sets itself to prove that the Russian and Continental Jews are reduced to the most terrible destitution by the restrictions to which they have been long, and still are, subjected by the nations among; whom they live. This writer does not confine his strictures to Russia alone, but applies them to all the nations of Europe. It is not so very long since Germany went in for a sorb ot sport called " Judenhetze," or Jew-baiting, which broke out there in 1882. A great outcry was raised in England at that time, at the cruel manner in which the Jews were then treated in Germany. So with what grace can that Great Power come forward to reason with Russia?

The causo of all this persecution is obvious. Wherever the Jews locate themselves in Europe, their neighbours find that in commercial matters the Jew gradually creeps ahead of them, until he to a certain extent maintains a monopoly of whatever may be his business. There is only one race who can live side by side with the Jewish traders and merchants without losing ground, and that is the Anglo-Saxon race. Neither in Great Britain nor in Canada, nor in any of the colonies, nor in the United States, has this particular element ol mischief, which so enrages continentals, ever been hinted at. As an evidence of the excellent feeling which exists between the Jews in England and Englishmen, an English paper recently published an article on "The Jewish Community," in which it mentioned : " In consequence of the success which attended certain special services in which there was a considerable admixture of English, ib is now suggested thab there should be a weekly service of a similar character. This movement is, indeed, not confined to London. In more than one provincial synagogue on the Day of Atonemonb an English prayer was delivered, and in London itself there haa been the introduction of English prayer, English reading, and English hymns." The Jews, Mr Gladstone believes, are destined to play a very important part in the possibly near future. He wrote an article which was much noticed upon " The Office and Work of the Old Testament in Outline." After the opening paragraph he says : " I touch next on tho call of Abraham, which imports the selection of a peculiar and separate people to be in a special degree the subject of God's care, the guardian of Hi* word, and the vehicles of his promises. Of all groat and distinctive chapters in the history of the human race, we have here the greatest and most distinctive. Abraham with his descendants became subject to a special training. They lived not like other men upon the exercise of their natural faculties alone, but with the advantages and responsibility of supernatural command and visitation." He asks himself the question whether the Hebrew race was .chosen on account of their moral superiority. This he answers in the negative, saying: "Wo cannot claim as a thing demonstrable a great moral superiority for the Hebrew line generally over the whole ot the historically known races. I nevertheless cannot but believe that there was an interior circle, known to us by its fruits in the psalter and the prophetic books of morality and sanctity, altogether superior to what could be found elsewhere." He Chen puts to himself this question : " Why was the race chosen as a raco to receive the promises, to guard the oracles and to fulfil the hopes of the great redemption ?" The answer set forth is : " The design of the Almighty, as we everywhere find, was to prepare the human raco, by a varied and prolonged education, for the arrival of the great redemption. The immediate purposes of the Abrahamic selection may havo been to appoint for the task of preserving in the world the fundamental basis of religion a race which possessed qualifications for that end decidedly surpassing those of all other races." The ultimate eftecfc of these persecutions will no doubt be to force them from the nations where they are now located, and draw them in thousands to the Englishspeaking countries, where they can enjoy perfeat freedom. A movement of this character on a gigantic scale would cause a good deal of embarrassment. Tho "Evening Standard" of December 23rd, referring to an invasion then threatened, said: "According to a telegraphic message from Hamburg, no fewer than thirty thousand Russian Jews are shortly expected to be passing through that port, and ib ia stated that a Committee is actually being organised there in order to forward this enormous body of emigrants to the shores of Brazil. It is to be sincerely hoped that the Committee will be successful in this object. In Brazil there is a great demand for European labourers, and the Jewish exiles from Russian Poland, if they can only be landed in South America, will, at all events, bo bebter off than if they had remained in Europe. But the German telegram adds to the precedine intelligence a statement ab which British readers may well take alarm. We are Coolly told that if the Hamburg gentlemen are unable to ship their emigrants to Brazil, the latter, who, it must be remembered, are thirty thousand in number, and probably almost all in a state of destitution, may be expected to come on to London and other parts of England. No doubt the sympathy shown by Englishmen for the condition of the Russian Jews may encourage these paupers to seek the hospitable shores of the British Isles. At all events, they will nob be allowed to stay in Germany ; nor would bhey be permibted bo land in bhe United States. In the event, bherefore, of their not beingaenbbo South America, they would seem to have no choice but to come to London. If the Franco-Russian entefite were worth much, France would seem to be a more appropriate destination for these unfortunates than England, where the distress among our own people at the East End is jusb now assuming terrible proportions. Certain it is, that if we have thirty thousand pauper immigrants landing in this country almost in a body, the whole question will demand the immediate attention of the British Imperial authorities."