JEWS IN RUSSIA AND JEWS IN AUSTRIA.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 143, 30 November 1844, Page 156

JEWS IN RUSSIA AND JEWS IN AUSTRIA.

[From the Illustrated London News.']

While the Emperor of Russia is banishing the Jews from his frontiers, breaking up societies and families, destroying property, and breaking the hearts and hopes of thousands of this ancient and persecuted people, the Emperor of Austria is doing honour to an individual of the same faith and nation, but in all other respects how different from the many sufferers by the barbarous despotism of the Russian Autocrat. The following appears among the foreign news of the week ; —

" Vienna, February 20. — The Emperor, by letters patent of the 15th instant, countersigned by all the Ministers, and sealed with the grand seal, has granted to Baron Salomon Rothschild, the head of the firm of Rothschild, in our capital, and to his male and legitimate heirs, the right of purchasing and holding real property of every description in the provinces of Moravia and Silesia. He thus acquires a right which is denied to all the Israelites throughout the Austrian monarchy. The title of honorary burgess of Vienna, conferred upon him last year by our municipality, secures to him a similar privilege in our capital." Such is the effect of the " money-power," the talisman that softens the hearts of Emperors, and opens the eyes of Kings, enabling them to see in one individual of a race, " a man whom the King delighteth to honour," while thousands of the same blood they crush to the earth by an ukase or a decree. The common herd are swept from their territories as if they polluted the soil; they are driven forth with as little ceremony, and much less care, than if they were so many head of cattle. But the possessor of gold — the charm, the spell, without which even an Emperor, were he ten times a Bourbon, would be despised — cannot be injured. There is a circle round him that not even the ukase of a despot can cross, or perchance the dazzle and glitter of the court, or the appointments of some halfdozen crack regiments, would vanish like frostwork in the sun. Compare the position of a Rothschild, one of the real " Lords of Europe," with that of a poor Jew of Lithuania — can any two human conditions be wider asunder ? It is unav oidable ; we may modify the old adage, and say, " money is power ;" dmi having so much of both, holding such sway/ not over the hearts but the necessities of Kings, and being able to do so much to serve or thwart the projects of Minister^ of State, could not a Rothschild interpose with at least some effect between the imperious despot and his poor fellow Jew driven at the lance's point through the snows of Russia, from a home where he at least existed, to a place where it is a matter of chance if he will be able to exist at all ?

The statistics of the Jewish population are among the most singular circumstances of this most singular of people. The numbers who entered Palestine from the Wilderness were evidently not much more than three millions ; and their census, according to the German statists, who are generally considered to be exact, is now nearly the same as that of the people under Moses — about three millions. They are thus distributed : —In Europe, 1,916,000 ; in Asia, 738,000 ; Africa, 504,000; America, 5,700: making a total of 3,153,700. India-rubber Matting. — The Government have ordered the new garrison church at Portsmouth to be covered with this extraordinary manufacture, to prevent the soldiers from suffering from rheumatism, &c, brought on by sitting with their feet on the cold*stones. This example may be well followed in country churches, and especially over old vaulted places of worship. Where the dead are deposited, the escape of noxious gases is injurious to the living.— Church and State Gazette. The Late Duke of Sussex's Library. — By the will of the late Duke of Sussex it was directed that if the Government did not purchase his library within one year after his royal highness's decease, it was to be sold by public auction. The King of Prussia is now in treaty for the purchase of this rare collection of books, which coniiits of upward* of 45,000 volume*, the whole of which haiijjfci catalogued l^r. Pettigrew, the duke's libwiu. tL^S^>