How Russia Persecutes the Jew.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 5990, 10 February 1891, Page 2

How Russia Persecut es the Jew.

— "'»'■- ■-» Two of the English magazines contain harrowing accounts of the legal persecution to which Jews are subjected who have the misfortune to reside in Russia. The tale is told temperately by an anonymous writer in * Black wood's, 1 and the more unsparing pen of " R. B. Lanin " tills in the picture in the Fortnightly Review with a few more lurid touches. The following extracts, summarised from both articles, give some idea, of the joint accusation : -In Russia the present legal status of the Jew is that of an alien, The spirit of the laws which regulate his position, may be summed up as follows : The Jew is presumed to be an individual against whoso treacherous wiles the authorities must always be on their guard. He has no rights or privileges, except such as have been specially granted him by Imperial statute, and his enjoyment of even these is precarious. His conduct and oooupations must bo regulated by special legislation, and he must on no account be allowed, 'so long as he remains true to his faith, to acquire the position of .a. permanent inhabitant of the country. It is chiefly as a trader that the Jew excites the jealousy of his neighbors. The general accusation against the Jews of immorality resolves itself, when examined, into charges of defrauding the peasantry, of smuggling, coining, and forging, and of avoidance of their dutiea as citizens, particularly in the army service. The smugglers, coiners, and forgora who are brought to justice are often Jews ; but smuggling is only practicable on a large scale on the western frontier, and that is exactly where oppressive legislation forces the Jews to congregate, and at the sinae time denies them the right of freely selecting their means of livelihood. Two other charges have recently been brought against the Jews — namely, that they have a regular system of combination for evil purposes, and that large numbers of them are to be found as active members of the revolutionary party. The first of these accusations is too vague and general to be seriously dealt with ; and, with regard to the second, the charge ia disproved by facts. The number: of Jews among the persons who have been arrested and tried as Nihilists is exceedingly small. For every animal, fowl, and bird killed for food according to Jewish rites (Kosher) a fixed sum has to be paid. And oh/every pound of that same meat, and on every one of those identical fowls, an additional sum is levied when they are sold. In addition to this there is a candle tax, the proceeds of which are employed to support those denominational schools with which the Jews would moat gladly dispense if they were allowed to avail them ' selves of the ordinary educational establishments, to which they have quite as much right as their Christian, fellowsubjects. Over and above these'oppressive tributes, all Jews have to pay certain percentage— from which Christians are, of course, exempt— on the rent they receive from their houses, shops, stores, and granaries ; and on the gross income they receive from the sale of wine in publichouses and inrs. They are likewise subjected to a special annual tax on distilleries and breweries, glassworks, copper and iron works, tar, pitch, and tallow works, and for the permission to set up as cattle-breeders. In ; addition, to' this all money left by deceased Jews pays a fixed percentage to -the same common fund ; and finally a fine is paid for the authorisation to wear Hebrew apparel. " AH Jews who desire to wear a skull cap " (I am quoting textually from the Statute Book) " are hereby subjected to a permanent tax of neither more nor less (sic) than five silver roubles a year each." This ia not an extract from obsolete laws framed during the Middle Ages, but a clause o£ law drawn up in the last quarter of the sober nineteenth century, and strictly enforced to-day. Every sordid motive that a legislator well versed in the lower branch of his profession could suggest is pub before the Jew to induce them to abandon the faith of his forefathers, without replacing it with anything better. Privileges denied his brethren, money and it various equivalents, even the hope of unlawful plunder, have been deliberately relied upon by these champions of Christianity to tempt the Hebrew to please the Emperor by denying his God. The poverty of the greater part' of the six . million Jews who are caged up in- the few plague-stricken towns and .; villages of the Pale surpasses' that which excited such a cry of horror in London when the sweating system and its results were dragged into the light of day. In most parts of the Pale they are cooped up like insects or animals rather than men. In Berditscheff, the official statistician tells us " the Jews are huddled together more like salted herrings than human beings ; tens of thousands of them are devoid of any constant means of subsistence, living from hand to mouth ; several families are often crowded into one or two rooms of a dilapidated hut, so that at night there is absolutely no space whatever between the sleepers. . . .. The lodgers turn these rooms into workshops in the daytime, refining wax therein, making tallow candles, tanning leather, etc. ; here whole families live, work, eat, and sleep together, in that fetid atmosphere, with their tools and materials lying around. The ' Moscow Gazette,' describing the state of the Jews in Berditsoheff, says :— The streets of the Jewish quarter of the town are uot more than 4ft wide. On either side of them the tumbledown old houses seem ready to fall to pieces ; children are lying before the houses in a state of almost complete nudity, wallowing in the slough, and among them numbers of slovenly women — the mothers of the children — also stretched out sideways and lengthways on the street, sleeping under the rays of the burning sun." The statistician, M. Bobrovski, writing on the condition of the Jews in the Government of Grodno, says : — By far the greater part of the Jewish population are poor and are always engrossed with the same care — how to get their daily bread. Burdened with nuuierous families, the crowdad state in which they live surpasses anything one can conceive as possible. Frequently one hut consisting of three or at most four rooms lodges as many as twelve families, whose lives are an unbroken series of privations and pains. Whole families sometimes live on threequarters of a pound of bread, one salt herring, and a few onions." At a meeting of the Tasmanian Tent* perance Alliance the other night, the Hobart Mercury reports that Mr Arthurs Olampett, described as a v visitor from New Zealand," gave a powerful address on temperance, forcibly illustrating the evils of indulging in strong drink. The problem of cheap travelling on the publio highways appears to have been solved in Vienna, where a Benzpline oleotric carriage travels eighb miles an hour, and runs eighty miles without needing to be recharged. A Melbourne correspondent writes : — The general feeling throughout Australia is that the time is ripe for making a determined effort to secure a complete federation of the colonies into which the island continent is divided, so that all artificial barriers may bo swept away, that Australia as a whole may flourish by the unrestricted interchanged ;Qf commodities, and that the foundations may be lajd of Q groat nation which shall be strong enough to successfully resist^ an attack from an outside foe. A Melbourne lad.7- Ijotelkeeper, who " went through, the Oouvt " lately, attributed her failure to the loss of L 25 a week by the stoppage of Sunday tfacliug !