Chapter XVI: Part I: , for 1776, London, 1776, pp. 100-6. (The narrative is somewhat (14)

"The legend of the 'Wandering Jew' has a pathos beyond the usual
interpretation. The story is told that the Jew, who refused to
comfort Christ as he toiled under the weight of the cross, was
condemned to tarry until he came, and so wanders around the
world until the second coming. But it is the symbol also of the
restlessness of the race, roaming through Christendom, homeless
and rejected. It is the curse, says many a Christian heart, of
the people that crucified the Redeemer. This is the common theory
of the origin of the traditional antipathy to the Jews, and,
undoubtedly, this is with many persons a vague justification of
the feeling with which a Jew is regarded. But should it be nothing
to such persons that when, as they believe, the Creator would
incarnate himself, He became a Jew? Or, again, do they reflect
that if it was in the eternal decrees that the sins of men were
to be atoned and condoned by the innocent sacrifice, those who
accomplished the sacrifice were but the agents of the Divine
will? Are all such ingenious speculations other than devices to
explain and justify a mere prejudice of race, such as some African
tribes cherish against people of white skins? Those who find in
such prejudice a profound significance will continue to plead
the feeling as its own sufficient reason. But honorable men will
be careful how they carelessly use the name of a race to which
the religion, the literature, the art, the civilized progress of
humanity, are so greatly indebted, as a term of utter derision and
scorn."

* * * * *

Mr. Curtis in his reference to Shakespeare's "Shylock" truly says that "there is nothing in Shakespeare more vital and intelligible than the fervent appeal of Shylock to the common humanity around him." Much has been said and written concerning this remarkable creation of the dramatist's genius, and often and again it has been remarked that Shakespeare's Jew was not the real Jew, not even the Jew of his own imagination, but the Jew as mirrored in the distorted consciousness of mediæval Europe. The great pathologist of human feeling only then failed in his diagnosis when he sought to realize the Jew, the real Jew and his attributes were beyond his ken.

One of the grandest and most cherished of our poets, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, long the editor of the New York _Evening Post_, in a trenchant criticism of the character of Shylock on the occasion of a presentation of the drama by Edwin Booth, wrote as follows:[118]

"In terming Shylock 'the Jew whom Shakespeare drew,' there is a
perfect logic, for Shylock is, of all Shakespeare's characters, the
only one untrue to nature. He is not a Jew, but a fiend presented
in the form of one; and whereas he is made a ruling type, he is but
an exception, if even that, and the exception is not to be met with
either in the Ghettos of Venice or of Rome. Shakespeare holds up
the love of money that marks the race, although he does not show
that this passion was but the effect of that persecution which, by
crowding the Jew out of every honorable pursuit, and thus cutting
off his nature from every sympathy with the world around, sharpened
and edged the keen corners of his brain for the only pursuit left
to him.

"It is true that money-changers once spat on in the Ghetto are now
hugged in the palace. But we fear that it is not so much that the
prejudice against the Jews has ceased, but that the love of money
among the Christians has increased. Shakespeare was not true in the
picture he has drawn of the Jew's cravings for revenge, and in the
contempt with which he is treated by his daughter. Revenge is not a
characteristic of the Jew. He is subject to sudden fits of passion,
but that intellect which always stands sentinel over the Hebrew
soon subdues the gust. However strong in Shylock's time might have
been the hatred of the Jew towards the Christian, the lust of lucre
was more strong, and Shakespeare might have ransacked every Ghetto
in Christendom without finding a Jew, or a Christian either, who
would have preferred a pound of flesh to a pound sterling; and Jews
also shrink from physical contests. Their disposition is to triumph
by intellect rather than violence. It was this trait more than any
other that rendered them, in the Middle Ages, so repulsive to the
masses, who were all of the Morrissey and muscular Christianity
school. The contempt of a daughter for her parent is equally
uncharacteristic of the Jew. The Jews are universally admired for
the affections which adorn their domestic life. The more they have
been pushed from the society of the family of man the greater has
been the intensity with which they have clung to the love of their
own family.

"No one can ever have visited the houses of the Jews without having been struck by the glowing affection with which the daughter greets the father as he returns from the day's campaign and the slights and sneers his gaberdine and yellow cap provoke, and without observing how those small, restless eyes that sparkle and gleam, shine out in a softened, loving lustre as they fall upon the face of Rebecca, or Jessica, or Sarah, and how he stands no longer with crooked back, but erect and commanding, as he blesses his household gods with an exultation as vehement as the prejudices which during the day have galled and fretted his nature. To do justice to the grandeurs of the Jewish race, and to brand with infamy its infirmities, it is not enough to produce a repulsive delineation of the latter. It would only be just to give expression to the former, and to exhibit that superiority of intellect which has survived all persecution, and which, soaring above the prejudices of the hour, has filled us with reluctant admiration on finding how many of the great events which mark the progress of the age or minister to its improvements, or elevate its tastes, may be traced to the wonderful workings of the soul of the Hebrew, and the supremacy of that spiritual nature which gave to mankind its noblest religion, its noblest laws, and some of its noblest poesy and music."

* * * * *

Treating the same subject the great German critic, ROBERT BENEDIX, writes as follows:[119]

"Let us look at this Shylock closer. Antonio calls him an usurer;
the proof he fails in. Shylock takes high interest; so did all the
merchants of Venice. Shylock deals in money; to-day we call him a
banker. Why does he deal in money? Because it is the only trade
permitted. He does not carry on an industry, has no agricultural
pursuits, no official station--only trade. If the Jews, under
centuries of restriction, ostracised from social life, did cling
to money and its uses, whose fault was it? No one can say anything
dishonorable of Shylock. He is penurious; in no law-book of the
world is that denominated as a crime. What is against this man?
Simply nothing more than that he is a Jew. But for the poet, who,
enthroned on Olympian heights, there should exist only _the man,
not the Jew_. Shylock is revengeful. Well, who has instigated it?
Only they who have despised him. After persecuting and deriding
him, they crown their infamy by asking him to turn Christian. That
is the very depth of baseness. What is left to the poor Jew, whom
you have trodden under foot, when you rob him of his faith? It is
the bond that binds him to his fathers, to his home. It has been
his solace in persecutions a thousand times repeated. To this faith
Israel clings with devoted love, and from this faith shall Shylock
turn to become a Christian? No wonder he turns with abhorrence from
those who torture him so cruelly. Christians they may be. Men they
are not. And is there no feeling for a father? To exalt a daughter
who absconds and robs him whom she should honor? Is that Jewish
or Christian? The grand speech, 'Has not a Jew eyes,' etc., is
the exclamation of a martyr people who for centuries had been the
victims of debauched, bigoted priests.

"It is impossible to acquit Shakespeare of the prejudice of his
age. He has morally sinned; artistically erred. Contrast Lessing;
and he wrote in an age of equal intolerance. His 'Nathan the Wise'
is an embodiment of morality and sublime virtues; his figures are
apostles of true humanity. Nathan is an evangelist of true worth;
and Lessing, taking for his hero a Jew, made thereby the amende
honorable in the name of humanity."

* * * * *

As a veritable anti-climax to these utterances of poet and critic, we may here consider the views of the representative proletary of America, who deals with the Shylock theme from an entirely different standpoint. This dissertation is by Mr. TERRENCE V. POWDERLY, long the leader of the organization of wage-earners known as the Knights of Labor, and as such will command the attention of the reader. Under the caption of "_The Real Shylock_," he writes in the _Journal of the Knights of Labor_ as follows:

"Flings at the Jews are flying about promiscuously on every hand,
and it seems to me that this practice is neither just nor manly.
Turn the pages of history backward to the dawn of Christianity
and notice how the Jew has been persecuted by those who professed
to be actuated by Christian charity. Notice how he has been
driven from country and home, how he has been driven ahead of
the advanced guard of Christianity, and then pause for a moment
to ask if the Christian is not in some small measure to blame
for the money-lending characteristics of the Jew of this day and
generation. Driven from all other branches of trade, with a price
on his head, and his home at the mercy of others, how could the Jew
protect himself? It is well enough to single out Rothschild and
to point to him as a fit representative of an usury-taking class,
but when he is pointed to as 'Rothschild the Jew,' the bounds of
propriety are overstepped and common justice is violated.

"What right has a Christian to drive a man from every walk in life
but that of money-lending and then insult his race and religion
because of that fact, in sneeringly calling him a Jew. It is
proper to call a money-lender a 'Shylock,' for that is a term that
is applicable to men of all races and religions if they practice
usury, but to single the Jew out as the only one who should wear
that appellation is an outrage. I know Christians, and the reader
knows them, who on every Sunday morning will walk slowly down the
middle aisle in the Christian church, and with sanctimonious mien
bend the knee before the altar of God with no more of Christianity
in their hearts than may be found in the stone steps leading up
to the church door. If a living representative of 'Shylock' is to
be singled out, one whose talon-like fingers itch for usury and
stretch out toward your pocket for the principal as well, let us
be honest enough to admit that we can throw a stone into any of
our temples of Christianity and hit such a sinner. Do not lay it
all to the Jew. I admit that he knows how to deal in money, but,
who gave him points in the game of usury? Look over the United
States to-day. Contrast the acts of pretended Christians with the
principles of Christ, and then dare to lay the blame of all the
wrong that usury has wrought, to the door of the Jew. Look at our
American Congress and tell us if those who obey the voice of greed
in that body are all Jews.... Are all who have cornered lands,
railroads and homes Jews? Let the reader whose home is mortgaged
inquire who it is holds the mortgage, and if he happens to be a
Christian, as in nine cases out of ten he will be, ask him to be
lenient with you, and you will learn that he wants his 'pound
of flesh,' and will be anxious to go old Shylock one better, by
sucking the blood along with it."

* * * * *

_The Jewish Question and the Mission of the Jews_, published by Harper and Brothers, New York, 1894, contributes a valuable addition to historical literature. The work ably elucidates its comprehensive subject matter and deserves the careful perusal of every student of whatever creed. A few characteristic extracts are collated in the following:--

"If we turn to Europe, in which we are chiefly interested, we find
that the Jews were settled there as early as Roman times, and
lived on terms of perfect equality with all their neighbors, until
religious intolerance set itself to repress them or directed and
intensified the jealousy which their success elicited. When the
west of Europe was raised out of its barbarism by Charlemagne,
this great leader of modern civilization also took account of the
valuable civilizing influence of the Jews, especially as regarded
commerce and learning. He granted them privileges, and even made
use of them for diplomatic services; and as he transplanted learned
men from Italy into France and Germany in order that their wisdom
might be diffused among those people, so he also desired to engraft
the learning of the Jews in these districts. He encouraged them
to found Talmudic Schools and transplanted from Lucca the learned
family Kalonymos to Narbonne about the year 787, gave them a large
tract of land, where the chief of the family and his successors
were called princes, while the part of the town where they lived
was called 'The Court of the King of the Jew.' The position which
the Jew, Isaac, held in the embassy of Charlemange to Haroun al
Rashid is a matter of history."

* * * * *

"As to the pluck and courage of the Jews it certainly did not die
out with the Maccabees and the Zealots. I will not mention the
spiritual courage it required for the whole race to survive at
all during the persecutions which might have been avoided by the
simple act of conversion, or of the thousands that burned at the
stake singing. I should say, even numerically, more than the whole
Christian martyrology has to show. The numbers who heroically
during the Spanish Inquisition, and at other times and places,
preferred burning at the stake to baptism, the perfidy which often
met their heroic resistance, would fill volumes. In the history of
the Spanish Jews more than in that of any other of their numerous
communities do we meet with heroism, courage and chivalry. They
fought, in the Spanish battles as the bravest knights. Alfonso X
of Castile, rewarded them en masse for their war-like assistance
against Seville and gave them, when the enemies' land was divided,
a village which was called "Aldea de los Judeos." They fought
desperately for Dom Pedro, even after the Black Prince had forsaken
him, defended Burgos to the last man, so that even their opponent,
Dom Enrico, recognized publicly their valor."

* * * * *

"Even in Germany during the Black Death and the butchery of Jews,
and in Poland, the spirit of the Maccabees and the Zealots had
not forsaken them. It very often met with the basest treachery on
the part of their enemies and allies. One instance is a striking,
if not a typical one. During the onslaught of the Cossacks into
Poland in the Thirty Years' War the Jews were brave defenders of
the Polish territory. When a horde of Hadamaks attacked the town
of Tulczyn, six thousand Christians and about two thousand Jews
retreated to the fortress. Nobles and Jews pledged themselves by
oath to defend the fortress to the last man. The Cossacks resorted
to a stratagem, and assured the Nobles that they were only fighting
against their real enemies, the Jews. If they were handed over to
them they would withdraw. The nobles asked the Jews to give up
their arms; and when they complied, they opened the gates to the
Cossacks. When the Cossacks had plundered the Jews, they proposed
to them the alternative of death or baptism. Not one of them
accepted the latter, and they were put to the sword. But the nobles
suffered the same fate, as the Cossacks held that there was no
cause to hold faith by the faithless."

* * * * *

"The late James Russell Lowell was wont to say that a large
proportion of the great families of the English aristocracy had
some admixture of Jewish blood, while some of the great names
were in a direct line to be traced back to Jewish ancestors. So,
for instance, he believed, and he must have had good grounds for
his belief, that the families of the Cecils and the Russells were
originally Jewish. Of course such conversational statements must
not be taken literally. Many years ago I met a Russian scholar,
deeply read in literature and science--the pure Russian, without
any associations with Jews--who told me he was engaged upon a work
which set itself the task of tracing the origin of most of the
great men in letters and science that were then living in Germany,
and that he was coming to the conclusion that, not only were a
great many of them actually Jews, but that a large proportion
of the best known among the Christian dignitaries had also some
admixture of Jewish blood."

* * * * *

Our symposium could not be more effectively and fitly rounded out than by a quotation of the Preface to M. Anatole Leroy Beaulieu's celebrated work, "_Israel chez les nations_," and of the Preface written by the author for the English translation by Mrs. Theodore Hellman, which has just been announced as soon to be published by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Son's, New York. M. Leroy Beaulieu, whose mastery of the philosophy of history has commanded universal recognition, makes clear his standpoint in the preface to the original work, and in the preface to the English translation he evinces his thorough insight, not only into his general subject, but furthermore into its American phases especially.

We copy these extracts from the columns of the _American Hebrew_, New York, September 13, 1895, and from its editorial reference to the subject we gladly quote the concluding paragraph, as follows:

"The publication of M. Leroy Beaulieu's work in its English dress
will be timely for two reasons: Its Jewish readers will find it
an eloquent appeal for renewed devotion to the noble cause of
Israel's mission; its Christian readers, recognizing the important
part Judaism has played in the production of our present-day
civilization, will recognize how baseless is the prejudice that
reigns against the Jew. May the book find many readers."

FOOTNOTES:

[118] See note, next page.

[119] These citations are gleaned from the notable lecture by Hon. Simon Wolf, on "The Influence of the Jews on the Progress of the World," delivered before the Schiller Bund in Washington, April 1st, 1888.

ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS.

THE PREFACES TO M. LEROY-BEAULIEU'S "_Israel chez les nations_." [_Copyrighted, 1895, by_ G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.]

I. PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL WORK.

The author of this book is a Christian and a Frenchman. As a
Christian, he is one of those who believe that a spirit of
intolerance is repugnant to Christianity, and nothing appears to
him less consistent with the Gospel than race-hatred. Be it a war
of races or a war of classes, popular jealousy can never screen
itself behind the robe of Christ. Be it Aryan or Semitic, a nation
should never purchase its salvation at the cost of another's rights.

As a Frenchman, the author is one of those who are convinced that
France ought to remain true to her traditions of justice and
liberty. They are the only glory and the only wealth which the
fortunes of war cannot wrest from her. The more severe the trials
that she has undergone, the more menacing the dangers that await
her, the more essential is it to her honor that she should remain
herself and not belie, in the eyes of the nations, those great
ideas which she was the first to proclaim. To abjure them would
be not only an act of apostasy, but a forfeiture of her place in
history. A France that should stoop, more than a century after
1789, to abridge religious and civil liberty and to establish among
her inhabitants distinctions based upon name or birth, would no
longer be the France that the world has thus far known.

The inheritance of the Revolution, which we have come to regard
with so much reverence, may possibly include rash postulates and
exaggerated inferences that tend to intoxicate, almost to madness,
a people infatuated with its title of sovereign; but surely neither
religious liberty nor civil equality is likely to produce such
effects; neither the one nor the other can have any tendency to
turn the people's heads; and, after having been the first to preach
these principles to Europe, France will not disavow them now, when,
thanks to our propaganda or our example, they have conquered almost
all the countries of both hemispheres. On others be the shame of
such a recantation!

Anti-Semitism is consistent with neither the principles nor
the genius of our nation. It came to us from the outside, from
countries which have neither our spirit nor our traditions. It came
to us from across the Rhine, from old Germany, always ready for
religious quarrels, and always imbued with the spirit of caste;
from new Germany, all inflated with race-pride and scornful of
whatever is not Teutonic.

Anti-Semitism may be traced also to Russia, to that huge and
shapeless Russia, which, with its steppes and forests, has remained
isolated from the great currents of modern life; to holy, Orthodox
Russia, half Oriental, half Asiatic, which endeavors to find
its national unity in its religious unity, and which regards
the Catholic and the Lutheran with little more favor than the
Israelite; to that autocratic Russia, which differs from us in
all its institutions, as well as in all its conditions, be they
economic, political, religious or social. Whatever sympathy we may
feel with the Slavonic mind or the Russian spirit, the Russians,
who so often emulated us, would be greatly surprised to see us
copying them; as well might one propose to the Czar to model the
government of his moujiks and cossacks on that of the French
Republic.

Men of my age, who have grown up under the Second Empire and in the
worship of liberty--it was fashionable then among the young--have
witnessed many distressing sights. How often was the lie given to
our youthful faith in right and justice! How many truths which we
thought established forever were again called into question by the
selfish passions or the ignorant claims of new generations! How
many of the conquests won by reason and liberty were we unable
to maintain against the encroachments of power or the delusions
of political sophistry! Popular rights trodden under foot in the
name of the principle of nationality, everywhere heralded as a
principle of emancipation; European states transformed, for half a
century, into entrenched camps and separated once more from each
other by custom-house barriers and ramparts of prejudice almost
as high as the Wall of China; freedom of thought and religious
toleration cynically overridden or hypercritically evaded by those
very political parties that professed to be their champions; laws
passed to the detriment of special persons; decrees of exile or
confiscation promulgated in the name of liberty, within so-called
free countries and by self-styled liberals; appeals to secular
power, demands for legal restriction, for paternalism, addressed to
the government by all manner of clashing interests and passions.
And all this, not only in Eastern Russia, buried neck-deep in the
Middle Ages or rather in the ancien régime, but in the West, in
France, in Germany, among nations said to be the most advanced of
ancient Europe. Oh, how old she is, this ancient Europe, and how
difficult it is for her to slough her skin and regain her youth!
What an effort it is for her to strip off her old prejudices and
practices and clothe herself in the spirit of a new age!

And this new age, the age that we have so ardently invoked, what
will it bring us and how will it fulfil its boasted promises?
To judge by the methods and the teachings extolled by those who
proclaim themselves its representatives, this new age is in great
danger of reviving the worst practices of the past. Men who
boast of being the pioneers of the future openly praise deeds
of absolutism, and smile sanctimoniously at legal brutalities
borrowed from the _ancien régime_ by the jurists of the Revolution.
Visions of the future and mediæval prejudices; Utopias conceived
by dreamers deluded with misty ideals and belated memories of a
superannuated past; unceasing race-competition and ever-recurring
class jealousies, all these have become confused and entangled in
the minds of the learned as well as in those of the masses. And
something of all this is contained in anti-Semitism; something of
the old and of the new, of the far-off Middle Ages and of visionary
socialism, of reactionary instincts and of revolutionary passions;
and it is because of this that anti-Semitism finds an echo in
such different quarters, from the drawing-rooms of society to the
grog-shop of the working-man.

Let us confess it once again: we have presumed too much on reason,
and relied too confidently on civilization. This brilliant
civilization, which inspires our idlers with such ludicrous pride,
is often shallow and unsound, even in the most advanced countries
of the continent. In our proudest capitals it is barely thicker
than a light veneer, underneath whose surface, if we scratch it
ever so little, we shall find all the ignorance and savagery of the
ages that we deem barbarous. Thus, in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, the
close of our century suffers the disgrace of seeing measures of
proscription and confiscation advocated by people who are really
good-natured and ordinarily harmless.

It must not be inferred from what has been said that the complaints
of the anti-Semites are wholly imaginary. By no means. Whether
they attack our private or our public morals and customs, many
of their complaints are but too well founded. Abroad, as well as
at home, and most especially, perhaps, in our republic France,
they are right, these noisy anti-Semites, in loudly denouncing
certain governmental methods, certain practices which seem about
to take root in the life of modern nations. Anti-Semitism may have
been, in its time, a protest, on the part of public conscience,
against culpable concessions of men in office, against the venality
of politicians, and the domination, at once mysterious and
contemptuous, of stock-jobbing interlopers. Despite its excesses
and outrages, anti-Semitism is within its rightful province when it
assails the worship of money, the scandalous barter of political
influences, and the shameless exploitation of the people by the men
whom they have elected; or, again, when it unmasks the hypocritical
intolerance of inconsistent free-thinkers, who have erected
irreligion and corruption into a method of government.

Modern society is ailing indeed, more ailing that the most honest
anti-Semite imagines. The error of anti-Semitism lies in its
misapprehension of the origin and the seat of the evil. It sees,
or is willing to see, but one of the symptoms, and it calls this
symptom the cause of the disease. Anti-Semitism is essentially
"simple-minded," in the literal sense of the word. It fails to
grasp the complexity of social phenomena. But this failure, which
should prove its ruin, is largely the cause of its success with the
masses, who in their simplicity are always carried away by that
which they deem simple.

Even if the Jews had all the vices and all the power which the
hatred of their enemies sees fit to ascribe to them, it were none
the less childish to discover in a handful of Semites the source of
the evils that afflict modern society.

It is not true that, in order to restore it to health, we need but
to eliminate the Semite, as the surgeon's knife eradicates a cyst
or a malignant excrescence. The extent and gravity of the evil are
of a different nature. The evil is in ourselves, in our blood, in
the very marrow of our bones. To cure us, it will not be enough to
remove a foreign body from our flesh. Though every Jew be banished
from French soil, though Israel be swept from the face of Europe,
France would be not one whit more healthy, nor Europe in any better
state. The first condition of a cure is a knowledge of the nature
of one's malady. Now, anti-Semitism deceives us; it blinds us to
our condition by trying to make us believe that the cause of the
evil is external, instead of internal. There is no more dangerous
error. We are afflicted with an internal trouble, due to our
constitution and our entire mode of living; and the anti-Semites
insist upon telling us, over and over again, that it is but a
superficial ailment, brought on by chance, and foreign to our race
and blood. Even when they boast of exposing our secret wounds,
they misconstrue their nature; consequently, instead of furnishing
a cure for them, they are in great danger of inflaming them still
more.

Such will be, I doubt not, the feeling of every reader who is
sufficiently thoughtful and independent to base his opinions upon
reflection, and not upon the antipathies of the mob. Anti-Semitism,
even when most justified in its complaints, is mistaken as to
the source of our evils. It would be easy for me to prove this
conclusively, could I, in this volume, have treated of finance,
capital, and the ascendancy of the stock-exchange. Unfortunately,
I have been obliged, for the present, to omit a part of my
subject--that which in these days of subserviency to material
interests so completely engrosses the public mind--the money
question. I had intended at first to devote one or two chapters to
it. But this money-question has assumed so prominent a place in
our democratic society; it so easily takes the lead everywhere, it
is so complex, and so liable to give rise to confusion, that it
seemed to me worthy of separate treatment. Therefore this volume
will be followed by another, in which I shall attempt to define the
role played by money among the nations of to-day. On that occasion
I shall take up again some of the views set forth in my book on
_Papacy, Socialism, and Democracy_. There may, perhaps, seem to be
no connection between these two subjects. That is a mistake, for
anti-Semitism, too, is a social question. And as for myself, in
studying the influence of the Jew and of modern Israel, as well as
in examining the teachings of the Pope on socialism and democracy,
I have always the same object in view: religious liberty and social
peace. _Caritas et Pax_, such is ever my motto; and, if I mistake
not, it is a Christian motto, not unbecoming a Frenchman.

II. PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH VERSION.

Our age will constitute a critical, a supreme epoch in the long
history of Israel. To-day the prophecies of the seers are at last
approaching fulfilment, and Israel is really being scattered to the
ends of the earth. We are witnessing a new _diaspora_, the great
and final dispersal.

The tree of Israel, the ancient vine of Judah, transplanted to
the Sarmatian plains, has again been rudely shaken by the blast
of persecution; its branches have fallen and its seeds have blown
afar, over the hills and across the deserts and oceans.

As in earlier times, the wrath of their persecutors is forcing Jews
and Judaism into countries where the Sabbath-lamp has never yet
been lighted. The spectacle witnessed during the Renaissance and at
the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the edicts of
Isabella of Castile--the exodus of a people driven forth, without
means of existence, from the land of its ancestors because it clung
to the faith of its fathers--this spectacle disgraces the closing
years of our nineteenth century, in consequence of the ukases of a
Russian czar.

What will be the verdict of history as to the effects upon Judaism
of the harsh policy of Alexander III? Possibly in years to come,
when the tears of her exiles and their present sufferings shall be
forgotten, the historians of Israel may affirm that the Russian
autocrat contributed, more than any other man, to the expansion and
renovation of Judaism.

The Jews who are driven from Slavic soil by the law or by their own
poverty, are forced to begin a new life under kindlier skies and
in freer lands. They are torn from the old Jewries where, closely
herded together, they had barely air enough to breathe; and this
painful expatriation may well prove of equal benefit to their souls
and their bodies.

The majority of these exiles have gone to America, and especially
to the United States. To their brethren already established between
the Atlantic and the Pacific this sudden influx of a whole people,
in the main poor and ignorant, who demand from them shelter and
support, must indeed prove a very heavy burden. The Jews of the
United States have been confronted here with an enormous task, to
which, however, they have shown themselves equal. Fortunately,
the most trying years seem to be over. The accession of the young
emperor, Nicholas II, to the throne of Russia gives rise to the
hope of some mitigation of those antiquated laws which, under
Alexander III, had furnished official intolerance with the means of
hypocritical persecution. The stream of emigration, whose volume
is already lessening, will probably slacken. It will not wholly
cease, for free America will long continue to attract the victims
of persecution.

I, for one, do not believe that the United States ought to view
this Jewish immigration with any disquietude; I cannot see what
there is to fear from it. Among all the races and nations that have
furnished the United States with colonists and have thus helped
to advance its marvelous growth, I can find none more intelligent
or more industrious; nor can I find any that is more capable of
assimilating American civilization and of introducing into it a
useful competition.

I am told that one of the charges brought against the Jews of
America is that they frequently manifest leanings toward socialism;
or rather toward anarchism. This may be the case with many
Russian and Roumanian Jews--we have some in Paris who show such
tendencies--but the fact is due less to the racial character of the
Jews than to the conditions under which they have long been forced
to live in Europe, and to which they are still subjected in Russia
and Roumania. If Lassalle and Karl Marx were the prophets of German
socialism, one of the causes of their revolt against the old social
order lay in the sort of life which that order imposed upon the
sons of Israel, even in Germany. This is still more evident in the
case of the Jews who have been infected in Russia by the germs of
nihilism and anarchy. The Jew of the old secluded Jewry is--as I
have shown in this book--essentially conservative. If, in the past
twenty or twenty-five years, a certain number of young Jews and
Jewesses have joined the ranks of the nihilists, if some of them
have been concerned in the conspiracies against the person or the
authority of Alexander II and of Alexander III, this is due to the
social conditions imposed on the Jews by the Russian laws. This I
think I have conclusively proved, both in my present volume and in
my larger work: "The Empire of the Tsars."

Only the most systematic vexations and humiliations could have
aroused the children of Abraham to this spirit of revolt, to these
political conspiracies, so opposed to Jewish ideas and traditions.
A further proof of this, which ought to appeal to the most furious
anti-Semites, is that in Russia conspiracy can lead to nothing, as
yet, but transportation or the gallows.

Moreover, I have often noticed that all the Israelites implicated
in political trials were what I call "de-Judaized" Jews--that is to
say, Jews who have renounced the beliefs and practices of Judaism.
It was Christian contagion that gave the Jews their revolutionary
ideas. Some of the Jewish emigrants from Russia and other parts
of Europe have been obviously degraded and corrupted by centuries
of oppression. Many years--perhaps one or two generations--will
be needed to raise their moral plane, to imbue them with a sense
of honor, and dignity. It is a great mistake to believe that this
moral uplifting can be facilitated by detaching them from their
religion. On the contrary, the least praise-worthy Jews that I
have met have generally been "de-Judaized" Jews, those who had
ceased to observe the Mosaic law. The Jew--such, at least, is my
opinion--stands in even greater need of religious support than
the Christian; and, as a rule, he can find that support only in
the faith of his fathers. There are indeed, Israelites who become
converts to Christianity. But, in order to be morally efficacious,
such conversion should be genuine and disinterested. Its object
should be to find favor, not in the eyes of society or of man, but
of God. Now, it is well known that such true conversions are rare,
and this accounts for the fact that the baptized Jews are often the
least commendable.

I must confess that, in many cases, the Christian missionaries
are to blame. They are too often satisfied with purely external,
nominal conversions, and, for the winning of souls, they too often
employ means that are neither holy nor honest. I have been told
that there are missionaries--mainly of the Protestant faith--in
London, New York, and the East, who angle for Jewish souls with
the coarse bait of worldly benefits, taking unfair advantage of
the poverty, abandonment, and loneliness of immigrants driven
out of their country by want or persecution, to lead them to the
Christian font. These conversions by seduction, if I may venture so
to call them, are not a whit less odious than conversions by force.
Such proselytizing is unworthy of the Christian ministry and is a
disgrace to the churches that encourage it. It can result only in
making bad Christians and in educating bad citizens.

I need say little, in addressing my English-speaking readers, of
the fear entertained by some persons, that the Jewish newcomers
are likely to monopolize the national wealth. Although these
apprehensions are quite common among the simple souls of the old
world, I do not imagine that they have crossed the Channel or
the Atlantic. Englishmen and Americans have too much faith in
themselves to share such visionary fears. However great may be the
commercial talents of the Jews, the Anglo-Saxons feel themselves by
no means inferior to them; and when it comes to "making money," the
Yankee does not fear the competition of the Semite.

Nor do I believe that, in extending hospitality to the sons of
Israel, the United States, or Australia, or even old England
herself, has reason to apprehend what German anti-Semites call the
"judaizing" of modern society.

This expression is often used in Europe to indicate the growing
ascendancy of material interests and the encroachment of the
mercantile spirit. I do not think that the Jew can be held
responsible for this tendency, and I shall attempt to show this in
my forthcoming work: "Le Règne de l'Argent." What the anti-Semites
call the "judaizing" of society might, as I have taken the liberty
of asserting, be more correctly called the "Americanizing" of
morals. I trust that this remark will not bring down the resentment
of my American readers. That would be unfair, for I am, in many
respects, a sincere admirer of their great Republic. If I have
ventured to speak of the "Americanizing" of modern society, it is
simply because the typical characteristics of democratic industrial
society were first revealed in the United States, and have there
been developed on a larger scale than in any other country. This
form of social organization, new to history, is gradually becoming
dominant in all parts of the old world, as well as the new. If
it has its advantages, it has also its faults, which we are all
in duty bound to correct. The ascendancy of material interests,
the greed for money, the frantic race for wealth, are the most
deplorable characteristics of our modern industrial and democratic
society. These are not social characteristics; they are peculiar
neither to the Yankee nor to the Jew, although they sometimes seem
to be most pronounced in the Jew and the Yankee. They are the
result of our social conditions, and it is not by proscribing any
particular race or any faith, but only by appealing to moral forces
and by bringing all such forces to their highest development that
our modern democracies can escape from the practical materialism
that threatens to engulf them.

_Paris_, April, 1893.

RUSSIA'S CRIME AGAINST THE JEWS AND CIVILIZATION.

The closing citation in the symposium of general opinion which we have presented under our preceding rubric, the preface to the English translation of Leroy Beaulieu's work on "Israel among the Nations," may serve almost without further comment as an effective introduction to our present subject. It deals directly with the great wrong committed by the government of Russia against Israel and Humanity, and it deals with it from the vantage ground of an impartial authority.

The proscriptive policy adopted by Russia against the Jewish people, a policy whose animus appears to be a mixture of political and religious fanaticism, has erected the provinces along the Western frontier of the Empire, on the German and Austrian borders, into a "Pale of Jewish Settlement" and thus created a Ghetto-country, into which the Jews of the interior provinces have been driven, to live as best they may. Even in these confines they are forbidden to apply themselves to agriculture and forced into various towns and cities, there to huddle and if need be to starve.

It has been held that this seemingly inexplicable policy has been deliberately directed to the end and with the purpose of crowding a mass of helpless and impoverished population on the Western borders of the Empire, to be utilized as an abattis against a foreign foe or as a cushion against foreign invasion, but it seems incredible that Russian fanaticism, shortsighted and ruthless as it is, should reach such a degree of turpitude and folly. It would seem, on the contrary, to be persisted in notwithstanding the manifest political and military dangers which the unreasonable procedure harbors and which, since its inception in 1879-80 has not ceased to bring about widespread economic and social disorganization, not to speak of the political disturbance of the Empire. The "russification" of the Empire, the retaining of "Russia for the Russians" (as though the Jews who are conscripted in disproportionate numbers into the army, who fought valiantly for their native land in the Crimea and on the Balkans, were not to be regarded as Russians), is the ostensible purpose of the proscription. With this purpose the ruling power of Russia continues to drive out its Jewish subjects; the historic tragedy wrought out by Spanish bigotry and fatuousness 400 years ago is being re-enacted by Russia at the present day, and the political and economic lessons taught by that example, not to mention the admonitions of humanity and the protests of an outraged civilization remain unheeded. The end of this wicked folly is apparently still afar, and seems likely to be brought nearer in point of time only by a political explosion. It were difficult to arrive at a conclusion as to which prospect is the worst.

The facts concerning the persecution of the Russian Jews have constantly been belied by the Russian authorities, in conformity with the historic methods of Russian diplomacy, but have for some years past been placed beyond question through the efforts of our own government. In view of the positive contradictions between the Russian official statements and the constantly reported and seemingly well-established facts, it was deemed expedient by the administration of President Harrison, in 1891, to send an official American Commission to investigate the condition of affairs in Russia, and the report of this Commission, referred to below by Ambassador White, gave official confirmation to the previously published details of the relentless and heartrending cruelties practiced by the Russian officials in the name of the Czar. Into these details we will not here enter. The Commissioners' Report has been widely published and has become historic.[120]

A statement of the general subject has, however, been formulated in another official report, made subsequently to that noted above, by our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Hon. Andrew D. White, in a despatch to the Secretary of State, the late Walter Q. Gresham. In this document Mr. White summarizes the conditions relating to the persecution of the Russian Jews in a manner so concise and lucid, and in a spirit so entirely dispassionate, that it may properly be cited here as a statement whose authority is entirely beyond question.[121]

FOOTNOTES:

[120] This Commission was appointed, under direction of the President, by Secretary of the Treasury Charles Foster, by virtue of authority of the act of Congress (Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill) of March 3, 1891, and its Report was transmitted by the Secretary to Congress, February 25, 1892. The Commission consisted of Hon. John B. Weber, Commissioner of Immigration at the port of New York, Chairman, and the following named special immigrant inspectors: Judson N. Cross, of Minnesota; Walter Kempster, M. D., of Wisconsin; Joseph Powderly, of Pennsylvania, and Herman J. Schultheis, of Washington, D. C. The investigations with which the Commission was charged were made in the various countries of Europe by the Commissioners in severalty, those relating to Russia and the persecution of its Jewish subjects being made by the Chairman, Col. Weber, with the assistance of Dr. Kempster.

Col. Weber's report on the condition of affairs in Russia affords the most detailed and exhaustive statement of the subject that has been given to the world. It followed closely upon the publication in the New York _Times_, (Sept.-Dec., 1891,) of the masterly review of Russian affairs generally, by Harold Frederic, in a series of articles entitled "An Indictment of Russia," and these two publications finally disposed of the glossing with which Russian diplomacy had attempted to hide the facts.

[121] This subject had on frequent occasions previously received the attention of our State Department. In a despatch under date of July 29, 1881, Secretary of State Jas. G. Blaine directs our minister at St. Petersburg, Mr. John W. Foster, to demand of the Russian Government the due rights of American Jewish citizens travelling or temporarily sojourning in Russia, in compliance with treaty obligations. From this document we quote the following salient paragraphs:

"From a careful examination of the causes of grievances heretofore
reported by your legation, it appears that the action of the
Russian authorities toward American citizens, alleged to be
Israelites, and visiting Russia, has been of two kinds:

"First. Absolute prohibition of residence in St. Petersburg and
in other cities of the Empire, on the ground that the Russian law
permits no native Jews to reside there, and that the treaty between
Russia and the United States gives to our citizens in Russian
jurisdiction no other rights or privileges than those accorded to
native Russians. The case of Henry Pinkos may be taken as a type of
this class.

"Second. Permission of residence and commerce, conditionally on
belonging to the first guild of Russian merchants and taking out a
license. The case of Rosenstrauss is in point.

"The apparent contradiction between these two classes of actions
becomes more and more evident as the question is traced backward.
The Department has rarely had presented to it any subject of
inquiry in which a connected understanding of the facts has proved
more difficult. For every allegation, on the one hand, that
native laws, in force at the time the treaty of 1832 was signed,
prohibited or limited the sojourn of foreign Jews in the cities of
Russia, I find, on the other hand, specific invitation to alien
Hebrews of good repute to domicile themselves in Russia, to pursue
their business calling under appropriate license, to establish
factories there, and to purchase or lease real estate. Moreover,
going back beyond 1832, the date of our treaty, I observe that the
imperial ukases concerning the admission of foreigners into Russia
are silent on all questions of faith; proper passports, duly viséd
being the essential requisite. And, further back still, in the time
of Empress Catharine, I discover explicit tolerance of all foreign
religions laid down as a fundamental policy of the empire.

"It would be, in the judgment of this government, absolutely
inadmissible that a domestic law restraining native Hebrews from
residence in certain parts of the empire might operate to hinder an
American citizen, whether alleged or known to profess the Hebrew
faith, from disposing of his property or taking possession thereof
for himself (subject only to the laws of alien inheritance) or
being heard in person by the courts which, under Russian law, may
be called upon to decide matters to which he is necessarily a
party. The case would clearly be one in which the obligation of
a treaty is supreme, and where the local law must yield. These
questions of the conflict of local law and international treaty
stipulations are among the most common which have engaged the
attention of publicists, and it is their concurrent judgment that
where a treaty creates a privilege for aliens in express terms,
it cannot be limited by the operation of domestic law without a
serious breach of the good faith which governs the intercourse of
nations. So long as such a conventional engagement in favor of the
citizens of another state exists, the law governing natives in like
cases is manifestly inapplicable.

"I need hardly enlarge upon the point that the Government of the
United States concludes its treaties with foreign states for the
equal protection of all classes of American citizens. It can make
absolutely no discrimination between them, whatever be their origin
or creed. So that they abide by the laws, at home or abroad, it
must give them due protection and expect like protection for them.
Any unfriendly or discriminatory act against them on the part of a
foreign power with which we are at peace would call for our earnest
remonstrance whether a treaty existed or not. The friendliness of
our relations with foreign nations is emphasized by the treaties
we have concluded with them. We have been moved to enter into
such international compacts by considerations of mutual benefit
and reciprocity, by the same considerations, in short, which have
animated the Russian Government from the time of the noble and
tolerant declarations of the Empress Catharine in 1784 to those
of the ukase of 1860. We have looked to the spirit rather than to
the letter of these engagements, and believed that they should be
interpreted in the broadest way; it is, therefore, a source of
unfeigned regret to us when a government, to which we are allied by
so many historical ties as to that of Russia, shows a disposition
in its dealing with us to take advantage of technicalities, to
appeal to the rigid letter and not the reciprocal motive of its
international engagements, in justification of the expulsion from
its territories of peaceable American citizens resorting thither
under the good faith of treaties and accused of no wrong-doing or
of no violation of the commercial code of the land, but of simple
adherence to the faith of their fathers."

OFFICIAL DISPATCH OF AMBASSADOR WHITE TO SECRETARY OF STATE GRESHAM.

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES, ST. PETERSBURG, JULY 6, 1893.

(Received July 27.)

SIR:--Your telegram, presumably of May 17, was received on the morning of May 18, and answered at once.

Since telegraphing you I have made additional inquiries with reference to your question, and am persuaded that there has been no new edict banishing Israelites from Poland, as was stated in some of the papers of Western Europe; but for some time past the old edicts and regulations against them have been enforced in various parts of the Empire with more and more severity.

Soon after my arrival at this post it was rumored that there was to be some mitigation in the treatment of them, but the hopes based on this rumor have grown less and less, and it is now clear that the tendency is all in the direction not only of excluding Israelites more rigorously than ever from parts of the Empire where they were formerly allowed on sufferance, but to make life more and more difficult for them in those parts of the Empire where they have been allowed to live for many generations.