hly educated and
wealthy, and take his place among the noble ones of the earth, and still
remain a faithful Jew and a loyal son of his persecuted people. "I leave
you," Sir Moses called to them at parting, "but my heart will ever
remain with you. When my brethren suffer, I feel it painfully; when they
have reason to weep, my eyes shed tears." Had Montefiore's visit
resulted merely in arousing his brethren's self-consciousness, he had
earned a place in the history of Haskalah, for self-consciousness is the
most potent factor in the culture of mankind.

Jews from other lands also came to the rescue of their Russian
coreligionists. Jacques Isaac Altaras, the ship-builder of Marseilles,
petitioned the czar to allow forty thousand Jewish families to emigrate
to Algeria. Rabbi Ludwig Philippson, editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung
des Judenthums, appealed to his countrymen to help the Russian Jews to
settle in America, Australia, Africa, anywhere away from Russia. But all
attempts were ineffectual. Though Count Kissilyef assured Montefiore
that the czar "did not wish to keep them [the Jews], five or six hundred
thousand might leave altogether," emigration was next to impossible.
Russia was constantly playing the game of the cat with the mouse. Her
nails were set and her eyes fixed upon her prey, and yet she made it
appear to the outside world that she was anxious about the welfare of
the Jews. For Russian tactics have always been, and still are, the
despair of the diplomat, a labyrinth through which only they who hold
the clue can ever hope to find their way.

The condition of the Jews in Russo-Poland was, if possible, even worse
than in Lithuania and Russia proper. Nothing, in fact, but the
auto-da-fe was needed to give it the stamp of medieval Spain. As before
the division of Poland, the Poles suspected the Jews of disloyalty to
Poland, while the Russians suspected them of disloyalty to Russia.
Hitherto too proud to soil his hand with a manual or mercantile pursuit,
the Polish pan, now that the glory of his country had departed, and he
was deprived of his lordly estates, began to engage in business of all
kinds, and, finding in the Jewish trader a rival with whose skill and
diligence he could seldom compete, he became embittered against the
entire race. This was the cause of the innumerable restrictions, the
extortion, and exploitation in Russo-Poland, which surpassed those of
Russia proper.

The Jewish archives--said D