rs of their respective towns and villages, but even
made voluntary offers to defray the necessary expenses
from their own means. Your Excellency has full evidence of
this fact in the numerous applications addressed to your
illustrious person, and I feel convinced that your
Excellency will be surprised to hear that difficulties are
thrown in the way on occasions like the following.

"Some Crown land situate in the vicinity of Wilna and
Kowno was offered to the public by auction, and Israelites
were prohibited from being amongst the applicants,
although many of them distinctly declared their
willingness to cultivate the land in question personally.
All this, I trust, will be sufficient to satisfy your
Excellency that the Israelites are not averse to
agricultural pursuits, and that there is no foundation for
the charge brought against them in this respect.

"Having thus, I trust, convinced your Excellency that
there is no just ground for the accusation that my
brethren are disinclined to work laboriously and cultivate
the land, I now humbly request your Excellency to consider
with your wonted justice the two other charges brought
against them, viz.:--

"That they impose upon the peasant and deal in contraband
goods, these vices being traceable to a disposition to
idleness. I trust, however, I have succeeded in proving
that idleness is unjustly charged against them, and in
further refutation of these two imputations against the
Israelites generally, I may also be justified in observing
that a man, however inclined he may be to accumulate
riches, will not readily give up an occupation which
insures him bread in comfort, and respectability for a
business that is attended with little profit and great
risk of life. I have already stated to your Excellency
that only the fourth part of the Hebrew population in each
town or village is engaged in commercial pursuits, and
supposing even for a moment, that all the merchants in any
one town might be liable to transgress the law of excise
and customs (which case, I think, almost impossible, as
the Hebrew law distinctly forbids such transgressions),
surely so wise and benevolent a Government will not cause
the removal of the entire Hebrew population from the
Austrian and Prussian frontiers, because a few among them
may have acted in opposition to the law? For these
delinquents I do not interce