de, His Majesty's wise and
paternal Government will treat them like similar offenders
in the Imperial cities of Saint Petersburg and Moscow,
where I believe it will appear from the records preserved
by His Majesty's Minister of Finance, there exists a great
number of them notwithstanding the entire absence of
Israelites. I implore only the extension of its merciful
protection to the rest of the Hebrew inhabitants.

"The presence of the Israelites in the various villages
throughout the Empire is said to be pernicious to the
peasants. From the information I received, your Excellency
will perceive that this cannot be the case. My informants
assured me that since the Israelites were obliged to leave
the Guberniums of White Russia and Little Prussia, the
peasants have found themselves in a most deplorable state,
and are very often in such an unfortunate condition that
they are even without the seeds necessary for the future
crops, which never happened whilst the Israelites were
amongst them.

"There is also another striking proof which your
Excellency, I am confident, will agree with me to be in
their favour. If the Israelites had indeed imposed upon
the peasants and impoverished them, the former, as they
were obliged to quit the villages and join their brethren
in the towns, would undoubtedly have carried some property
with them, but their utter destitution was apparent from
almost all of them becoming immediately a heavy burthen on
the congregation, and many of them actually perished from
want before they could reach the town fixed upon for their
future abode.

"Your Excellency will also be pleased to reflect that the
proprietors of the various establishments let on rent to
the Israelites being themselves good and charitable
Christians, and naturally most benevolently inclined
towards their brethren in faith, would not have suffered
their Hebrew tenants to impose upon them, and had the
Israelites in reality been guilty of the crime, the
proprietors would of themselves have driven them away.

"The circumstances, explanations of which I have now had
the honour of submitting to your Excellency, have,
however, in consequence perhaps of similar endeavours not
having been made previously to the present moment,
produced an unfavourable impression on the mind of His
Majesty's Government; so much so, that His Majesty the
Emperor, in h