ed) "Moses Montefiore."

CHAPTER XLV.

1846.

REPORT TO COUNT OUVAROFF ON THE STATE OF EDUCATION AMONG THE JEWS
IN RUSSIA AND POLAND--VINDICATION OF THE LOYALTY OF THE JEWS.

The report to Count Ouvaroff, Minister of Public Instruction at
St Petersburg, was as follows:--

"To His Excellency, le Comte Ouvaroff, Ministre de
l'Instruction publique de sa Majeste l'Empereur de Russie,
&c., &c., &c.

"May it please your Excellency,--The zealous and untiring
energy which your Excellency evinces in continual efforts
to promote education, and to diffuse amongst all classes
of His Imperial Majesty's subjects that important
blessing, Knowledge, will, I feel assured, induce you to
pardon me if I venture to lay before your Excellency such
observations on the present condition of my brethren in
Russia, with respect to their educational establishments,
as by your Excellency's favour I have been enabled to
make.

"Previously to my doing so, I beg leave to present my
warmest acknowledgments for the very kind and
condescending manner in which your Excellency was pleased
to convey to me the sentiments of His Imperial Majesty's
Government. I shall ever remember with gratitude the
assurances your Excellency gave me, that the Russian
Government was anxious to promote only such education as
is based upon pure religion; that it did not entertain
sentiments inimical to the Jewish faith; that on the
contrary the Government was anxious to institute with
respect to the Israelites such measures as would tend to
prove to them the paternal kindness of His Majesty; and
that for this reason the Government had called together a
Committee of Chief Rabbis, eminent for their piety, in
order to gain the perfect confidence of all their
brethren.

"These assurances enabled me with pleasure to undertake
the task, the result of which I now have the honour to
submit to your Excellency, feeling convinced that your
Excellency's noble and enlightened sentiments will induce
you to give a due consideration to a subject of such
infinite importance.

"It must be to your Excellency a source of the highest
gratification to hear that His Imperial Majesty's Hebrew
subjects are far from depreciating the advantages which
the human mind in general derives from education. Wherever
and whenever I had an opportunity of addressing them on
that subject, they assured me that