RUSSIAN PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 2848, 14 October 1890, Page 4

RUSSIAN PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS.

An abstract of the new repressive cdicts issued by the Russian Government against tho Jews has been communicated to the Times. Jews throughout Russia (aud including Russian l'oland) must henceforth reside in towns only, and not in the country. No Jew will longer be permitted to nwn land, or even to farm land. Tho old law which allowed Jews to reside in 16 of the enmities of tho empiro will now be strictly enforced, and the artisans who have hitherto been permitted to settle in places outside the 1G couuties will now ho expelled. Jews are no longer to be allowed to be in any way connected with mines or mining industry, nor even to hold shares in any mine. They will henceforth be practically debarred from partaking of any educationai advantages, whether in schools, gymnasia, or Universities, and they will be prohibited from following the professions of the law, of engineer, or army doctor, or from filling any Government post, however subordinate The correspondent who forwards tlie abstract points out that these edicts will affect about one million Jews, many of whom will be reduced to absolute beggary, and will be forced into the over crowded towns to be decimated either from diseases resulting from congestion, or from starvation caused by loss of livelihood. The Czar, he says, has declared a religious war against all who will fail to confirm to the orthodox Russian Church, and while the Lutherans have not escaped his vengeance, the vials of the Imperial wrath have chielly been poured out upon the Jews, always the scapegoats of religious fanatics. Such a persecution, he adds, involves a refinemeut of cruelty for which history affords no parallel. It means massacre, not by sword or daggers as of old, but by a slow automatic process of lingering death. The smaller incidents of the persecution—the deprivation of educatioual advantages, the closing of the Universities to the Jews, their exclusion from the professions—all these shrink into insignificance compared with the vast and widespread scheme of expulsion from hearth and home, which means death to countless thousands.