to forward a copy of these resolutions to the Right Honourable W.B.  Gladstone and the Right Honourable Earl Granville, in the hope that Her Majesty’s Government may be able, when an opportunity arises, to exercise a friendly influence with the Russian Government in accordance with the spirit of the preceding resolutions.

Finally a resolution was adopted to open a relief fund for the sufferers of the pogroms and for improving the condition of Russian Jewry by emigration as well as by other means.  The committee chosen by the meeting for this purpose included the Lord Mayor, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Manning, the Bishop of London, Nathaniel de Rothschild, and others.

A few days after the Mansion House Meeting the English Government responded to the resolutions adopted on that occasion.  The following dispatch, dated London, February 9, appeared in the Russian papers: 

In the House of Commons, Gladstone, replying to an interpellation of Sir John Simon, stated that reports concerning the persecutions of the Jews in Russia had been received from the English consuls, and could not but inspire sentiments of the utmost pain and horror.  But the matter being an internal affair of another country, it could not become the object of official correspondence or inquiry on the part of England.  All that could be done was to make casual and unofficial representations.  All other actions touching the question of the relations of the Russian Government to the Jews were more likely to harm than to help the Jewish population. [1]

[Footnote 1:  On this occasion Gladstone merely repeated the words of the Russian official communication which had been published on the eye of the Mansion House Meeting in the hope of scaring the organizers of the protest:  “The Russian Government, which has always most scrupulously refrained from interfering in the inner affairs of other countries, is correspondingly unable to allow a similar violation of international practice by others.  Any attempt on the part of another Government to intercede on behalf of the Jewish people can only have the result of calling forth the resentment of the lower classes and thereby affect unfavorably the condition of the Russian Jews.”  In addition to this threat, the Imperial Messenger endeavored to prove that the measures adopted by the Government against the pogroms “were not weak,” as may be seen from the large number of those arrested by the police after the disorders, which amounted to 3675 in the South and to 3151 in Warsaw.]

Another telegram sent from London on February 14 contained the following communication: 

In the House of Commons, Gladstone, replying to Baron Worms, stated that no humane purposes would be achieved by parliamentary debates about the Jews of Russia, Such debates were rather likely to arouse the hostility of a certain portion of the Russian population against the Jews and that therefore no day would be appointed for the debate, as requested by Worms. [1]

[Footnote 1:  Compare the Jewish Chronicle of February 17, 1882.]