Cardinal Manning, the warm-hearted champion of Jewish emancipation, who was prevented by illness from being present, sent a long letter which was read to the meeting.  The argument against interfering with the inner politics of a foreign country, the cardinal wrote, had found its first expression in Cain’s question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” There is a united Jewish race scattered all over the world, and the pain inflicted upon it in Russia is felt by the Jewish race in England.  It is wrong to keep silent when we see six million men reduced to the level of criminals, particularly when they belong to a race “with a sacred history of nearly four thousand years.”

The speakers who followed the Lord Mayor pictured in vivid colors the political and civil bondage of Russian Jewry.

The first speaker, the Duke of Westminster, after recounting the sufferings of Russian Jewry, moved the adoption of the protest resolution, notwithstanding the fact that the “great protest of 1882” (at the Mansion House meeting)[1] had brought no results.  “We read in the history of the Jewish race that ’God hardened the heart of Pharaoh so that he would not let the people of Israel go’; but deliverance came at last by the hand of Moses.”

[Footnote 1:  See p. 288 et seq.]

After brilliant speeches by the Bishop of Ripon, the Earl of Meath, and others, the following resolution was adopted: 

That in the opinion of this meeting the renewed sufferings of the Jews in Russia from the operation of severe and exceptional edicts and disabilities are deeply to be deplored, and that in this last decade of the nineteenth century religious liberty is a principle which should be recognized by every Christian community as among the natural human rights.

At the same time a second resolution was adopted to the following effect: 

That a suitable memorial be addressed to his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, respectfully praying his Majesty to repeal all the exceptional and restrictive laws and disabilities which afflict his Jewish subjects; and begging his Majesty to confer upon them equal rights with those enjoyed by the rest of his Majesty’s subjects; and that the said memorial be signed by the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, in the name of the citizens of London, and be transmitted by his Lordship to his Majesty.

A few extracts from the memorandum may be quoted by way of illustrating the character of this remarkable appeal to the Russian emperor: 

  We, the citizens of London, respectfully approach your Majesty and
  humbly beg your gracious leave to plead the cause of the afflicted.