Cries of distress have reached us from thousands of suffering Israelites in your vast empire; and we Englishmen, with pity in our souls for all who suffer, turn to your Majesty to implore for them your Sovereign aid and clemency.

Five millions of your Majesty’s subjects groan beneath the yoke of exceptional and restrictive laws.  Remnants of a race, whence all religion sprung—­ours and yours, and every creed on earth that owns one God—­men who cling with all devotion to their ancient faith and forms of worship, these Hebrews are in your empire subject to such laws that under them they cannot live and thrive....

Pent up in narrow bounds within your Majesty’s wide empire, and even within those bounds forced to reside chiefly in towns that reek and overflow with every form of poverty and wretchedness; forbidden all free movement; hedged in every enterprise by restrictive laws; forbidden tenure of land, or all concern in land, their means of livelihood have become so cramped as to render life for them well-nigh impossible.

Nor are they cramped alone in space and action.  The higher education is denied them, except in limits far below the due proportion of their needs and aspirations.  They may not freely exercise professions, like other subjects of your Majesty, nor may they gain promotion in the Army, however great their merit and their valour....

Sire! we who have learnt to tolerate all creeds, deeming it a principle of true religion to permit religious liberty, we beseech your Majesty to repeal those laws that afflict these Israelites.  Give them the blessing of equality!  In every land where Jews have equal rights, the nation prospers.  We pray you, then, annul those special laws and disabilities that crush and cow your Hebrew subjects....

Sire! your Royal Sister, our Empress Queen (whom God preserve!) bases her throne upon her people’s love, making their happiness her own.  So may your Majesty gain from your subjects’ love all strength and happiness, making your mighty empire mightier still, rendering your Throne firm and impregnable, reaping new blessings for your House and Home.

The memorial was signed by Savory, who was Lord Mayor at that time, and forwarded by him to St. Petersburg.  It was accompanied by a letter, dated December 24, from the Lord Mayor to Lieutenant-General de Richter, aide-de-camp of the Tzar for the reception of petitions, with the request to transmit the document to the emperor.

It is almost unnecessary to add that this touching appeal for justice by the citizens of London failed to receive a direct reply.  There were rumors that the London petition threw the Tzar into a fury, and the future court annalist of Russia will probably tell of the scene that took place in the imperial palace when this document was read.  An indirect reply came through the cringing official press.  The mouthpiece of the Russian Government abroad, the newspaper Le Nord in Brussels, which was especially engaged in the task of whitewashing the black politics of its employers, published an article under the heading “A Last Word concerning Semitism,” in which the rancor of the highest Government circles in Russia found undisguised expression: