A small group of influential Jewish merchants in St. Petersburg, which stood in close relations to the highest official spheres, the purveyor and banker Baron Joseph Yozel Guenzburg [1] and others, seized eagerly upon this idea which bade fair to shower privileges upon the well-to-do classes.  In June, 1856, this group addressed a petition to Alexander II., complaining about the disabilities which weighed so heavily upon all Jews, “from the artisan to the first guild merchant, from the private soldier to the Master of Arts, and forced them down to the level of a degraded, suspected, untolerated tribe.”  At the same time they assured the Tzar that, were the Government to give a certain amount of encouragement to the Jews, the latter would gladly meet it half-way and help in the realization of its policy to draw the Jews nearer to the original inhabitants and turn them in the direction of productive labor.

[Footnote 1:  Popularly known by his middle name as Yozel.]

Were—­the petitioners declare—­the new generation which has been brought up in the spirit and under the control of the Government, were the higher mercantile class which for many years has diffused life, activity, and wealth in the land, were the conscientious artisans who earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, to receive from the Government, as a mark of distinction, larger rights than those who have done nothing to attest their well-meaningness, usefulness, and industry, then the whole Jewish people, seeing that these few favored ones are the object of the Government’s righteousness and benevolence and models of what it desires the Jews to become, would joyfully hasten to attain the goal marked out by the Government.  Our present petition, therefore, is to the effect that our gracious sovereign may bestow his kindness upon us, and, by distinguishing the grain from the chaff, may be pleased to accord a few moderate privileges to the most educated among us, to wit: 

1.  “Equal rights with the other (Russian) subjects or with the Karaite Jews [1] to the educated and well-deserving Jews who possess the title of Honorary Citizens, to the merchants affiliated for a number of years with the first or second guild and distinguished by their business integrity, to the soldiers who have served irreproachably in the army.”

2.  The right of residence outside the Pale of Settlement “to the best among the artisans” who possess laudatory certificates from the trade-unions.  The privileges thus accorded to “the best among us” will help to realize the consummation of the Government “that the sharply marked traits which distinguish the Jews from the native Russians should be levelled, and that the Jews should in their way of thinking and acting become akin to the latter.”  Once placed outside their secluded “Pale,” the Jews “will succeed in adopting from the genuine Russians the praise-worthy qualities, by which they are distinguished, and the striving for culture and useful endeavor will become universal.”

[Footnote 1:  On the emancipation of the Karaites see Vol.  I, p. 318.]