artful design on the part of the Jews, and convinced them especially of the disloyalty of Montefiore.  The latter, they maintained, was scheming to set himself up as the Jewish czar.  Hence every movement of his was closely watched, every word he uttered carefully noted, and not a few Jews were left with memorable tokens for doing homage to the English baronet.  Their disabilities were not removed, their condition was not improved, the hopes they entertained resolved themselves into pleasant dreams followed by a sad awakening.[46]

Yet, though his visit did not, as Sir Moses had anticipated, “raise the Jews in the estimation of the people,” it was not without beneficent effect on the Jews themselves.  It cemented the “traditional friendship” which has always existed between Anglo-Jews and Russo-Jews more than between any sets of Jews of the dispersion.  It disclosed to the latter that there were happier Jews and better countries than their own; that there were men who sympathized with them as effectively as could be.  Above all, it convinced them that a Jew may be highly educated and wealthy, and take his place among the noble ones of the earth, and still remain a faithful Jew and a loyal son of his persecuted people.  “I leave you,” Sir Moses called to them at parting, “but my heart will ever remain with you.  When my brethren suffer, I feel it painfully; when they have reason to weep, my eyes shed tears.”  Had Montefiore’s visit resulted merely in arousing his brethren’s self-consciousness, he had earned a place in the history of Haskalah, for self-consciousness is the most potent factor in the culture of mankind.

Jews from other lands also came to the rescue of their Russian coreligionists.  Jacques Isaac Altaras, the ship-builder of Marseilles, petitioned the czar to allow forty thousand Jewish families to emigrate to Algeria.  Rabbi Ludwig Philippson, editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, appealed to his countrymen to help the Russian Jews to settle in America, Australia, Africa, anywhere away from Russia.  But all attempts were ineffectual.  Though Count Kissilyef assured Montefiore that the czar “did not wish to keep them [the Jews], five or six hundred thousand might leave altogether,” emigration was next to impossible.  Russia was constantly playing the game of the cat with the mouse.  Her nails were set and her eyes fixed upon her prey, and yet she made it appear to the outside world that she was anxious about the welfare of the Jews.  For Russian tactics have always been, and still are, the despair of the diplomat, a labyrinth through which only they who hold the clue can ever hope to find their way.