proved to be without foundation. Amongst other privileges the Jews had that of being tried by the common or territorial law, to which the nobles alone were amenable, whilst the citizens were ruled by the so-called law of Magdeburgh, or German municipal law. It was likewise enacted that the evidence of a Christian should not be received against a Jew, except it were also corroborated by a Jew. When money was lent by a Jew on goods pawned by a Christian, the oath of the former was sufficient, without further evidence being required. This last law was manifestly partial, considering the subtle precepts of the Talmud, which at one time allow, and at another command, all kinds of mental reservation in the transactions of the Jews with the Goim or Gentiles. The Jews were even permitted to lend money on landed property, and in case of the insolvency of the owner to take possession of it, which right was at that epoch confined to the nobles. They remained in quiet possession of their privileges until 1406, when, owing to their avaricious propensity, which drew upon them universal odium, they suffered a cruel retaliation from the inhabitants of Cracow, who were excited against them by a preacher. Since that time the current of public opinion decidedly set against them; and when the Chancellor Laski, under King Alexander, inserted the privileges granted to the Jews by Casimir, though much modified, into the statute published in 1507, he was suspected of having been bribed by them. It does not appear that the condition of the Jews by any means deteriorated in consequence during the two next centuries. Of their state in the southern provinces of Poland, where popular opinion was least favourable to them, Gratiani gives the following picture in his biography of Cardinal Commendani.

"In those countries a great number of Jews are to be found, who are not despised as in other countries. They do not there get their livelihood by the vile means of usury and servitude, though they do not despise this kind of profit; but they possess land, carry on trade, and apply themselves to various studies, particularly to those of medicine and astrology. They are almost everywhere employed in the collection of tolls on different merchandise. They frequently acquire considerable fortunes, and are not only placed on the footing of respectable people, but sometimes in authority over them. They have no particular badge to distinguish them from the Christians; they are even allowed to carry a sword, and to go about armed. In one word, they enjoy all the rights of other subjects.'

"

It appears, however, that they subsequently much abused the power which Gratiani says they possessed, and in conjunction with the Jesuits and the stewards of the great land owners, who were usually absentees, caused that horrible revolt of the people

of Ukraine* in the seventeenth century known as the rebellion of the Cossacks, and which lasted for a hundred years. The Cossacks vented their rage particularly against the Jews, and on one occasion 14,000 of these were massacred in the town of Constantinow in Volhynia, where they had attempted to defend themselves. Since that period the prosperity of the Jews, as well as that of the country in general, has been destroyed, and it is with much justice that the Polish historians accuse them of having contributed to the decline and partition of Poland.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Poland ranked amongst the most civilized countries, the Jews also followed the ascending movement, though, as ever, their chief care was to perfect their Rabbinical learning. According to Basnage, one of their historians, the Polish Jews possessed at that time many printing presses; there were four at Cracow, where the Talmud of Babylon was published in thirteen volumes between 1603 and 1617. The towns of Zolkiew, Lublin, Posen and Wilno were equally famous for their Hebrew printing presses. A Jew was the first professor of the Hebrew language at the University of Cracow, where another also taught law with great credit for many years. Since the partition of Poland, which the Jews have had more than one cause to regret, every vestige of their learned establishments has vanished; but they have remained unchanged as when they once stood weeping over the ruins of their city. It is an unquestionable fact, that by their dangerous status in statu they had a large share in the late misfortunes of Poland; and a serious question arises, what is to be done with them in any state where they may multiply to such an extent as they have done in that country. The only means by which the evil attending on this could be averted, appears to be their conversion, to effect which all Christians should unite their exertions and prayers that the prediction of the prophet may be soon accomplished: "The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return; the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness."-Isaiah, ch. x.

Since the partition of Poland, the condition of the Jews has undergone more or less change under the three respective governments that divided the spoil. In Austria, Joseph the Second granted them some new privileges, but subjected them to military service, which they consider the heaviest of all inflictions.† In

See the article on the Songs of the Ukraine, in a number of this Review which appeared last year.

It is said that a regiment having been formed of Jews, and ordered to march to

Prussia they were exempted from military service, but on the other hand were subjected to new strict regulations. In Russia, during the reign of Alexander, they were not liable to military duty, and instead of serving paid heavy taxes. At the accession of the present emperor that exemption ceased, and military service is now exacted from the Jews with more severity than from other Russian subjects. In virtue of an ukase issued last year, the Jews are bound to furnish two recruits for every deserter. Boys from ten to twelve years of age are usually carried off and sent to naval establishments to be trained for sailors, but twothirds of them die prematurely from the hardships they undergo. The Jews are also forbidden to enter Russia Proper or Muscovy, under any pretext whatsoever; nevertheless they contrive to creep in there under the garb of Christians. The reason which Peter the Great gave for this prohibition was, that the Jews must starve there, as they would be outwitted in their dealings by the Russians. All these oppressive measures proved to the Jews a calamity such as they had not experienced for many ages, and they whose policy since the partition of Poland was always to side with the stronger party, now began to pray for her restoration. The author of a work more than once alluded to in this Journal, in referring to the causes of the last insurrection, thus adverts to the Jews:

"Aliens did not escape the universal oppression, and Nicholas now compelled the Jews settled in the country to take military service. Persecuted during the middle ages in every other country, the Jews had found in Poland an asylum so hospitable that it was proverbially called their paradise, as it was also the heaven of the nobles. Their number is not accurately known, but it is certain that there are as many in Poland alone as in all the rest of Europe. The prejudices of the Jews must be understood before the offence given by this new ukase can be fully appreciated. Their customs do not allow of military service, and least of all in Russia, where no one who has not received baptism can rise from

distant quarters, they applied for a passport, lest they should be annoyed on the way. The following curious anecdote relative to the same subject is well known. The Jews having heard that they were to be subjected to military service, they bribed several members of the imperial privy council to oppose the measure, but could not get access to Prince Kaunitz, who supported it. At length they offered a large sum to his principal servant if he would procure for a Jew an interview with his master, which was to last for only a minute, and during which the Jew was to utter but a single word. The curiosity of Kaunitz was excited and he granted it. An hour before the council was to meet, the Jew arrived; and, having deposited on the table a sealed packet, retired, making a bow and saying only "Schweig" (Be silent). When the subject came under discussion others of the council spoke warmly against it, whilst Kaunitz remained silent. On the emperor inquiring why he did not defend the measure he had before advocated, he replied, placing the packet of bank-notes he had received from the Jew on the table, "This I got for being silent; ask these gentlemen what they have received for speaking." The bribed councillors were confounded, and the measure was carried.

the ranks. What cares a Jew for any war that does not tend to the recovery of the Holy Land? To preserve, and if possible to increase the race, is also one of the sacred dogmas of their religion and their policy. During twenty centuries of persecution they have maintained a kind of negative existence, and may be said to have in many countries rendered themselves a poison, in order that oppression may not digest them. The new ukase proved for them an era of calamity. The young men being chiefly taken as recruits, the population was diminished both by the chances of war and the loss of heads of families. The Jewish soldier is not allowed to marry, nor can he enrich himself by mercantile pursuits. In the Russian marine the Jews usually average one in three; and now, by a second ukase, Jewish children were seized and sent to Sebastopol and other ports of the Black Sea, to be brought up as sailors, but every one of these infant victims perished in the hospitals. In every instance this exterminating system proceeded with equal severity. The Jews of Ostryn (a miserable borough belonging to the Count of Saint Priest, a French peer) being in arrears for taxes to the amount of 50,000 paper roubles, Nicholas ordered the account to be settled by taking one Jew for 500 roubles,' and 115 were accordingly torn from a community of scarcely 1200, including women and children. In bitter aggravation of this cruelty they were prohibited from entering a Muscovite province on any pretence whatsoever, and thus by diminishing the numbers and the gains of his Jewish subjects, Nicholas created a host of dangerous malcontents. Though very numerous in the Muscovite provinces, it would be difficult to prove their origin. It is said that at St. Petersburg alone there are 8000 baptized Jews, and numerous instances show that the race does not die under any metamorphosis, least of all in Russia. The oppression of Israel is as keenly felt by the humble pedlar as by the rich monopolist, the state dignitary or the general officer. What prodigious numbers of these mysterious personages swarm in Russia! They are closely connected with their brethren in Poland; and these again with those dispersed over the continent, forming an association more powerful than the Russians are willing to admit. The financial operations of the empire are in their hands, as well as the army contracts both for peace and war, and all the inferior official medical establishments. On the issuing of the ukase the Jews began to pray for the success of the Poles, whom it rested with them most effectually to assist, by furnishing arms and money, or by reducing Russia to a state of bankruptcy."

The above remarks apply more particularly to the Jews in Lithuania, Podolia, Volhynia and the Ukraine. Those in the socalled kingdom of Poland, as declared by the Congress of Vienna, amounting to 400,000 in a population of four millions, met for a time with a better fate than the other Polish Jews. Having wrung from the united potentates of Europe a semblance of liberty, as their little kingdom was to be bound to Russia only by virtue of a constitution and a separate government, the Poles eagerly seized the opportunity for making a part of their country the means for the restoration of the whole, and endeavoured to

invigorate it by raising all parties in the moral scale. The Jews accordingly became one special object of the care of the government. Besides all public schools and universities being thrown open to them almost gratis, a committee was appointed for the promotion of still more effectual measures for their reform. One of these was the establishment of a seminary at Warsaw, where the future Rabbis and professors of Jewish schools should be educated. The course of studies was a double one; that of the Talmud, a knowledge of which, in spite of its absurd doctrines, is indispensable to a Rabbi; and that of the Polish language and literature, mathematics, history, geography, and the grammatical knowledge of the Hebrew. This last met with the greatest opposition from the Talmudists, who consider that a grammatical knowledge of the Hebrew language leads to infidelity. To understand this, it must be remembered that many passages of the Talmud are founded upon misinterpretations of the Scriptures. The object of this establishment was to counteract indirectly the Talmudic absurdities, and, by opening the minds of the rising generation to worthier subjects, gradually to bring them to acknowledge the divine truth of Christianity. It met with more success than was at first anticipated, and in a short period numbered about two hundred pupils, many of the Jews taking pride in having their sons educated there. At the outbreak of the insurrection of 1830, however, the establishment was broken up, never to be restored; and many of the students entering the national ranks, fought nobly for the independence of Poland, and some of them now share the fate of the exiles.

Five years ago an attempt was made to establish a seminary at Cracow on the model of that of Warsaw, and a Jew of high literary merit was placed over it. We are however unable to state to what extent it proved successful. The Jews of Cracow, 12,000 in number, forming one-third of the inhabitants, live in a separate quarter, called, after Casimir the Great, the town of Casimir, and they still enjoy some of the privileges granted them by that king. They have their own municipal corporations, called Cahals, which assess taxes, judge minor disputes, and decide upon divorce, the maintenance of synagogues, &c. The principal objection against the Cahals is the tyranny which they sometimes exercise over the community, by subjecting a Jew, for an infringement of the rules of the Talmud, to Cherem, or anathema, which is as fatal as that of the Vatican used to be formerly.

We have endeavoured to give a sketch of the external state of the character of the Polish Jews. It remains to speak of the inward soul which animates that strangely articulated social body. As the greater number of them adhere to the principles of the