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No. 23. Vienna, 10th June 1898. Second Year.

The Aliens and the Lords.

By Leo Raphaels.

Lord Salisbury, who as Minister for Foreign Affairs has suffered one defeat after another in the course of the last ten months, is now on the point of gaining a glorious victory in the field of home politics — over Polish and Russian Jews. Salisbury's popularity, which was never particularly great, has sunk to zero after the failures in Europe, Asia and Africa; the Prime Minister's own party associates are not a little vexed at the equanimity with which the supposed disciple of Disraeli looks on while English influence in Constantinople loses in weight day by day, while Russia gains a Chinese province without a stroke of the sword and pushes her posts forward to the very gates of Peking, while Germany occupies the admittedly best and militarily most important bay of Eastern Asia, while France takes energetic steps to realise the great plan of a French colonial possession spanning the whole of West Africa and reaching from ancient Carthage to the mouth of the Congo; even the household journals of the ruling party, the "Times" and the "Standard", find themselves compelled to give expression to the whole country's displeasure at Lord Salisbury's incomprehensibly faint-hearted and aimless policy. The Conservative Government — in other words the ruling plutocracy, for in spite of individual exceptions the possessing classes all belong to the Conservative party — was in danger, through the blunders of its leader, of losing the confidence of the British electors. Now this danger is removed at a single stroke; Lord Salisbury has seen to that with his victory in the Upper House. A certain Earl Hardwicke lent himself to bringing in afresh the Bill, proposed by Lord Salisbury as long ago as the year 1894, which was to prevent the immigration of poor Jews from Russia and Poland, and the prohibition of immigration was resolved upon by the born leaders with a crushing majority. To be sure, of 81 present 19 voted against the Bill; to be sure, Lord Herschell and Lord Monkwell spoke against the measure in the name of the Liberal party; but how lame was this objection against a law which signifies a deeply incisive breach with the English tradition of the last three hundred years, which stands in contradiction not only with every principle of humanity, but with all the experience which England in particular has had of her immigrant Jewish population!

It was in truth a cheap victory that the Lords gained over the poor fugitives from Poland and Russia, and history — perhaps the very near future — will show the latest measure of the born legislators in its proper light. "The only country in which real freedom prevails" — so the English like to call their happy island; well then, this land of freedom may boast of having created a record in the distress of the Jews. Lord Salisbury's prohibition of immigration is a unicum in the history of Israel among the nations, both by the nature of those who called the prohibition into being and by the character of those against whom it is directed. English lords, who have not the faintest notion of what work means, make it impossible for fugitive Jews to earn a morsel of bread by hard and honest labour! That is the new thing, the inconceivable thing about the Lords' latest legislative achievement, that it employs no pretext of the kind which anti-Jewish measures otherwise make use of, but confesses the naked, brutal truth: "The Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia are neither idlers nor criminals; no, they are untiring workers and unassuming to the point of pitiableness, but precisely for that reason we can make no use of them." Free England, dripping with the fear of God and the love of man, held it superfluous to preserve, towards the poor Jews, even a semblance of justification for its measure.

What motives have determined Lord Salisbury to slam the door in the faces of the poor tailors, cobblers and furriers from Poland and Russia? We will force ourselves to believe in the old diplomatist's love of truth, and will hear how he grounds his aversion to the very poorest. He finds that in the year 1897 close upon a thousand destitute aliens in the East of London were relieved out of the poor funds, that is to say out of the pockets of the British taxpayers, and he does not see how the British taxpayer, already so heavily burdened, comes to be supporting foreign paupers.

What a frightful thought! Close upon a thousand aliens were relieved out of public funds in the course of a single year! It is very hard to believe that Lord