lied their trade
honestly for five or ten years, should be allowed to reside outside the
ghetto. The same category of Jews, in addition to those married to
Christian women, should also be granted the right of acquiring landed
property. The ghetto on the one end of the line, and baptism on the
other--this medieval policy did not in the least abash the patriotic
reformers of the type of Stashitz.

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 279 et seq.]

[Footnote 2: Referring to the term _Starozakonni_, the Polish
designation for Jews.]

Stashitz's point of view was supported by certain publicists and opposed
by others, but all were agreed on the necessity of a system of
correction for the Jews. The discussion became particularly heated in
1818, after the convocation and during the sessions of the first [1]
Polish Diet in Warsaw. Three different tendencies asserted themselves: a
moderate, an anti-Jewish, and a pro-Jewish tendency. The first was
represented by General Vincent Krasinski, a member of the Diet. In his
"Observations on the Jews of Poland," he proceeds from the following
twofold premise: "The voice of the whole nation is raised against the
Jews, and it demands their transformation." This titled publicist
declares himself an opponent of the Jews as they are at present. He
shares the popular dread of their multiplication, the fear of a "Jewish
Poland," and is somewhat sceptical about their being corrigible.
Nevertheless he proposes liberal methods of correction, such as the
encouragement of big Jewish capital, the promotion of agriculture and
handicrafts among the Jewish masses, and the bestowal of the rights of
citizenship upon those worthy of it.

[Footnote 1: i.e., the first to be convoked after the reconstitution of
Poland in 1815.]

Krasinski was attacked by an anonymous writer in an anti-Semitic
pamphlet entitled "A Remedy against the Jews." Proceeding from the
conviction that no reforms, however well conceived, could have any
effect on the Jews, the writer puts the question in a simplified form:
"Shall we sacrifice the welfare of three million Poles to that of
300,000 Jews, or _vice versa?_" His answer is just as simple: the Jews
should be forced to leave Poland. Emperor Alexander I., "the benefactor
of Poland," ought to be petitioned to rid the country of the Jews by
transferring them to the uninhabited steppes in the South of Russia or
even "on the borders of Great Tartary." The 300,000 Jews might be
divided