Shaftesbury, pointed out that the English
people did not wish to meddle in the inner affairs of Russia, but
desired to influence it by "moral weapons," in the name of the principle
of the "solidarity of nations." The official denials of the atrocities
he brushed aside with the remark that, if but a tenth part of the
reports were true, "it is sufficient to draw down the indignation of the
world." It was necessary, in the opinion of Shaftesbury, to appeal
directly to the Tzar and ask him "to be a Cyrus to the Jews, and not an
Antiochus Epiphanes."

The Bishop of London, speaking in the absence of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Primate of the Anglican Church, reminded his audience
that only several years previously England had been horrified by the
outrages perpetrated by the Turkish Bashi-buzuks[1] upon the Bulgars,
who were then defended by Russia, and it had now a right to protest
against Christian Russia as it had formerly done against Mohammedan
Turkey.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 253, n. 2.]

The most powerful speech was delivered by Cardinal Manning, the great
Catholic divine. He pointed to the fact that the Russian Jews were not
only the object of temporary pogroms but that they constantly groaned
under the yoke of a degrading legislation which says to the Jew: "You
may not pass beyond that boundary; you must not go within eighteen miles
of that frontier; you must not dwell in that town; you must live only in
that province." He caused laughter in the audience by quoting from
Ignatyev's famous circular concerning the appointment of the
gubernatorial commissions, in which, commenting upon the terrible
atrocities recently perpetrated upon the _Jews_, the Minister lamented
"the sad condition of the _Christian_ inhabitants of the southern
provinces." Cardinal Manning concluded his eloquent address with the
following words marked by a lofty, prophetic strain:

There is a book which is common to the race of Israel and to us
Christians. That book is the bond between us, and in that book I
read that the people of Israel are the eldest people upon the earth.
Russia and Austria and England are of yesterday, compared with the
imperishable people, which, with an inextinguishable life and
immutable traditions, and faith in God and in the laws of God,
scattered, as it is, all over the world, passed through the fires
unscathed, trampled into the dust, and yet never combining with the
dust into which it i