ese rumors through its diplomatic channels, though at the very
same time the well-informed _Novoye Vremya_ and _Grazhdanin_ were not
barred from printing news items concerning the projected disabilities or
from recommending ferocious measures against the Jews for the purpose
"of removing them from all branches of labor."

This comedy was well understood abroad. At the end of July and in the
beginning of August interpellations were introduced in both Houses of
the English Parliament, as to whether Her Majesty's Government found it
possible to make diplomatic representations in defence of the persecuted
Russian Jews for whom England would have to provide, were they to arrive
there in large masses. Premier Salisbury, in the House of Lords, and
Fergusson, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in the
House of Commons, replied that "these proceedings, which, if rightly
reported to us, are deeply to be regretted, concern the internal affairs
of the Russian Empire, and do not admit of any interference on the part
of Her Majesty's Government." [1] When shortly afterwards preparations
were set on foot for calling a protest meeting in London, the Russian
Government hastened to announce through the British ambassador in St.
Petersburg that no new measures against the Jews were in contemplation,
and the meeting was called off. Rumor had it that the Lord Mayor of
London, Henry Isaacs, who was a Jew, did not approve of this meeting,
over which, according to the English custom, he would have to preside.
The action of the Lord Mayor may have been "tactful," but is was
certainly not free from an admixture of timidity.

[Footnote 1: See _The Jewish Chronicle_ of August 8, 1890, p. 18b.]

2. CONTINUED HARASSING

While anxiously endeavoring to appease public opinion abroad, the
Russian Government at home did all it could to keep the Jews in an
agitated state of mind. The legal drafts and the circulars which had
been sent out secretly by the central Government in St. Petersburg
elicited the liveliest sympathy on the part of the provincial
administrators. Not satisfied with signifying to the Ministry their
approval of the contemplated disabilities, many officials of high rank
began to display openly their bitter hatred of the Jews.

At one and the same time, during the months of June, July, and August of
1890, the heads of various local provincial administrations published
circulars calling the attention of the police to the