he American Minister was therefore instructed to exert his influence
with the Russian Government in the direction of mitigating the severity
of the anti-Jewish measures. He was to point out to the Russian
authorities that the maltreatment of the Jews in Russia was not purely
an internal affair of the Russian Government, inasmuch as it affected
the interests of the United States. Within ten years 200,000 Russian
Jews had come over to America, and continued persecutions in Russia were
bound to result in a large and sudden immigration which was not
unattended with danger. While the United States did not presume to
dictate to Russia, "nevertheless, the mutual duties of nations require
that each should use his power with a due regard for the other and for
the results which its exercise produces on the rest of the world." [1]

[Footnote 1: _Loc. cit_., p. 737.]

The remonstrances of the American people which were voiced by their
representatives at St. Petersburg were received by the Russian
Government in a manner which strikingly illustrates the well-known
duplicity of its diplomatic methods. While endeavoring to justify its
policy of oppression by all kinds of libellous charges against the
Russian Jews, it gave at the same time repeated assurance to the
American Minister that no new proscriptive laws were contemplated, and
the latter reported accordingly to his Government. [1] On February 10,
1891, the American Minister, writing to Secretary Blaine, gives a
detailed account of the conversation he had had with the Russian
Minister for Foreign Affairs, de Giers. The latter went out of his way
to discuss with him unreservedly the entire Jewish situation in Russia,
and, while making all kinds of subtle insinuations against the character
of the Russian Jew, he expressed himself in a manner which was
calculated to convince the American representative of the conciliatory
disposition of the Russian Government. [2] Less than three weeks later
followed the cruel expulsion edict against the Jews of Moscow.

[Footnote 1: Compare in particular his dispatch, dated September 25,
1890, published in _Executive Document_ No. 470, p. 141.]

[Footnote 2: _Foreign Relations_, 1891, p. 734.]

While the Russian Government, abashed by the voices of protest, made an
effort to justify itself in the eyes of Europe and America and perverted
the truth with its well-known diplomatic skill, the _Russkaya Zhizn_
("Russian Life"), a St. Petersburg paper