The Semites—­quoth the semi-official organ with an impudent disregard of truth—­have never yet had such an easy life in Russia as they have at the present time, and yet they have never complained so bitterly.  There is a reason for it.  It is a peculiarity of Semitism:  a Semite is never satisfied with anything; the more you give him the more he wishes to have.

In the evident desire to fool its readers, Le Nord declared that the protesters at the London meeting might have saved themselves the trouble of demanding “religious liberty” for the Jews—­which in the London petition was understood, of course, to imply civil liberty for the professors of Judaism—­since nobody in Russia restricted the Jews in their worship.  Nor did the civil disabilities weigh heavily upon the Jews.  On the contrary, they felt so happy in Russia that even the Jewish emigrants in America dreamt of returning to their homeland.

4.  THE PROTEST OF AMERICA

The same attitude of double-dealing was adopted by the smooth-tongued Russian diplomats toward the Government of the United States.  Aroused over the inhuman treatment of the Jews in Russia, and alarmed by the effects of a sudden Russian-Jewish immigration to America, which was bound to follow as a result of this treatment, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution on August 20, 1890, requesting the President—­

To communicate to the House of Representatives, if not incompatible with the public interests, any information in his possession concerning the enforcement of proscriptive edicts against the Jews in Russia, recently ordered, as reported in the public press; and whether any American citizens have, because of their religion, been ordered to be expelled from Russia, or forbidden the exercise of the ordinary privileges enjoyed by the inhabitants.

In response to this resolution, President Harrison laid before Congress all the correspondence and papers bearing on the Jewish question in Russia. [1]

[Footnote 1:  The material was printed as Executive Document No. 470, dated October 1, 1890.  It reproduced all the documents originally embodied in Executive Document No. 192 (see above, p. 294, n. 1), in addition to the new material.]

A little later, on December 19 of the same year, the following resolution of protest was introduced in the House of Representatives and referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs: 

Resolved, That the members of the House of Representatives of the United States have heard with profound sorrow, and with feelings akin to horror, the reports of the persecution of the Jews in Russia, reflecting the barbarism of past ages, disgracing humanity, and impeding the progress of civilization.

Resolved, That our sorrow is intensified by the fact that such occurrences should happen in a country which has been, and now is, the firm