In former times the British government had a habit of taking waifs and strays of this description under its protection. Thus, nearly the whole Jewish community at Tiberias were originally Russian refugees who emigrated to Palestine thirty years ago, and applied for British protection, a privilege which Lord Palmerston promptly granted them, and to this day they travel with British passports, and pay five shillings a year to renew their registration, which secures them the protection of the British consul. If any government were philanthropic enough to adopt a similar plan now, there would be no difficulty in these poor Roumanians entering the country and settling here; but it is a course which naturally involves responsibilities, and opens a door to possible complications, and in these practical days people's sufferings, unless something is to be made out of them, do not furnish a sufficient justification to compensate for the amount of trouble which they might involve. Meantime the agricultural enterprise of the Jews in Palestine has to contend not merely with local opposition, but with the unaccountable indifference with which their efforts in this direction are regarded, with a few brilliant exceptions, by their Western coreligionists. At present the seven or eight colonies which exist are all composed of Russian or Roumanian refugees, but the best material for farmers is to be found among those Jews who have been bred and born in the country, who are already Turkish subjects, who speak the language, and are familiar with all the local conditions, and who are now mendicants, subsisting on that most pernicious institution, the Haluka, which, while it is a tax upon the whole Jewish nation outside of Palestine, is a fruitful source of pillage, contention, and sloth, among its recipients at Jerusalem and Safed. Out of some seven thousand Jews resident at the latter place, many are willing to give up all claim to the Haluka, and establish themselves as agriculturists, if they could be assisted in the first instance with the necessary capital. With some of these the experiment has been tried on a small scale, and they have proved more successful farmers in every way than the foreign immigrants, while, as they are natives of the country and subjects of the government, the latter does not interfere with their operations, as in the case of the foreigners. Under these circumstances, it is a thousand pities that Western Jews do not come to their assistance. They would confer thereby a twofold benefit upon their race. They would assist the industry and enterprise of their coreligionists, while they would undermine that system of religious mendicancy which is a disgrace to any religion, and they would deprive thereby their adversaries of the right to say, as they do now, that the success which attends missionary efforts at proselytism is due chiefly to the fact that Jews abroad are indifferent to the best