"I have always been averse to hating an unfortunate nation, because it worships God in another way. I have always lamented that we have driven the Jews to deceive us by an oppressive political yoke. For, what else can they do, in order to live? in what other way can they defray their heavy taxes?" Diez, Dohm's excellent friend, one of the noblest men of that epoch, afterwards Prussian ambassador to the Turkish court, thought that Dohm had asked far too little for the Jews. "You aver most truly," he remarked, "that the present moral depravity of the Jews is a consequence of their bondage. But to color the picture, and weaken the reproaches leveled at the Jews, a representation of the moral depravity of the Christians would have been useful; certainly it is not less than that of the Jews, and rather the cause of the latter." John von Müller, the talented historian of the Swiss, with his wide attainments in general history, also admired the glorious antiquity of the Jews, praised Dohm's efforts on behalf of the Jews, and supplied him from the treasures of his knowledge with new proofs of the unjust and pitiless persecution of the mediæval Jews, and their demoralization by intolerable tyranny. He wished the writings of Maimuni, "the Luther of the Jews," to be translated into one of the European languages. Naturally, hostile pamphlets were not wanting. Especially noteworthy was an abusive tract, published in Prague, entitled "Upon the Inutility of the Jews in the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Moravia," in which the author indulged in common insults against the Jews, and revived all the charges of poisoning wells, sedition, and other pretexts for their expulsion. This scurrilous work was so violent, that Emperor Joseph forbade its circulation (March 2, 1782). A bitter opponent of the Jews at this time was Frederick Traugott Hartmann. And why? Because he had been cheated out of a few pennies by Jewish hawkers. On account of their venomous tone, however, these writings harmed the Jews less than those of the German pedants.