Vice-Consul Wagstaff in an official despatch, while giving the Jews full credit for their remarkable intelligence, thrift, and business qualities, enumerates the complaints made against them by the Russians--namely, that “the Jews are the principal keepers of drinking shops and houses of ill-fame, receivers of stolen goods, illegal pawnbrokers and usurers. As Government contractors they frequently collude with unscrupulous officials in defrauding the State to vast amounts. They use their religion for business purposes, ‘boycott’ outsiders, play into each other’s hands at land sales, and thus despoil the peasantry. Often the harvest of a peasant who has been entangled in their toils passes into their grasp, as it stands in the field, on their own terms. They themselves do not raise agricultural products, but they reap the benefit of others’ labour, and steadily become rich while proprietors are gradually getting ruined. In their relation to Russia they are compared to parasites that have settled on a plant not vigorous enough to throw them off, and which is being gradually sapped of its vitality.”[165] Another witness describes the gradual subjection of the impoverished peasant to the Jewish money-lender and adds, “The Jews’ two great factors in dealing with the Russian peasant are _vodka_ (native gin) and a few roubles at a pinch, and with these powers he enslaves and uses him for his own ends. Many large properties, belonging to influential and hereditary Russian noblemen, are rented out to Jews, because the proprietors find that they pay higher rents than the Russian tenants.” He concludes, however, with the reflection: “The real source of the evil lies in the mental and moral condition of the masses, and it is there the remedy must be applied.”[166]