As to Jewish extortion. The manumission of the serfs opened up fields for money-lending which it would have been impossible to resist the temptation of exploiting even to capitalists whose opportunities for investment are less circumscribed than are those of the Russian Jew. That reform, though undoubtedly beneficial in the long run, was meanwhile bound to upset the social fabric, especially in Little Russia, and to produce the evils which generally accompany a radical change brought about in a country unprepared for it. By the Ukase of 1864 there was created a state of transition. The old was pronounced out of date; the new was not yet born. While ruining many noble landlords, the abolition of serfdom brought into being a vast proletariat of freedmen poor in manual skill and capital, and poorer still in resource. Both these classes, bewildered by the unaccustomed conditions rudely thrust upon them, rushed to the Jew for loans as naturally as the moth rushes to the candle, and, like the moth, they suffered in the act. The Jew had no cause to treat either borrower with lenience; but, as might have been expected, the peasant was by far the greater sufferer of the two. He was less prepared for the struggle. For centuries he had lived under a restraint which, while stunting his manhood, conferred upon him some of the privileges, as well as more than all the punishments, of childhood. If the leading strings deprived the peasant of the freedom to act, they also deprived him of the freedom to ruin himself. These strings were suddenly removed. The peasant, still an infant in mind, was invested with all the responsibilities of an adult. The very qualities which had enabled him to bear his servitude now proved his unfitness for liberty. His utter lack of initiative, of enterprise, of self-reliance, and of self-restraint, and his abject submissiveness to the decrees of fate--all characteristic of the serf--are well summarised in the one word _nitchevo_, the commonest and most comprehensive expression in the _mujik’s_ vocabulary. It means “no matter,” and corresponds exactly to the _malesh_ of the Egyptian fellah--another peasantry sunk in ignorance and fatalistic resignation, as the results of centuries of serfdom.