Russian officials and English apologists of Russian anti-Semitism will not admit that the persecution of the Russian Jews is religious, though acknowledging that religion, too, plays its part. They claim that it is essentially economical and social, “and that the main cause has always been the unhappy relation of a wandering and parasitic race, retaining its tribal exclusiveness, to the races among which it sojourns, and on the produce of which it feeds.”[171] This view is natural in a modern spectator of the West; but it is not quite correct, as it implies modern and Western conditions and sentiments in a country which only in a small measure is modern and Western. The late Mr. Lecky wrote: “The Russian persecution stands in some degree apart from other forms of the anti-Semitic movement on account of its unparalleled magnitude and ferocity.” It also stands apart, to the same degree, on account of its origin. Jew-hatred in Russia is a thoroughly genuine survival. In Western Europe it is largely an artificial revival. The Russian Jews have never been emancipated from servitude, because the Russian Christians, with few exceptions, have never been emancipated from ignorance and bigotry. In other words, the modern term anti-Semitism, with all its quasi-scientific connotation, can hardly be applied to the Russian variety of the epidemic. But, be the causes what they may, the result is the same. To the slaughtered Jew, it is a matter of comparative indifference whether he is slain as a parasite or for the love of Christ. The student also must be very extraordinarily constituted who can derive any consolation from the fact that the principles of toleration made dear to us by the experience and the sacrifices of two thousand years, are violated in so outrageous a manner not from religious, but from “economical and social” motives. But, though the source of Russian antipathy to the Jew may be a matter of dispute, there is no question as to the sincerity and the depth of the feeling. An authority on the Jewish Question, writing in 1882, expressed the opinion that the disasters of that and the previous year were inevitable, and that, “unless the Jews are removed from the countries in which they have taken place, we may certainly anticipate their recurrence upon a much larger scale.”[172] This anticipation was justified by subsequent events. In 1891 and 1892 new anti-Jewish riots, encouraged by the authorities, were followed by fresh restrictive enactments.