According to the same authority, in “Little Russia” most of the Jewish villagers are either shop-keepers and retail dealers, or cobblers, tailors, smiths and the like. They form the commercial and industrial element in the rural population, and their expulsion means economic distress to the Russian husbandman, who, therefore, if left to himself, is not unwilling to forgive the Jew the Old Crime, and to forget his own prejudice against the foreigner and the follower of an abhorred creed. But he is not left to himself. The peasant’s latent antipathy is stirred to violence by the Nationalist agitators and Government officials, who collaborate in endeavouring to stifle the alien and revolutionary Jew through the brutality of the lower classes; assisted by the artisans and mechanics who by the persecution of the foreigner and the infidel seek the extinction of a successful competitor. All the outbreaks of anti-Jewish hatred, from 1881 to this day, were organised by the police authorities in accordance with a well-matured plan known as _pogrom_. The procedure consists in deliberately inciting by word of mouth and printed proclamations the dregs of society against the classes or sects of the community obnoxious to the Government, and then, when the work is done, suppressing the riot by the barbarous methods which are so typical of Russian administration. The same process is applied for the mutual extermination of others than the Jews. It is a process based on the maxim _divide et impera_--the last resource of an incompetent ruler.[195] ♦1904–05♦ The disasters which befell the Russian arms in the Far East, the discontent which they created at home, and the danger of a revolutionary upheaval of all the oppressed elements of the Empire induced the Czar’s Government to reconsider its attitude towards the suffering subjects of the Czar. The Austrian journal _Pester Lloyd_ ventured to give some good advice to that effect: “During the Napoleonic Wars the rulers captivated their subjects by promising them liberty and constitutions. Whoever wishes well to Russia must advise her to imitate the example.” In accordance with that policy of tardy conciliation which circumstances dictated, some Russian Liberals who had been banished for their championship of the interests of the people were permitted to return from exile, new Governors-General were appointed to Finland and Poland, with instructions to pursue a more lenient policy than their predecessors, a decree was issued ordering the Finnish Parliament to assemble, its property was restored to the Armenian Church, and other steps were taken showing that there was at least a desire to diminish the sources of general discontent by conceding to necessity what had hitherto been denied to justice.