But the congress had hardly been broken up, when the Roumanians endeavoured to escape from the obligation thus laid upon them. Instead of conferring the privilege of naturalization on the whole of the Jews throughout the country by one sweeping measure, they granted it only to such individuals as applied for it, and required of those certain conditions with which it would be difficult for many Jews, and impossible for many more, to comply.[227] The consequence has been that although there are said to be more than two hundred and fifty thousand Jews in Roumania, who have been for many generations past resident in that country,[228] little more than a thousand have been naturalized; and even in the instance of these, the naturalization is only personal, the children of such persons being reckoned as aliens. In 1884 no single Jew obtained the privilege. In short, the condition on which Roumania was admitted by the Congress of Berlin to rank as a sovereign State has been deliberately and systematically evaded. This has, indeed, been pointed out to the Roumanian Government by some of the Signatory Powers, but without effect. It must not be supposed that the withholding of naturalization is merely a sentimental grievance. It entails disabilities of the gravest character, debarring them from most professions and trades, and hampering the Jews seriously in such as they are allowed to follow. No Jew can be a government, a railway, or a sanitary official, a director of a bank, a broker, a clerk, or a chemist. They are excluded from all places of public education; in many places the right of keeping inns has been withdrawn from them; there is a continual agitation in progress to deprive them of the power of carrying on the few trades still allowed them. Only in the year 1884 what was called the ‘Hawking Law’ was passed, by which hawkers were liable to prosecution if they traded without a licence, and this licence is invariably refused to Jews. Nor does the tale of their wrongs end with their exclusion from all privileges of citizenship. They are exposed to insults and wrongs of all kinds, for which there is practically no redress; no court of law would venture to give an impartial judgment in any suit between a Christian and a Jew.[229] Any attempts to bring the question of their rights before the Senate inevitably fail, permission even to discuss the question being refused. The press, in most countries the advocate of toleration and freedom, is here the bitterest and loudest supporter of injustice and oppression. In fact, the worst intolerance of the worst periods in France, Spain, and Germany is displayed in the Roumania of the present day. It is surprising that the European Powers who imposed their conditions on the Roumanian Government at the Berlin Congress have not felt themselves bound in honour to see them loyally carried out. It may surely be hoped that they will before long awake so far to a sense of their responsibility as to do so.