The government, of course, endeavors to persuade foreigners that to permit the Jews to settle beyond the pale would mean the Judaization, and the consequent ruin, of all Russia. This assertion is made in spite of their knowledge that the contrary is true. A memorial in regard to the Jews, written in 1884 by Ivan Blioch, and published by the ministry of the interior--_The Jewish Question in Russia_--shows by statistics that the greatest percentage of pauper peasants is found in the Jewless governments of Moscow, Tula, Orel, and Kursk; that the prosperity of the peasantry in the governments within the pale is incomparably higher than in the territory from which the Jews are excluded. The arrears of revenue in districts in which there are no Jews are three times as great as in the pale. As a result, the land purchased by peasants by means of the peasants' banks is much greater in extent in the latter than in the former districts. The usurers who advance money to the peasants at from three hundred to two thousand per cent. are without exception Christians. The assertion that the Jews tempt the people to drunkenness stands morally upon about the same level as the statement that the Jews are never found engaged in agriculture. The latter statement is true, but only because the Jews are not allowed to live in the open country. The government has now monopolized the retail sale of spirits, thus driving out of the business thousands of Jewish tavern-keepers. This measure, however severe, is viewed with satisfaction by intelligent Jews as tending to improve the morals of the Jewish masses. All these are only idle excuses in justification of the policy of extermination of the Jews, which policy has in reality a quite different cause. Three conditions have already been cited, any one of which is alone sufficient to place the unhappy Jews of the great prison state in an especially bad situation, and also to expose the régime in all its depravity--a depravity almost incomprehensible to western Europeans.