Why, then, it may be asked, is this tolerance not extended to the Jews? They complain, and apparently not without reason, that they are subject to certain disabilities and exposed to persecution in Russia. Thereby hangs a tale! Peter the Great would not allow Jews to settle in his dominions on the ground that his single-minded, ignorant subjects could not compete with a naturally clever race endowed with a marvelous talent for money-making. Under his successors, by the annexation of Poland, several millions of Polish Jews became Russian subjects; but the policy of exclusion, so far as Russia proper is concerned, has been maintained down to the present day, so that, throughout the purely Russian provinces, Jews are not yet allowed to settle in the villages. If you ask the reason, you will probably be told that if a single Jew were allowed to live in a village, all the Orthodox inhabitants would soon be deeply in debt to him. In some respects, however, the old regulations have been relaxed. A certain proportion of Jewish students are admitted to the universities and higher schools, and such of them as pass their examinations may settle in the towns and freely exercise their professions. As a matter of fact, a considerable proportion of the most capable barristers, physicians, bankers, &c., in Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities are Jews by race and religion, and I have never heard of any of them being persecuted. Anti-Semitic feeling, so far as it exists, has nothing to do with religious beliefs. It is confined to such people as the trader who suffers from the competition of Jewish rivals, or the peasant who finds that the money-lender, from whom he has borrowed at a high rate of interest, exacts rigorously the fulfillment of the contract. The pillaging of Jewish shops and houses which occurred some years ago in certain towns of the southwestern provinces and was graphically described in the English press was due to pecuniary rather than religious enmity, and was organized by political intriguers.