LABOURING POPULATION. 173 



amongst those for whom they were intended. MrVenning 

 acceded at once to their request j and when he found it 

 necessary to return to England, Dr Haas, of Moscow, 

 kindly undertook the work. And it was then found that 

 Moscow was a much better place than St. Petersburg for 

 carrying out the benevolent suggestion. In a few years 

 after this a sufficient number of New Testaments were 

 placed at the disposal of Dr Haas to enable him to give a 

 copy to every criminal passing through Moscow, the 

 number of which must have been very great, as to that 

 city prisoners were sent from twenty-two of the Govern- 

 ments of Russia, that they may be conveyed thence to the 

 various penal settlements in the interior. Dr Haas was 

 afterwards permitted to extend the boon to a numerous 

 class of persons attached to the convoys, to facilitate the 

 distribution of the daily allowance of Government for the 

 support of the criminals while pursuing their journey. 

 These were chiefly discharged soldiers. They were neither 

 exiles nor prisoners, and they often envied the poor exiles 

 the copy of the Scriptures granted to these, but not to 

 them. And it soon appeared that if they could be pro- 

 cured, many copies might be satisfactorily disposed of 

 amongst these outcasts of society, and through them con- 

 veyed to various and distant parts of the Empire. 



Dr Haas was a Roman Catholic, but he took a deep 

 interest in the circulation of the sacred volume. He was 

 at the head of the prison discipline committee of Moscow, 

 and his situation supplied him with many opportunities 

 of ameliorating the spiritual condition of the wretched 

 men going into exile. He had frequent interviews with 

 them, while they were in confinement, and they had all to 

 pass in review before him, as they set out on their long 

 and toilsome journey. He availed himself of that oppor- 

 tunity to present them with a copy of the New Testa- 

 ment, seeing, himself, that it was entered in their little 

 inventory of stores, that the officer in charge might be 

 made responsible for its being delivered to them again on 



