206 FORESTRY IN LITHUANIA. 



the thing which is good ; in which case they themselves 

 might have had to give to him that needeth. And the peas- 

 antry complain that they are impoverished, they know 

 not how, while their Jewish neighbours have enough and 

 to spare. It is so in part, if not entirely, through their 

 wasting their earnings upon intoxicating drinks which, 

 like many of Anglo-Saxon descent living amongst 

 people easily tempted to indulge in such stimulants, the 

 Jews who have invested their capital in suitable 

 premises are willing, and more than willing, to sell to 

 them ; but which they need not buy or consume unless 

 they choose. Others, influenced by patriotism, or by 

 philanthrophy, or by loss coming upon them indirectly 

 from the evil, may have some right to complain ; but the 

 immediate victims have none they are reaping the 

 rewards of their own doings. 



Of the extent to which the fathers and mothers, wives 

 and children, and brothers and sisters, of drunken 

 peasants have occasion to complain of the drink traffic, 

 and of the drink traffic carried on by the Jews in Russia, 

 some idea may be formed from facts stated by Madame 

 Novikoff in an article in the Nineteenth Century, of 

 September 1882, based on statements in a valuable work 

 entitled L' Empire des Tzar, et les Russes, by M. Anatole 

 Leroy-Beaulieu. 



From the sixteenth century onwards efforts have been 

 made by patriotic Russians to restrain the indulgence of 

 the people in intoxicating drink. It is within my personal 

 knowledge that not a little was done by the Emperor 

 Nicholas. More was done in more propitious circum- 

 stances by his successor, the emancipator of the serfs. 

 From a tabulated statement in the Novoie Vremia it 



knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish 

 their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God,' 

 said Paul of his brethren in his day, and so may seem to devout Christians, and many 

 of the Jews in the present. The zeal of God is there, and in this it makes itself seen. 



It seems, then, to be most desirable that some, at least, of those who devote them- 

 selves to labour amongst the Jews, should be prepared to cope with the most learned in 

 the discussion of the most subtile of Talmudical speculations, otherwise contempt for 

 the intellectual attainments of the missionary may prevent an attentive consideration 

 being given to the doctrines which he teaches in the name of Jesus. 



