THE JEWISH POPULATION. 211 



' Every three years lists of localities where public-houses 

 can be established are to be drawn up by the Zemstvos, 

 with the assistance of the excise officers. A proposal to 

 permit the local commissary of the police to assist in 

 drawing up these lists was defeated after a very animated 

 dispute. 



' Another important decision was that which interdicted 

 any member of the Zemstvos or municipal councils to 

 hold a license for the sale of drink, and the owners of the 

 houses where drink is sold are not to be permitted to vote 

 in the settlement of any questions relating to the drink- 

 shops. They are only allowed to have a consultative 

 voice a very necessary stipulation* 



' It was also decided to forbid the opening of any 

 drink-shop within less than 40 to 100 sagenes (from 90 

 to 230 yards) from any church, school, or other public 

 building in towns, or within less than 100 to 200 sage'nes 

 wi villages. 



' Communes and individual proprietors are to be allowed 

 to forbid the opening of drink -shops upon their own 

 land. 



' One of the decisions at which the experts arrived, with 

 only one dissentient, referred to the sale of drink by Jews. 

 Well, we do not like the Jews, that is a fact ; and the dis- 

 like is reciprocal. But the reason we do not like them is 

 not because of their speculative monotheism, but because 

 of their practical heathenism. To us they are what the 

 relics of the Amorites and Canaanites were to the Hebrews 

 in old times a debased and demoralised element which 

 is alien to our national life, and a source of indescribable 

 evils to our people. It is not to the Jew as a rejector of 

 Christianity that we object ; it is to the Jew as a bitter 

 enemy of Christian emancipation, the vampire of our rural 

 communes, the tempter of our youth, and the centre of the 

 demoralising, corrupting agencies which impair our civil- 

 isation. Ask anybody who has lived, if only for a day or 

 two, near our custom-houses, and you will learn that all 

 the smugglers, all the receivers of stolen goods, all the 



