§ VISCOUNT FOLKESTONEasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the Government have received any information, confirmatory or otherwise, concerning the revolting atrocities that were stated in the "Daily Telegraph" of the 17th to have been lately committed on Jewish men and women in Russia?
§ SIR CHARLES W. DILKEAll the information in the possession of Her Majesty's Government with regard to the treatment of the Jews in Russia will be found in the Parliamentary Paper distributed this day.
§ BARON HENRY DE WORMSasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether Her Majesty's Government, with reference to Lord Tenterden's letter of the 10th November last to Mr. Lewisohn, are prepared to accept the Russian construction of the Treaty of 1859, according to which British subjects who are Jews are to be excepted from Article 11 of that Treaty, which secures to all British subjects the right of entering, travelling in, and residing in any part of the dominions and possessions of Russia, and are to be required, although provided with a British passport, to send a petition to the Russian Minister of the Interior on each occasion when they wish to visit Russia, as stated in Lord Tenterden's letter of the 13th ult. to Mr. Lewisohn; if so, whether British subjects in Russia are to be deprived, by the fact of their being Jews, of the protection which is given by Her Majesty's Government to all other British subjects in that Empire and elsewhere, and are subject to the disabilities and persecution suffered by Russian Jews; and, what steps, if any, Her Majesty's Government intend to take for the protection of Her Majesty's Jewish subjects?
§ SIR CHARLES W. DILKEThe conclusions at which, after very careful consideration of the subject, Her Majesty's Government have arrived, in consultation with the Law Advisers of the Crown, with regard to the Treaty rights in Russia of British subjects of the Jewish faith, are stated in a despatch to Her Majesty's Ambassador at St. Petersburg, of the 28th of December of last year, which is given at page 21 of Parliamentary Paper, Russia, No. 4, 1881. In 1862, Earl Russell informed Lord 1103 Napier, then Her Majesty's Ambassador at St. Petersburg, that the effect of the 1st and 11th Articles of the Treaty was to place British subjects on the footing of Russian subjects before the law, each class being alike, and one not more than the other, amenable to all general laws applicable in like cases; that, as Russian subjects being Jews incurred certain disabilities, the equality intended and provided for by the Treaty was not infringed by British subjects who were Jews and resident in Russia sharing the same disabilities. The laws of Russia relating to native Jews have been relaxed from time to time in favour of foreign Jews; but the precise formalities which the latter are bound to observe when visiting Russia are not very clearly defined, and are still the subject of correspondence between the two Governments. British subjects of the Jewish faith who resort to Russia will continue to receive all the protection to which they are entitled at the hands of Her Majesty's Government, and which can properly be extended to them consistently with Treaty obligations.