ROUMANIA—DISABILITIES OF JEWS. (Hansard, 23 June 1884)

§ BARON HENRY DE WORMS

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether he is aware that an edict has recently been issued in Roumania prohibiting hawking, and that most of the hawkers are Jews, who are in consequence deprived of the means of supporting themselves and their families, and reduced to utter destitution; whether the Roumanian Government refused to receive a petition from the Jews protesting against this edict on the ground that they were considered as aliens, and for the same reason debarred them from seeking redress in the Courts of Law, afforded to all other Roumanian subjects; whether the independence of Roumania was not, by Article 43 of the Treaty of Berlin, recognized, subject to the conditions set forth in Article 14 of the said Treaty, viz.: — In Roumania the difference of religious creeds and confessions shall not be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil and political rights, admission to public 1089 employments, functions, and honours, or the' exercise of the various professions and industries in any locality whatsoever…… The subjects and citizens of all the Powers, traders or others, shall be treated in Roumania without distinction of creed on a footing of perfect equality; and, whether this action of the Roumanian Government is not a distinct violation of the condition precedent under which the independence of Roumania was recognised by the Great Powers, and by which the Jews in Roumania were to be placed on a footing of absolute equality with Christians and persons of other denominations; and, if so, whether Her Majesty's Government, on behalf of Great Britain, as one of the signatories of the Treaty of Berlin, will either alone, or in concert with the other signatory Powers, make representations to the Government of Roumania on the subject?