commissioners have visited the frontier towns on the Lithuanian
border, from which the Jews are to be banished, in order that
the value of the real estate may be estimated. But how is the
valuation calculated? Even one who is acquainted with the
venality and unscrupulousness of Russian officers cannot form a
correct idea of how this business is conducted. If a man has no
connection with those in authority, or cannot obtain powerful
intercession, or is unable to give heavy bribes, his property is
valued at perhaps five per cent, or is set at so low a figure as
to make the appraisal differ little from downright robbery. We,
however, are used to such measures, for when they banished us
some time past from certain districts of the city of
Brest-Litovsk, where for centuries celebrated scholars of our
people dwelt, nothing better was done by the crown to compensate
us for our houses.[42] The same occurred at the expulsion from
St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Nikolayev, Alexandrov, Sebastopol,
etc., but as it did not affect so large a mass, nor injure us to
so great an extent, we bore the injury silently. Alas, this is
not the case at present. We should gladly quit the country,
gladly should we emigrate to America, Texas, and especially to
Palestine under English protection, if, on the one hand, we had
the means and, on the other, the Government would permit us.[43]

This Exportation Law of Nicholas I, the result of a lawsuit between a
Jew and a nobleman living on the eastern frontier, which had been
decided by the supreme court in favor of the former, aroused much
excitement in every civilized country of Europe. It was before
anti-Semitism was in flower, and the people of the time were more
responsive even than during the later Kishinev massacres. Indignation
meetings were held. Both Jews and Gentiles, not only abroad, but even in