Recently the readers of the Times were informed "that the Austrian Government have revived the system of intolerance against the Jewish subjects." In fact, however, there was no need of a revival of the system of intolerance, because the Austrian Government has at all times been cruel and malicious against the unfortunate Jewish inhabitants. Though the Jews in Austria settled there at the very dawn of the history of Austria itself, and though they have at all times exercised the most beneficial influence upon the commerce and general welfare of the whole country, they were, nevertheless, ill-treated, and never have been permitted to attain to citizenship, and to hold any office of a public character.

It would require many sheets of this paper to describe the wrongs the Jews have suffered from the hands of the Austrian tyrants; but we purpose to give you a short sketch of the atrocious despotic system which the "most Catholic" Government of Austria practically carry out in governing the Jews. We divide those wrongs into three classes:

The Jews are not permitted to settle where they might choose. The emigration from one Austrian province into another is either entirely interdicted, or made artificially impossible. The immigration to Upper Austria and Styria, for instance, is interdicted. The Jewish merchants coming to Vienna on business, from all parts of the empire, must renew every fortnight their permit, and when twice renewed, they must apply for a third renewal to the Government itself, as the local police is prohibited from renewing the permit more than twice. We need not add, that this practice is a source of revenue, both to the officials and the Government, and they are, consequently, unwilling to part with it. A Jewish emigrant to a foreign country must pay the twentieth part of his property into the public treasury. The Bohemian Jew is obliged to indemnify Government for the loss of his taxes, by securing another Jew, who takes upon him the responsibility of paying the share of the emigrant. In Brunn, the Jews, except on fairs, are not permitted to reside more than "thirty days," and their dwellings must consist of no more than "one room and one chamber," and be located in the suburbs. In Olmutz, they are not permitted to hire a permanent residence, nor to remain in the city a whole week. There are many cities, boroughs and villages where the Jews are confined to certain locations, (ghetti) from which they are not allowed to remove. Even those Jews who are natives in the Austrian dominions, are not allowed "to domesticate" themselves in the country; as for instance, a Jew, native of Vienna, is permitted to have his wife and unmarried children in his dwelling; but when the children are married, they must apply for a permit to reside in Vienna. The difficulties which are thrown in the Jews’ way, to impede their marriages, are almost insurmountable. As the Jewish merchant in Vienna, having obtained a "toleration-permit" for one year, may have many servants, if he describes their particular appointments to Government, they generally take their own children into service, i.e., they make the Government believe they are servants, though they are their own flesh and blood. When their father dies, all these "servant-children" must leave Vienna and emigrate, either into some of the provinces, or a foreign country.

In Moravia, Silesia and Gallicia, the Jews are not permitted to employ Christian servants, especially nurses. On those holy days when the Jews are not allowed to perform any manual labour, they may hire a Christian servant, but are prohibited from giving them food, or keeping them through the night. Religious exercises—of which we shall have to say a few words afterwards—are restricted, and those permitted are so by atrocious taxes only. In very recent times the Jews were kindly instructed by the parental Austrian Government to print their prayer-books and other tracts of devotion, with an accompanying German translation. There are many establishments of education which preclude Jewish youths, as the Imperial Deaf and Dumb and Blind Institution; the School of Cadets in Neustadt. In the other institutions where they are permitted, they are exposed to maltreatment, both by the professors and the students; they therefore take care of themselves, or remain ignorant. Jewish apprentices can hardly find work among Christian masters. Government and superstition have both conspired to hinder their development, and to degrade them physically and intellectually.

In Nether-Austria, Moravia and Silesia, the Jews are not permitted to possess real estates. Exception is made with such estates belonging to the whole community, as synagogues and burying-places. The Jews in Vienna are neither allowed to have their own houses nor any other real estate. They are, consequently, not allowed to practise agriculture. In Bohemia they are permitted to buy property belonging to the cities, but must work on it with their own hands, and they are prohibited from hiring Christian servants. This is the principal reason that Jews in despotic Europe—chiefly in Austria—do not cultivate the soil they live on. In Gallicia they are prohibited from purchasing houses and grounds which have never been the property of Jews.

Mining is strictly interdicted to the Jews. They cannot obtain citizenship in any of the Austrian dominions, though there is, in some of the states, a sort of modification. This sole disability of becoming citizens is the source of innumerable sufferings which the Jews have to endure. Every movement of theirs is watched and guarded, as if they were enemies of the Christians and the Government. Suppose they are. But who caused them to become so? It is bad policy, to cause a friend to become an enemy, and afterwards to surround him with a thousand fences and barriers to make him harmless.

Jews educated to the practice of the learned professions are rarely or never promoted to high stations, though they merited promotion more than their Christian rivals. A Jewish physician finds it more difficult to practise his profession in Vienna than even a common tradesman; and we know cases where sons of talented Jewish families, who have lived there for the space of half a century, were prohibited from practising medicine. Jewish midwives are not permitted to assist Christian mothers in their time of need, unless there be no Christian midwife in the place, or, if there be, is prevented from coming by sickness.

No Jewish "Doctor in Law" has yet been permitted to attain the stallum advocandi in Vienna.

In no Austrian dominion is the Jew allowed to hold any office, either in the government of cities or states. The chairs in schools and universities are not to be desecrated by the Jew.

A Jew is not allowed to deal in drugs. One single exception was made in Gallicia, with the son of an eminent Jew in Tarnipol; but with this clause in the grant, that after the decease of the owner, the apothecary-store should be sold to a Christian, and not continued by the heirs. One office of a public character a Jew is permitted to hold: he may be a "Censor."

All the taxes which Christian citizens are to pay, and all the duties they have to perform as such, the Jews have, of course, punctually and exactly to remit and to accomplish. But they have taxes and duties which they are compelled to give and to do, because they are Jews; or because they eat no pork and are not baptised. The "tax of toleration" exacts from each Jew the minimum of 20 florins, or $10, and the maximum of 200 florins, or $100, annually. There are taxes of Jewish marriages, Jewish elections of their religious officers, and other kindred kinds of Jewish taxes, which we shall pass over with silence.

In Bohemia, the "Judensteuer, or Jew-tax," amounts annually to 261,000 florins. This tax the Jews must pay, not according to their numbers, but even if "one Jew" only lived there. Then come the "Family tax" and "Property tax." Property tax is 7¼ per cent from the property ascertained by oath. The Family tax is according to the Property tax, either increasing or decreasing. Suppose one Jew pays Property tax of 300 florins, at 7¼ per cent; fl. 21, 45cr.; he has to pay Family tax, fl. 5, 30 cr.; or, about 9 percent, fl. 27, 15cr. In more recent times the taxes are still higher.

The exaction of these enormous taxes makes them intolerable. The tax-payers are the prey of informers, which are encouraged and remunerated by the Government, and, therefore, they submit to the arbitrary valuation of the tax exactors themselves, in order that they may escape the clutch of the informers.

These taxes press the poor more heavily than the rich, though it is not so apparently. This is because the poor, if he has any trade in detail, must pay taxes of 300 florins, whether he has them or not. The rich is left to declare the amount of his property himself, and he knows always how to escape an arbitrary estimate of the Tax Directors.

Besides these exorbitant taxes, the Jews have to pay another tax, which was imposed upon them by the heroic Most Catholic Emperor, Francis the First, in the year of Grace 1808, on every "pound of Jewish meat." The Jews, namely, have a peculiar method of slaughtering the animal and preparing the meat for their use; this the "paternal Government" thought a fit occasion for charging the Jews a trifling sum for each morsel of meat, because they have the privilege of preparing it in accordance with the laws of the Old Testament. In very small cities, where there are a few Jews only, and have no slaughterer of their own, they must pay the tax to the contractors of the larger neighbouring city, though they never come there to buy their meat, or even if they eat Christian meat, or none at all.

In Prague, the capital of Bohemia, the Jews have to pay a "Domestic tax" (Domesticalsteuer) for the lighting of the lamps in the Jewish localities, though they contribute an equal share with the Christians for lighting their lamps, cleaning their streets, and so forth.

In Moravia, a province where the Jews are neither wealthy nor many, the Jew tax is annually 185,000 florins.

The Family tax is five florins from every family, without distinction between rich and poor. The regulation for the exaction of this tax enjoins: "That those who delay the remittance of the tax should be made responsible before both the civil and military authorities, and the synagogue shall be closed."

The Moravian Jews pay, of course, all the taxes which the Bohemians pay; but in addition to them, is every Jewish stranger, though from an Austrian province, obliged to pay from five to twenty florins for his temporary sojourn. There are also taxes for the privilege of marriage—one florin from each thousand; and the tax for the privilege of performing prayers at a Jew’s residence—not in the synagogue. An old, sick Jew, for instance, or one who lives remote from the synagogue, is desirous to have the legal number of persons (ten) in his house, to have common worship; he is not allowed to do so without the consent of the Government, which is indeed rarely refused; but they exact for the consent 24 florins, when there is no roll of the Pentateuch; if there be one, the tax is 50 florins annually.

The Silesian Jews pay the same taxes as the Moravian.

The Jews in Gallicia are badly treated. The taxes are more cruel, exorbitant, and inhuman. The annual sum of the Jewish taxes is 1,000,000 florins. If we take in consideration their poverty, and the scanty sources to which they may lawfully resort for their sustenance, the taxes appear the more ferocious and infernal. There are two kinds of taxes, and it is difficult to determine which of them is more inhuman. They are: Tax for Jewish meat, and the tax for lighting the candles on Sabbaths and festivals. In Gallicia, the meat for the Jews costs twice as much as the Christian one. Taxation on daily provisions is an evil everywhere, and where it is introduced, utmost necessity only may justify such a measure; but it must be granted that the difference between 2, 5, 10, 15, or 20 percent, and 80 to 100, is very great. Now, this tax in Gallicia on the Jewish meat amounts to just 100 per cent, which is taken from a poor and oppressed population. This is exactly as much as if the paternal Government would say to the Jews: "Ye sons of Abraham, ye shall eat no (not pork) meat at all." And, indeed, it is a sober reality, that the greater part of the Jews in that unhappy part of the once kingdom of Poland eat no meat in the whole year. This statement is made by one of the imperial officials, who published several books on the condition of the Jews in Gallicia. (Stoger, Lemberg, 1842.) It is also worth notice, that the more the taxes increased, their liberties were at the same time diminished.

The tax for lighting the candles on Sabbath eve has its origin in the traditional custom, that every Jewess lights two candles at least, whereby she pronounces a blessing over the approaching Sabbath. The number of candles, and the materials of which they are made, are distinctly described in the tax regulations.

A few of the tax regulations will, perhaps, suffice to give you an idea of the enormity of this tax.

"For every candle that burns in the house of a Jew on holy days, if of tallow, he is to pay . . . . cr. 5

"Of wax . . . . cr. 15

"For every piece burnt on the anniversary day of a deceased father or mother—if of wax cr. 6

"Tallow or oil . . . . . . . . . . . . cr. 3

"For every light in the synagogue on the day of atonement . . . . cr. 10

"For every candle at the ceremony of marriage—if of wax . . . . cr. 30

"If a torch . . . . . . . . . . fl. 1

"For the lights on Sabbath and holy days, the Jew must pay tax, if he does not burn them."

The consequent demoralisation of these atrocious taxes is indescribable. The poor Jew escapes generally the tax of his meat, by not eating it; but he cannot escape the paying of the tax for his lights on holy days, because he must pay, though he burns none. He saves the 10 creuzer, not to buy candles and to light them on a Sabbath day, in order that his poor habitation may look cheerful, but to pay the contractor of the tax, who is ready to confiscate all his furniture, if he delay remittance. He pays for two lights; but his meal he eats by the obscure light of a miserable lamp, from want of means to purchase a better; and in what does his meal consist? Of meat? No! —of roots and coarse flour. Oh, what a dreadful tyranny! Often you may see poor Jews standing on Friday evenings at certain corners of the cities, and waiting for some benevolent Jew, whom they know to pass by there, to beg of him the few missing creuzer, to pay the contractor for the candles which they do not burn.

The organization of Jewish communities, and the election of officers for the synagogue, depend upon the number of lights which the candidates pay for. A candidate for office who may be the best fitted, cannot be elected, if he cannot pay for "eleven" lights on each holy day. But the least fitted one may be elected, if he accomplish the duty imposed upon him by the Government. The contractors of the taxes, generally Jews themselves, are the vilest and most tyrannous individuals possible. They become commonly the most influential members of the community, partly from fear, and partly from the influence they exercise in the election of Jewish officers and heads of the congregations. Whom the contractors are favourable to they may elect, by granting them a receipt for the issuing year of the whole amount of the required taxes for the lights. This is the most recommendable quality of an officer.

When a Jew is accused of having burnt in his house more lights than he has paid for, the contractor may compel him to take an oath to the contrary, two times in one year. This oath is to be taken with the greatest solemnities, in the presence of a high officer of the Government of the circle, and administered by the Rabbi. He who takes the oath must be dressed in his shroud. If he refuses to take the oath, the civil authorities may impose upon him a fine of money, or imprison him.

A host of animosities, hostilities and denunciations are the offspring of these taxes. The contractors generally employ informers, who watch the opportunity of denouncing their neighbours for the non-observance of the regulation, namely, to pay for each light above the two, which must be paid, into whose houses the contractor breaks in suddenly with military force, confiscates every thing he finds, and takes the man into prison, off from his wife and children, whose society he did not enjoy the whole week, on account of his peddling in the country, to earn as much as his dire necessities require.

There is in Gallicia another tax imposed upon the Jews: the "Marriage tax." The first—that is, the poorest class of Jews, which consists of labourers, and have an annual income of no more than 100 florins, or $50, the permit of marriage of the first son costs three ducats, or $6: for that of the second son, six ducats; for that of the third, twelve ducats; and so the taxes doubled by each succeeding child. Those Jews among the first class whose income amounts to more than 100 florins, must pay exactly twice as much as the former, when they apply for marriage permits.

The second class of Jews, in which Jewish officers in the synagogue are comprised, pay, for the first son, 12 ducats; for the second, 24 ducats; and the third, 48 ducats; and in the same ratio, at subsequent applications for marriage permits.

Jewish merchants, when their annual income amounts to 400 florins, the tax for the first son is 20 ducats; the second 40; and the third 80; and so forth. But if his income is any more than 400 florins, the tax is 30, 60, 120, and so on.

The refusal of liberties, and the burden of taxation, on account of a different belief between the Government and the citizens, are not only oppressive, but offensive in the highest degree; and the unjust treatment, which we have not embodied in those mentioned already, which we cannot, however, pass over with silence, appear, comparatively speaking, as prickings of needles only; but if one is pricked with needles all over the body, he certainly feels as much pain as if he had been stabbed with a knife to the heart. One can be lacerated by the sting of a swarm of bees, as by the horn of a bullock. The atrocities, however, which we have yet to chronicle in the Times, are neither like the prickings of needles, nor the stings of bees, especially to those who are honourable men.

A criminal apprehends neither offence nor stigmatisation, after he has atoned for his crime according to the legal verdict; no one has a right to offend him, or to reproach him for his previous conduct. But it is not so with the Austrian Jew, who has committed the crime of having another religious belief than that prevailing in his country; he is constantly reproached and offended that he is a "Jew," though he pays dearly for the exercise of this belief.

If we cast a glance through the streets of Vienna, where the lowest class of Jews are advanced in civilisation, and are not inferior to any Christian class of the capital, we behold in the very heart of the city, the inscription on a public building, "Judenamt," or office for Jews—that is, for Jewish affairs, as if it be a degradation to let Jews come into courts where Christian affairs are transacted.

Here the Jews remit their taxes; here they have to renew their permits; here they are to await the permission of journeying in the capital, and here the officials bestow on them epithets the most vulgar and barbarous. There is made no difference between an honest and dishonest Jew; both suffer alike; and even the Jewish nobleman—an Austrian Jew—if he can pay, may be clothed with nobility and decorated with orders, and yet have less political rights than a common Christian cobbler—must bow beneath this intolerable yoke. When a Jew is denounced to have slept one night in Vienna, without notifying to the police his intention to be there, both the guest and the host are fined and maltreated in the most arbitrary manner.

It is a notorious fact, that the Government keeps a pack of spies in employ, to hunt and to scent those Jews who might, peradventure, have dared to sleep in Vienna without the imposed notification.

Has the Jew worked the whole day for the sustenance of his family, and retires to rest—which animals even enjoy undisturbed—he is kept awake from fear to be suddenly snatched away from the bosom of his family by the ever-watchful rabble of informers. He trembles at every accidental sound from without, and like a chased deer he slips out of his retirement into remoter parts of the city, to escape his pursuers, yet before the dawn of the morning.

But woe to him, if his first walk in the morning is to the house of God! here the malicious rabble are waiting to look among the devoted congregation, whether they could not detect a suspicious countenance, that made its first appearance in the capital, or sojourned there a fortnight, and neglected to notify their intentions at their expiration, to seize the suspected individual from the altar of the Lord, which in former times protected even the manslaughterer.

Jews who are tolerated, and pay heavy taxes for their toleration, are frequently roused in the night by the police, and asked for their papers.

If a Jew hires a house for a quarter of a year, and had the permit to sojourn there one month only, if the police detect it, though his intention was to renew the permit, he must leave the house, without mercy, although his wife and children be sick, and on the verge of death.

But let us leave the "Judenamt"—that abode of denunciation, demoralisation, vulgarity, and lowest brutality. We need not, however, walk very far to meet with another mark of outraged humanity.

On the very next corner of a house we see a placard in which it is officially made known that the "Jewish taxes" will be levied in this year as in the past. The oppression itself does not seem to satisfy the Austrian parental Government; it is the disgrace which affords them pleasure. It is the ignominy, publicly announced, which is the source of satisfaction. It is the opinion which is propagated hereby, that the Jews deserve to be thus treated.

Now we come to a court of justice. A Jew is to take an oath. The oath is composed in such terms that many Israelites do rather sacrifice the advantages they might have derived from it than to utter the words which the oath-form contains. If the Jew is inclined to take the oath, the following admonition precedes it: "Know," says the Judge, "that we Christians worship the same Almighty and Omniscient God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, whom you worship, and no other than Him alone. This I tell you that you should not fancy yourself excused before your God in taking a false oath before Christians, whom you believe to be idolaters."

We should very much like to know from what Jewish source the Judge knows that Jews consider Christians as idolaters. Is it from the Bible itself, or from Rabbinic sources? But if there are no such doctrines in the Jewish religious books, why should they be deliberately accused of such falsehoods? It has been more than once sufficiently demonstrated that the simplest oath is binding on a Jew, whether against a Jew or a Christian. There is no permission of mental reservation, and the sacredness of an oath is based on the Ten Commandments. But the sequel of the preceding admonition is in itself a corroboration to the statement: "I remind you that you are bound to take a true oath before us, who worship the only Almighty, Omniscient God, as your religion and law inculcate." Well, if the Jewish religion and law-book inculcate them to take a true oath before Christians, why reproach them, falsely, that they believe Christians to be idolaters? What is the use of it?

Omnibuses and cabs in the streets of Vienna are often stopped by the servants of the police, and the passengers are asked whether they eat pork or not; or, which amounts to the same thing, whether they are Jews or Christians, —and if the former, they are obliged to show their permits. But, peradventure, the Jew who travelled many days from the remotest borders of the empire, to transact his business and to hear the music in the Imperial Opera-House, will not be molested there in the temple of the muses! The beautiful art will certainly not be made the detestable means of capturing Jews within the walls in which it is enshrined? Oh yes! here, too, the Jew is found out, and before the whole assembly of spectators and listeners, he is made the laughing-stock and the object of hatred, persecution and oppression.

This picture is drawn in natural colours. We have neither overdrawn nor exaggerated. We have narrated facts, and no more than historical facts.

But there is one outlet for the Austrian Jew to escape all these miseries and persecutions, namely: To be baptised. This, however, he will not do: either from hardness of heart, philosophy, or from hatred against his persecutors. He will not, or cannot be convinced, that a religion can be true which makes its followers persecutors of humanity. But why do the Jews not emigrate to the United States, or, at least, to England? Ah me! Emigration not only requires a great deal of material aid, which the Austrian Jews have not, but it is almost impossible for them to emigrate, as Government requires remittance of taxes for several years before the Jew is permitted to emigrate. Thousands, indeed, did emigrate to the United States, the general asylum for all persecuted human beings—whether Jews, infidels, or heretics; and industrious citizens these Jews are. There is no class of men in the whole world—we venture to maintain—as industrious as the Jews are as a people. They are the embodiment of industry. They are temperate, saving, and do not cherish the more sensual enjoyments. There are thousands of Jews in this city, who came, a few years ago only, from Europe, poor, destitute, neglected and ignorant. Look at them now. They have their stores well filled with goods, and accumulate fortunes gradually. And what is the mystery of their success? Liberty and industry! The Jew is like the ant—when the sun of liberty shines over him, he becomes prosperous by his industry. Shut out for him this sun, and he dies away in poverty and wretchedness. He is a native republican; he acknowledges no king but God, and loves liberty more than his life. In all parts of Europe the Jew sides with the Democrats. And when the time arrives to strike the first blow, he is certainly not the last to change his pruning-hook into a sword.

M. TH. AXTMAYER.

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