Horace Maynard to the Right Hon. Sir Henry Elliot , Her British Majesty’s, June 26, 1877

No. 327. Mr. Maynard to Mr. Evarts.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge your dispatch No. 126, dated May 28, 1877, transmitting a copy of correspondence between the Department of State and the president of the board of delegates of American Israelites. It was announced by telegraph weeks ago that such a dispatch had been sent, one of the very few items of intelligence communicated by that channel. The telegram from the Department disapproving of the course of Mr. De Haas, being of subsequent date, I assume should be construed with the dispatch. I at once prepared an instruction to the consulate-general at Constantinople, of which a copy is inclosed.

The number of Israelites in Turkey is variously estimated. In European Turkey it may be set down at 75,000; in Asiatic Turkey at a few thousand more, making an aggregate, probably, of 155,000. This estimate does not include Egypt and the African possessions, nor the tributary provinces of Roumania and Servia. In the former of these provinces the Israelites are reckoned at about 250,000; in the latter at less than 2,000. In the whole Ottoman Empire they must number nearly or quite 500,000.

During my term of official service a single instance only of maltreatment suffered by this faith has been brought to the notice of the legation. That was the case of the Rabbi Sneersohn, an American Israelite, grievously outraged by his co religionists at Tiberias, in November, 1874. The history of it will be found in my note to Sir Henry Elliot, Her British Majesty’s ambassador, and in a verbal note from the legation to the imperial ministry of foreign affairs. To both notes satisfactory answers were returned, and I transmitted them, with an instruction, to the United States consul at Beirut. Meanwhile the rabbi, wearied and impoverished by the delay, seems to have abandoned all hope of redress, and to have gone, I believe, to Prance; possibly he returned to America. Nothing further has been done in his case; indeed, in his absence, nothing could be done.

My attention was drawn to the situation of the Israelites in the provinces by receiving, in January last, a copy of a memorial addressed to the conference, then in session at Constantinople, by a body of Hebrew delegates assembled in convention at Paris. I inclose a copy of the letter transmitting it. The memorial itself appears to have been sent to Washington, and is no doubt on file in the Department of State. I took occasion to present the matter, unofficially, to members of the conference, the inconclusive result of whose labors is known.

I have referred to the telegram from the Department of State, disapproving the course of Mr. De Haas. A dispatch from him has been shown me, explaining that the protection extended by him and disapproved of by the Department was given to certain Israelites in and around Jerusalem who had been protected by the Russian consulate, and who, at some time, had lived themselves or their ancestors in Russia, but who at present have no national allegiance, being, as he expresses it, a scattered remnant of God’s ancient people.

This recapitulation embraces all the occasions I have had to consider the situation of the Israelites in Turkey until I received your dispatch No. 126.

The communication addressed to the Department of State by Mr. Isaacs, president, refers mainly to the persecuted Hebrews of Roumania. No doubt the persecutions have been greater there than elsewhere in the empire; and this for a variety of reasons. Among others, they are as numerous in this province, I have shown, as in all the rest of the Ottoman dominions. A trace of their persecution appears in the correspondence of the legation. (Mr. Morris’s dispatches, Nos. 363 and 364, of May, and 370 of July, 1870.) Recently Her British Majesty’s Government presented to the House of Commons, in pursuance of their address, a correspondence respecting the condition and treatment of the Jews in Roumania and Servia. It forms a blue-book, so called, of some 360 pages, containing 644 papers, beginning in March, 1867, and concluding in April last, thus covering a period of ten years, and is the fullest as well as the most authentic narrative on that subject I have seen.

In ordinary times the authority of the Ottoman Government in Roumania is very slight indeed. At the date of Mr. Isaacs’s correspondence with the Department of State the province was in the military possession of Russia, and it has so remained until now, to the entire exclusion of the Sublime Porte. The United States consular agent at Bucharest, himself an Israelite, as I am informed, and our only consular officer in the two provinces of Roumania and Servia, enjoys a superior reputation, indeed, and, by comparison, it would be advisable, in my opinion, to give him consular rank.

Justice to the Turks requires me to say they have treated the Jews much better than have some of the western powers of Europe. When banished from Spain, for instance, they found an asylum in Turkey, where their descendants remain to this day, distinguished from the others of the same faith by the use of the Spanish tongue. An impression prevails that under Turkish rule the treatment of the Jews is better than that of the Christians. They are recognized as an independent religious community, with the privilege of possessing their own ecclesiastical rule, and their chief rabbi (chacham-bashi) possesses, in consequence of his functions, great influence.

Yesterday, during my weekly call upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I introduced the subject. His excellency protested that where the Turkish rule obtained the Israelites had always enjoyed every privilege and immunity accorded by the laws to Ottoman subjects. His language in this sense was very emphatic. For their treatment in the provinces the Sublime Porte could not justly be held responsible. Yet, even then, in the late treaty with Servia, they had exacted from her a promise of justice to these much-injured people.

If any grievances are reported, or otherwise come to my knowledge, I shall interpose for relief.

I am, &c.,