My Dear Lord Mayor,—I regret more deeply than I can express that the state of my health renders it impossible to me to be present at the public meeting to be held at the Mansion House to-morrow, under your Lordship's presidency.

I need hardly assure your Lordship how keen is the grief which I share with every member of my community at the pitiable calamities suffered by my coreligionists in Russia.

But in the midst of the darkness which overshadows my oppressed brethren there is, happily, a gleam of light. For there appears to me no small probability that deliverance may arise through the influence of the public opinion of free and enlightened England, and through the noble and spontaneous outburst of sympathy from our Christian fellow-countrymen. Grateful, indeed, do I feel, in common with every Israelite in this land, for the enthusiastic and practical sympathy which has just found utterence; and the grief which oppresses my heart at the dire woes of my brethren is not a little assuaged by the consoling thought that I have lived to witness in the people of England the noblest development of religious toleration—the union of all creeds on the broad platform of common humanity.

May God, our common Father, bless your philanthropic efforts, and crown them with success.