the Jewish defects, their separatism and one-sided economic activity, are merely the fruits of this oppression.  Where the law has no confidence in the population, there inevitably the population has no confidence in the law, and it naturally becomes an enemy of the existing order of things, “Human reason does not admit of any considerations which might justify the placing of many millions of the Jewish population, on a level with criminal offenders.”  The first step in the direction of complete emancipation ought to be the immediate grant of the right of domicile all over the Empire.

[Footnote 1:  The narrow utilitarianism of the governmental policy in the Jewish question may also be illustrated by the official attitude towards the promotion of agriculture among the Jews.  Under Alexander I. and Nicholas I. Jewish agricultural colonization in the South of Russia was encouraged by the grant of special privileges, though the Jewish settlers were subjected to the stern tutelage of bureaucratic inspectors.  But under Alexander II., when Southern Russia was no longer in need of artificial colonization, the Government discontinued its policy of promoting Jewish colonization, and an ukase issued in 1866 stopped the settlement of Jews in agricultural colonies altogether.  A little later the Jewish colonies in the South-west were deprived of a large part of their lands, which were distributed among the peasants.]

These bold words which turned the Jews from defendants into plaintiffs ran counter to the fundamental task of the Committee, which, according to the original instructions received by it, was expected to draft its plans in a spirit of reaction.  At any rate, these words were uttered too late.  A new era was approaching which in solving the Jewish question resorted to methods such as would have horrified even the conservative statesmen of the seventies:  the era of pogroms and cruel disabilities.

4.  THE DRIFT TOWARD OPPRESSION

During the last decade of Alexander’s reign, the machinery of Jewish legislation was working at a slow rate, pending the full “revision” of Jewish rights.  Yet the steps of the approaching reaction could well be discerned.  Thus in 1870, during the discussion of the draft of the new Municipal Statute by a special committee of the Ministry of the Interior, which included as “experts” the burgomasters of the most important Russian cities, the question arose whether the former limitation of the number of Jewish aldermen in the municipal councils to one-third of the whole number of aldermen [1] should be upheld or not.  The cities involved were those of the Pale where the Jews formed the majority of the population, and the committee was searching for ways and means to weaken “the excessive influence” of this majority upon the city administration and to subordinate it to the Christian minority.

[Footnote 1:  See above, p. 41.]

One solitary member, Novoselski, the burgomaster of Odessa, advocated the repeal of the old restriction, with the one proviso that the Jewish aldermen should be required to possess certain educational qualifications, inasmuch as educated Jews were “not quite as harmful” as uneducated ones.