[Footnote 1:  See Vol.  I, p. 407 et seq.]

Modified in shape and reduced in size, the code was submitted in 1834 to the Department of Laws forming part of the Council of State, and after careful discussion by the Department of Laws was brought up at the plenary sessions of the Council.  The “ministerial” draft, though smaller in bulk, was marked by such severity that the Department of Laws found it necessary to tone it down.  The ministers, with the exception of the Minister of Finance, had proposed to transfer all Jews, within a period of three years, from the villages to the towns and townlets.  The Department of Laws considered this measure too risky, pointing to the White Russian expulsion of 1823, which had failed to produce the expected results, and, “while it has ruined the Jews, it does not in the least seem to have improved the condition of the villagers.” [1] The plenum of the Council agreed with the Department of Laws that “the proposed expulsion of the Jews (from the villages), being extremely difficult of execution and being of problematic benefit, should be eliminated from the Statute and should be stopped even there where it had been decreed but not carried into effect.”

[Footnote 1:  Compare Vol.  I, p. 407.]

The report was laid before the Tzar, who attached to it the following “resolution”:  [1] “Where this measure (of expulsion) has been started, it is inconvenient to repeal it; but it shall be postponed for the time being in the governments in which no steps towards it have as yet been made.”  For a number of years this “resolution” hung like the sword of Damocles over the heads of rural Jewry.

[Footnote 1:  See on the meaning of the term “resolution” Vol.  I, p. 253, n. 1.]

Less yielding was the Tzar’s attitude on the question of the partial enlargement of the Pale of Settlement.  The Department of Laws had suggested to grant the merchants of the first guild the right of residence in the Russian interior in the interest of the exchequer and big business.  At the general meeting of the Council of State only a minority (thirteen) voted for the proposal.  The majority (twenty-two) argued that they had no right to violate the time-honored tradition, “dating from the time of Peter the Great,” which bars the Jews from the Russian interior; that to admit them “would produce a very unpleasant impression upon our people, which, on account of its religious notions and its general estimate of the moral peculiarities of the Jews, has become accustomed to keep aloof from them and to despise them;” that the countries of Western Europe, which had accorded fall citizenship to the Jews, “cannot serve as an example for Russia, partly because of the incomparably larger number of Jews living here, partly because our Government and people, with all their well-known tolerance, are yet far from that indifference with which certain other nations look upon religious matters.”  After marking his approval of the last words by the marginal exclamation “Thank God!”, the Tzar disposed of the whole matter in the following brief resolution:  “This question has been determined by Peter the Great.  I dare not change it; I completely share the opinion of the twenty-two members.”