While on this occasion the Tzar endorsed the opinion of the Council as represented by its majority, in cases in which it proved favorable to the Jews he did not hesitate to set it aside.  Thus the Department of Laws, as part of the Council of State, and, following in its wake, the Council itself had timidly suggested to Nicholas to comply in part with the plea of the Jews for a mitigation of the rigors of conscription, [1] but the imperial verdict read:  “To be left as heretofore.”  Nicholas remained equally firm on the question of the expulsions from Kiev.  The Department of Laws, guided by the previously-mentioned representations of the local governor, favored the postponement of the expulsion, and fourteen members of the plenary Council agreed with the suggestion of the Department, and resolved to recommend it to the “benevolent consideration of his Majesty,” in other words to request the Tzar to revoke the baneful ukase.  But fifteen, members rejected all such propositions on the ground that, as far as that question was concerned, the imperial will was unmistakable, the Tzar having decided the matter in a sense unfavorable to the Jews.  In a similar manner, numerous other decisions of the Council of State were dictated not so much by inner conviction as by fear of the clearly manifested imperial will, which no one dared to cross.

[Footnote 1:  The Kahal of Vilna, in a memorandum submitted in 1835, pleaded for the abolition of the dreadful institution of cantonists, and begged that the age limit of Jewish recruits be raised from 12-15 to 20-35.]

Under these circumstances, the entire draft of the statute passed through the Council of State.  In its session of March 28, 1835, the Council voted to submit it to the emperor for his signature.  On this occasion a solitary and belated voice was raised in defence of the Jews, without evoking an echo.  A member of the Council, Admiral Greig, who was brave enough to swim against the current, submitted a “special opinion” on the proposed statute, in which he advocated a number of alleviations in the intolerable legal status of the Jews.  Greig put the whole issue in a nut-shell:  “Are the Jews to be suffered in the country, or not?” If they are, then we must abandon the system “of hampering them in their actions and in their religious customs” and grant them at least “equal liberty of commerce with the others,” for in this case “we may anticipate more good from their gratitude than from their hatred.”  Should, however, the conclusion be reached that the Jews ought not to be tolerated in Russia, then the only thing to be done is “to banish them all without exception from the country into foreign lands.”  This might be “more useful than to allow this estate to remain in the country and to keep it in a position which is bound to arouse in them continual dissatisfaction and resentment.”  It need scarcely be added that the voice of the “queer” admiral found no hearing.