Thus all the schemes and machinations of the Russian Government respecting the Jews proved ineffectual.  Nicholas I, with the possible exception of Ivan the Terrible, the greatest autocrat in Russian history, at whose wish seemingly insuperable obstacles were instantly removed, the wink of whose eye was sufficient to kill or revive the millions of his crouching slaves—­Nicholas I, with all his herculean strength, yet found himself helpless in the presence of a handful of wretched Jews.  Furious at his defeat, he expressed the intention to reduce all Jews to Governmental servitude or to make them, like the Cossacks, lifelong soldiers.  Being advised to postpone the execution of this plan and to employ less severe measures meanwhile, he issued the Exportation Law of 1843, ordering the expulsion of Jews from the fifty-vyerst boundary zone and from the villages within the Pale, thereby depriving fifty thousand families at once of their homes and their support.

Those from the country—­writes a Russo-Jewish eye-witness of the scenes following the enforcement of this inhuman law—­move first to the neighboring cities, and increase the existing poverty, rendering the difficulty of finding profitable employment still greater.  God only knows how it will end when the congestion increases still further....  I must also inform you—­he proceeds—­that these past four months several imperial commissioners have visited the frontier towns on the Lithuanian border, from which the Jews are to be banished, in order that the value of the real estate may be estimated.  But how is the valuation calculated?  Even one who is acquainted with the venality and unscrupulousness of Russian officers cannot form a correct idea of how this business is conducted.  If a man has no connection with those in authority, or cannot obtain powerful intercession, or is unable to give heavy bribes, his property is valued at perhaps five per cent, or is set at so low a figure as to make the appraisal differ little from downright robbery.  We, however, are used to such measures, for when they banished us some time past from certain districts of the city of Brest-Litovsk, where for centuries celebrated scholars of our people dwelt, nothing better was done by the crown to compensate us for our houses.[42] The same occurred at the expulsion from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Nikolayev, Alexandrov, Sebastopol, etc., but as it did not affect so large a mass, nor injure us to so great an extent, we bore the injury silently.  Alas, this is not the case at present.  We should gladly quit the country, gladly should we emigrate to America, Texas, and especially to Palestine under English protection, if, on the one hand, we had the means and, on the other, the Government would permit us.[43]

This Exportation Law of Nicholas I, the result of a lawsuit between a Jew and a nobleman living on the eastern frontier, which had been decided by the supreme court in favor of the former, aroused much excitement