displayed by the Jews during the Polish insurrection of 1831. The Kahal of Vilna, therefore, implored the Council of State "to turn its attention to this unfortunate and maligned people" and to stop all further persecutions.

A more emphatic note of protest is sounded in the memorandum of Feigin. By a string of references to the latest Government measures he demonstrates the fact that "the Jewish people is hunted down, not because of its moral qualities but because of its faith."

The Jews, faced by the new statute, have lost all hope for a better lot, inasmuch as the Government has embarked upon this measure without having solicited the explanations or justifications of this people, whereas, according to common legal procedure, even an individual may not be condemned without having been called upon to justify himself.

The rebuke had no effect. The Government preferred to render its verdict in absentia, without listening to counsel for the defence and without any safeguards of fair play. In line with this attitude, it also denied the petition of the Vilna Kahal to be allowed "to send at least four deputies to the capital as spokesmen of the entire Jewish people for the purpose of submitting to the Government their explanations and propositions concerning the reorganization of the Jews, after having been presented with a draft of the statute." The final verdict was pronounced in the spring of 1835, and in April the new "Statute concerning the Jews" received the signature of the Tzar.

This "Charter of Disabilities," which was destined to operate for many decades, represents a combination of the Russian "ground laws" concerning the Jews and the restrictive by-laws issued after 1804. The Pale of Settlement was now accurately defined: it consisted of Lithuania [1] and the South-western provinces, [2] without any territorial restrictions, White Russia [3] minus the Villages, Little Russia [4] minus the crown hamlets, New Russia [5] minus Nicholayev and Sevastopol, the government of Kiev minus the city of Kiev, the Baltic provinces for the old settlers only, while the rural settlements on the entire fifty-verst zone along the Western frontier were to be closed to newcomers. As for the interior provinces, only temporary "furloughs" (limited to six weeks and to be certified by gubernatorial passports) were to be granted for the execution of judicial and commercial affairs, with the proviso that the travellers should wear Russian instead of Jewish dress. The merchants affiliated with the first and second guilds were allowed, in addition, to visit the two capitals, [6] the sea-ports, as well as the fairs of Nizhni-Novgorod, Kharkov, and other big fairs for wholesale buying or selling. [7]

[Footnote 1: The present governments of Kovno, Vilna, Grodno, and Minsk.]

[Footnote 2: The governments of Volhynia and Podolia.]

[Footnote 3: The governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev.]

[Footnote 4: The governments of Chernigov and Poltava.]

[Footnote 5: The governments of Kherson, Yekaterinoslav, Tavrida, and
Bessarabia.]

[Footnote 6: St. Petersburg and Moscow.]

[Footnote 7: The time-limit was six months for the merchants of the first guild and three months for those of the second.]

The Jews were further forbidden to employ Christian domestics for permanent employment. They could hire Christians for occasional services only, on condition that the latter live in separate quarters. Marriages at an earlier age than eighteen for the bridegroom and sixteen for the bride were forbidden under the pain of imprisonment—a prohibition which the defective registration of births and marriages then in vogue made it easy to evade. The language to be employed by the Jews in their public documents was to be Russian or any other local dialect, but "under no circumstances the Hebrew language."

The function of the Kahal, according to the Statute, is to see to it that the "instructions of the authorities" are carried out precisely and that the state taxes and communal assessments are "correctly remitted." The Kahal elders are to be elected by the community every three years from among persons who can read and write Russian, subject to their being ratified by the gubernatorial administration. At the same time the Jews are entitled to participation in the municipal elections; those who can read and write Russian are eligible as members of the town councils and magistracies—the supplementary law of 1836 fixed the rate at one-third, [1] excepting the city of Vilna where the Jews were entirely excluded from municipal self-government.

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 368.]

Synagogues may not be built in the vicinity of churches. The Russian schools of all grades are to be open to Jewish children, who "are not compelled to change their religion" (Clause 106)—a welcome provision in view of the compulsory methods which had then become habitual. The coercive baptism of Jewish children was provided for in a separate enactment, the Statute on Conscription, which is declared "to remain in force." In this way the Statute of 1835 reduces itself to a codification of the whole mass of the preceding anti-Jewish legislation. Its only positive feature was that it put a stop to the expulsion from the villages which had ruined the Jewish population during the years 1804-1830.

6. THE RUSSIAN CENSORSHIP AND CONVERSIONIST ENDEAVORS

With all its discriminations, the promulgation of this general statute was far from checking the feverish activity of the Government. With indefatigable zeal, its hands went on turning the legislative wheel and squeezing ever tighter the already unbearable vise of Jewish life. The slightest attempt to escape from its pressure was punished ruthlessly. In 1838 the police of St. Petersburg discovered a group of Jews in the capital "with expired passports," these Jews having extended their stay there a little beyond the term fixed for Jewish travellers, and the Tzar curtly decreed: "to be sent to serve in the penal companies of Kronstadt." [1] In 1840 heavy fines were imposed upon the landed proprietors in the Great Russian governments for "keeping over" Jews on their estates.

[Footnote 1: A fortress in the vicinity of St Petersburg.]

Considerable attention was bestowed by the Government on placing the spiritual life of the Jews under police supervision. In 1836 a censorship campaign was launched against Hebrew literature. Hebrew books, which were then almost exclusively of a religious nature, such as prayer-books, Bible and Talmud editions, rabbinic, cabalistic, and hasidic writings, were then issuing from the printing presses of Vilna, Slavuta, [1] and other places, and were subject to a rigorous censorship exercised by Christians or by Jewish converts. Practically every Jewish home-library consisted of religious works of this type. The suspicions of the Government were aroused by certain Jewish converts who had insinuated that the foreign editions of these works and those that had appeared in Russia itself prior to the establishment of a censorship were of an "injurious" character. As a result, all Jewish home-libraries were subjected to a search. Orders were given to deliver into the hands of the local police, in the course of that year, all foreign Hebrew prints as well as the uncensored editions, published at any previous time in Russia, and to entrust their revision to "dependable" rabbis. These rabbis were instructed to put their stamp on the books approved by them and return the books not approved by them to the police for transmission to the Ministry of the Interior. The regulation involved the entire ancient Hebrew literature printed during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth