imposed
upon Kosher meat was originally placed at the free disposal of the
Kahals, though subject, since 1839, to the combined control of the
administration and municipality. According to the new enactment, the
proceeds from the meat tax which was to be let to the highest bidder
were to be left entirely in the hands of the gubernatorial
administration. The latter was instructed to see to it that the income
from the tax should first be applied to cover the fiscal arrears of the
Jews, then to provide for the maintenance of the Crown schools and the
official promotion of agriculture among Jews, and only as a last item to
be spent on the local charities.

[Footnote 1: The tax is called in Russian _korobochny sbor_, or, for
short, _korobka_, a word related to German _Korb_. It was partly in use
already under the Polish regime.]

In addition to the general basket tax, imposed upon all Jews who use
Kosher meat, an "auxiliary basket tax" was instituted to be levied on
immovable property as well as on business pursuits and bequests.
Moreover, following the Austrian model, the Government instituted, or
rather reinstituted, the "candle tax," a toll on Sabbath candles. The
proceeds from this impost on a religions ceremony were to go
specifically towards the organization of the Jewish Crown schools, and
were placed entirely at the disposal of the Ministry of Public
Instruction.

Thus in exact proportion to the curtailment of communal autonomy,
voluntary self-taxation was gradually supplanted by compulsory
Government taxation, a circumstance which not only increased the
financial burden of the Jewish masses, but also tended to aggravate it
from a moral point of view. The "tax," as the meat tax was called for
short, became in the course of time one of the scourges of Jewish
communal life, that same life which the "measures" of the Government had
merely succeeded in disorganizing.

Anxious as the Government was to act diplomatically and, for fear of
intensifying the distrust of Russian Jewry towards the new scheme, to
stem the flood of restrictions during the execution of the school
reform, it could not long restrain itself. The third plank in the
platform of the Jewish Committee, the increase of Jewish disabilities,
which had hitherto been kept in reserve, was now pressing forward, and
issued forth from the recesses of the chancelleries somewhat earlier
than tactical considerations might have dictated. On April 20, 1843,
while t