ught to be easy if the whole
thing is not a miserable lie." His belief in the guilt of the Jews had
evidently been shaken.

In its endeavors to make up for the lack of substantial evidence, the
commission, personified by Khovanski, put itself in communication with
the governors of the Pale, directing them to obtain information
concerning all local ritual murder cases in past years. The effect of
these inquiries was to revive the Grodno affair of 1818 which had been
"left to oblivion." A certain convert by the name of Gradlnski from the
townlet of Bobovnya, in the government of Minsk, declared before the
Commission of Inquiry that he was ready to point out the description of
the ritual murder ceremony in a "secret" Hebrew work. When the book was
produced and the incriminated passage translated, it was found that it
referred to the Jewish rite of slaughtering animals. The apostate, thus
caught red-handed, confessed that he had turned informer in the hope of
making money, and was by imperial command sent into the army. The
confidence of St. Petersburg in the activity of the Velizh Commission of
Inquiry vanished more and more. Khovanski was notified that "his Majesty
the Emperor, having observed that the Commission bases its deductions
mostly on surmises, by attaching significance to the fits and gestures
of the incriminated during the examinations, is full of apprehension
lest the Commission, carried away by zeal and anti-Jewish prejudice, act
with a certain amount of bias and protract the case to no purpose."

Soon afterwards, in 1830, the case was taken out of the hands of the
Commission which had become entangled in a mesh of lies--Strakhov had
died in the meantime--, and was turned over to the Senate.

Weighed down by the nightmare proportions of the material, which the
Velizh Commission had managed to pile up, the members of the Fifth
Department of the Senate which was charged with the case were inclined
to announce a verdict of guilty and to sentence the convicted Jews to
deportation to Siberia, with the application of the knout and whip
(1831). In the higher court, the plenary session of the Senate, there
was a disagreement, the majority voting guilty, while three senators,
referring to the ukase of 1817, were in favor of setting the prisoners
at liberty, but keeping them at the same time under police surveillance.

In 1834 the case reached the highest court of the Empire, the Council of
State, and here for the f