pay a
heavy tax for their right of sojourn, the so-called "ticket impost,"
amounting to fifteen kopecks (71/2c) a day. Finally the Jews were
forbidden to settle within twenty-one versts of the Austrian and
Prussian frontiers. [2]

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, pp. 85 and 95.]

[Footnote 2: The law in question was passed by the Polish Government on
January 31, 1823, barring the Jews from nearly one hundred towns. It was
repealed by Alexander II. in 1862. See below, p. 181.]

At the same time, the Polish legislators were fair-minded enough to
refrain from forcing the Jews, these disfranchised pariahs, into
military service. In 1817 an announcement was made to the effect that,
so long as the Jews were barred from the enjoyment of civil rights, they
would be released from personal military service in Poland, in lieu
whereof they were to pay a fixed conscription tax. About the same time,
during the third decade of the nineteenth century, was also realized the
old-time policy of curtailing the Jewish Kahal autonomy, though, as will
be seen later, this "reform" did not proceed from the Government
spheres, but was rather the product of contemporary social movements
among the Poles and the Jews.

The political literature of Poland manifested at that time a tendency
similar to the one which had prevailed during the Quadrennial Diet.[1]
Scores of pamphlets and magazine articles discussed with polemical ardor
the Jewish problem, the burning question of the day. The old Jew-baiter
Stashitz, a member of the Warsaw Government who served on the Commission
of Public Instruction and Religious Denominations, resumed his attacks
on Judaism. In 1816 he published an article under the title "Concerning
the Causes of the Obnoxiousness of the Jews," in which he asserted that
the Jews were responsible for Poland's decline. They multiplied with
incredible rapidity, forming now no less than an eighth of the
population. Should this process continue, the Kingdom of Poland would be
turned into a "Jewish country" and become "the laughing-stock of the
whole of Europe." The Jewish religion is antagonistic to Catholicism: we
call them "Old Testament believers," [2] while they brand us as
"pagans." It being impossible to expel the Jews from Poland, they ought
to be isolated like carriers of disease. They should be concentrated in
separate quarters in the cities to facilitate the supervision over them.
Only well-deserving merchants and craftsmen, who have p