ry feud concerning the problem of Judaism was raging,
an unhealthy movement against the Jews started among the dregs of the
Polish population. In several localities of the Kingdom there suddenly
appeared "victims of ritual murder" in the shape of dead bodies of
children, the discovery of which was followed by a series of legal
trials against the Jews (1815-1816). Innocent people were thrown into
prison, where they languished for years, and were subjected to
cross-examinations, though without the inquisitorial apparatus of
ancient Poland. It is impossible to say whither this orgy of
superstition might have led, had it not been stopped by a word of
command from St. Petersburg. In 1817, as a result of the energetic
representations of "the Deputies of the Jewish People," [1] Sonnenberg
and his fellow-workers, the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs,
Golitzin, gave orders that the ukase which had just been issued by him,
forbidding the arbitrary injection of a ritual element into criminal
cases, be strictly enforced in the Kingdom of Poland. This action saved
the lives of scores of prisoners, and put a stop to the obscure
agitation which endeavored to revive the medieval spectre.

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 394, and above, p. 74.]

The Polish Diet of 1818 reflected the same state of mind which had
previously found expression in political literature: an unmistakable
preponderance of the anti-Jewish element. Some of the deputies appealed
to Alexander I. in their speeches and openly called upon him to give
orders to lay before the next session of the Diet "a project of Jewish
reform, with a view to saving Poland from the excessive growth of the
Hebrew tribe, which now forms a seventh of all the inhabitants, and in a
few years will surpass in numbers the Christian population of the
country." For the immediate future the deputies recommend the
enforcement of the suspended law barring the Jews from the liquor
traffic [1] and their subjection to military conscription.

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 304, and above, p. 94.]

One might have thought that the Diet had no need of extra measures to
"curb" the Jews. It was quite enough that it tacitly sanctioned the
prolongation of the ten years term of Jewish rightlessness which had
been fixed by the Government of the Varsovian duchy in 1808. [1] This
term ended in 1818, while the first Diet of the Kingdom of Poland was
holding its sessions, but neither the Polish Diet nor the Po