he necessity of modifying the method of Jewish
conscription, with its fiendish contrivances of seizing juvenile
cantonists and enlisting "penal" and "captive" recruits. Nevertheless
the removal of this crying evil was postponed for a year, until the
promulgation of the Coronation Manifesto [2] of August 26, 1856, when it
was granted as an act of grace.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 49.]

[Footnote 2: On the meaning of Manifesto see later, p. 246, n. 1.]

Prompted by the desire--the Manifesto reads--of making it easier for
the Jews to discharge their military duty and of averting the
inconveniences attached thereto, we command as follows:

1. Recruits from among the Jews are to be drafted in the same way as
from among the other estates, primarily from among those unsettled
and not engaged in productive labor. [1] Only in default of
able-bodied men among these, the shortage is to be made up from
among the category of Jews who by reason of their engaging in
productive labor are recognized as useful.

2. The drafting of recruits from among other estates and of those
under age is to be repealed.

3. In regard to the making up of the shortage of recruits, the
general laws are to be applied, and the exaction of recruits from
Jewish communities as a penalty for arrears is to be repealed.

4. The temporary rules, enacted by way of experiment in 1853,
granting Jewish communities and Jewish individuals the right of
presenting as recruits in their own stead coreligionists seized
without passports [2] are to be repealed.

[Footnote 1: See on these designations pp. 64 and 142.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 148 et seq.]

The abolition of juvenile conscription followed automatically upon the
annulment, by virtue of the same Coronation Manifesto, of the general
Russian institution of "cantonists" and "soldier children," who were now
ordered to be returned to their parents and relatives. Only in the case
of the Jews a rider was attached to the effect that those Jewish
children who had embraced Christianity during their term of military
service should not be allowed to go back to their parents and relatives,
if the latter remained in their old faith, and should be placed
exclusively in Christian families.

The Coronation Manifesto of 1856 marks the end of the recruiting
inquisition, which had lasted for nearly thirty years, adding a unique
page to the annals of Jewish martyrdom. In the matter