vince."]

The prisoner at the bar was the Jewish people which was tried on the
charges contained in the official bill of indictment--the imperial ukase
as supplemented and interpreted in the ministerial circular. A
well-informed contemporary gives the following description of these
sessions in an official memorandum:

The first session of each commission began with the reading of the
ministerial circular of August 25. The reading invariably produced a
strong effect in two different directions: on the members from among
the peasantry and on those from among the Jews. The former became
convinced of the hostile attitude of the Government towards the
Jewish population and of their leniency towards the instigators of
the disorders, which, according to an assertion made in Ignatyev's
circular, were due exclusively to the Jewish exploitation of the
original inhabitants. Needless to say, the peasants did not fail to
communicate this conviction, which was strengthened at the
subsequent sessions by the failure to put any restraint upon the
wholesale attacks on the Jews on the part of the anti-Semitic
members, to their rural communes.

As for the Jewish members (of the commissions), the effect of the
ministerial circular upon them was staggering. In their own persons
they beheld the three millions of Russian Jewry placed at the
prisoner's bar: one section of the population put on trial before
another. And who were the judges? Not the representatives of the
people, duly elected by all the estates of the population, such as
the rural assemblies, but the agents of the administration,
bureaucratic office-holders, who were more or less subordinate to
the Government. The court proceedings themselves were carried on in
secret, without a sufficient number of counsel for the defendants
who in reality were convicted beforehand. The attitude adopted by
the presiding governors, the speeches delivered by the anti-Semitic
members, who were In an overwhelming majority, and characterized by
attacks, derisive remarks, and subtle affronts, subjected the Jewish
members to moral torture and made them lose all hope that they could
be of any assistance in attempting a dispassionate, impartial, and
comprehensive consideration of the question. In the majority of the
commissions, their voice was suppressed and silenced. In these
circumstances the Jewish members were forced, as a last resor