t, to
defend the interests of their coreligionists in writing, by
submitting memoranda and separate opinions. However, the instances
were rare in which these memoranda and protests were dignified by
being read during the sessions.

This being the case, it is not to be wondered at that the commissions
brought in their "verdicts" in the spirit of the indictment framed by
the authorities. The anti-Semitic officials exhibited their "learning"
in ignorant criticisms of the "spirit of Judaism," of the Talmud and the
national separatism of the Jews, and they proposed to extirpate all
these influences by means of cultural repression, such as the
destruction of the autonomy of the Jewish communities, the closing up of
all special Jewish schools, and the placing of all phases of the inner
life of the Jews under Government control. The representatives of the
Russian burghers and peasants, many of whom had but recently co-operated
or, at least, sympathized with the perpetrators of the pogroms,
endeavored to prove the economic "injuriousness" of the Jews, and
demanded that they should be restricted in their urban and rural
pursuits, as well as in their right of residence outside the cities.
Notwithstanding the prevailing spirit, five commissions voiced the
opinion, which, from the point of view of the Russian Government, seemed
rank heresy, that it was necessary to grant the Jews the right of
domicile all over the empire so as to relieve the excessive congestion
of the Jewish population in the Pale of Settlement.

4. THE SPREAD OF ANTI-SEMITISM

While the gubernatorial commissions--gubernatorial in the literal sense
of the word, because entirely dominated by the governors--were holding
their sessions, the satraps-in-chief of the Pale of Settlement, the
governors-general, were busy sending their expressions of opinion to St.
Petersburg. The governor-general of Kiev, Drenteln, who himself was
liable to prosecution for allowing a two days' pogrom in his own
residential city, condemned the entire Jewish people in emphatic terms,
and demanded the adoption of measures calculated "to shield the
Christian population against so arrogant a tribe as the Jews, who refuse
on religions grounds to have close contact with the Christians." It was
necessary, in his opinion, to resort to legal repression in order to
counteract "the intellectual superiority of the Jews," which enables
them to emerge victorious in the straggle for existence