il of State, and, following in its wake, the
Council itself had timidly suggested to Nicholas to comply in part with
the plea of the Jews for a mitigation of the rigors of conscription, [1]
but the imperial verdict read: "To be left as heretofore." Nicholas
remained equally firm on the question of the expulsions from Kiev. The
Department of Laws, guided by the previously-mentioned representations
of the local governor, favored the postponement of the expulsion, and
fourteen members of the plenary Council agreed with the suggestion of
the Department, and resolved to recommend it to the "benevolent
consideration of his Majesty," in other words to request the Tzar to
revoke the baneful ukase. But fifteen, members rejected all such
propositions on the ground that, as far as that question was concerned,
the imperial will was unmistakable, the Tzar having decided the matter
in a sense unfavorable to the Jews. In a similar manner, numerous other
decisions of the Council of State were dictated not so much by inner
conviction as by fear of the clearly manifested imperial will, which no
one dared to cross.

[Footnote 1: The Kahal of Vilna, in a memorandum submitted in 1835,
pleaded for the abolition of the dreadful institution of cantonists, and
begged that the age limit of Jewish recruits be raised from 12-15 to
20-35.]

Under these circumstances, the entire draft of the statute passed
through the Council of State. In its session of March 28, 1835, the
Council voted to submit it to the emperor for his signature. On this
occasion a solitary and belated voice was raised in defence of the Jews,
without evoking an echo. A member of the Council, Admiral Greig, who was
brave enough to swim against the current, submitted a "special opinion"
on the proposed statute, in which he advocated a number of alleviations
in the intolerable legal status of the Jews. Greig put the whole issue
in a nut-shell: "Are the Jews to be suffered in the country, or not?"
If they are, then we must abandon the system "of hampering them in their
actions and in their religious customs" and grant them at least "equal
liberty of commerce with the others," for in this case "we may
anticipate more good from their gratitude than from their hatred."
Should, however, the conclusion be reached that the Jews ought not to be
tolerated in Russia, then the only thing to be done is "to banish them
all without exception from the country into foreign lands." This might
be "