rida, and
Bessarabia.]

[Footnote 6: St. Petersburg and Moscow.]

[Footnote 7: The time-limit was six months for the merchants of the
first guild and three months for those of the second.]

The Jews were further forbidden to employ Christian domestics for
permanent employment. They could hire Christians for occasional services
only, on condition that the latter live in separate quarters. Marriages
at an earlier age than eighteen for the bridegroom and sixteen for the
bride were forbidden under the pain of imprisonment--a prohibition which
the defective registration of births and marriages then in vogue made it
easy to evade. The language to be employed by the Jews in their public
documents was to be Russian or any other local dialect, but "under no
circumstances the Hebrew language."

The function of the Kahal, according to the Statute, is to see to it
that the "instructions of the authorities" are carried out precisely and
that the state taxes and communal assessments are "correctly remitted."
The Kahal elders are to be elected by the community every three years
from among persons who can read and write Russian, subject to their
being ratified by the gubernatorial administration. At the same time the
Jews are entitled to participation in the municipal elections; those who
can read and write Russian are eligible as members of the town councils
and magistracies--the supplementary law of 1836 fixed the rate at
one-third, [1] excepting the city of Vilna where the Jews were entirely
excluded from municipal self-government.

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 368.]

Synagogues may not be built in the vicinity of churches. The Russian
schools of all grades are to be open to Jewish children, who "are not
compelled to change their religion" (Clause 106)--a welcome provision in
view of the compulsory methods which had then become habitual. The
coercive baptism of Jewish children was provided for in a separate
enactment, the Statute on Conscription, which is declared "to remain in
force." In this way the Statute of 1835 reduces itself to a codification
of the whole mass of the preceding anti-Jewish legislation. Its only
positive feature was that it put a stop to the expulsion from the
villages which had ruined the Jewish population during the years
1804-1830.

6. THE RUSSIAN CENSORSHIP AND CONVERSIONIST ENDEAVORS

With all its discriminations, the promulgation of this general statute
was far from checking the feverish ac