government, and could boast of a number of prominent municipal
workers. This activity of the Jews went against the grain of the
inquisitorial trio, Pobyedonostzev, Durnovo, and Plehve, and they
decided to bar the Jews completely from participation in the municipal
elections.

[Footnote 1: See p. 198 et seq.]

The reactionary, anti-democratic "Municipal Regulation" of 1892
proclaimed publicly this new Jewish disfranchisement. The new law
deprived the Jews of their right of passive and active election to the
municipal Dumas, merely granting the local administration the right to
_appoint_ at its pleasure a number of Jewish aldermen, not to exceed
one-tenth of the total membership of the Duma. Moreover, these Jewish
aldermen "by the grace of the police" were prohibited from serving on
the executive organs of the Duma, the administrative council, and the
various standing committees. As a result, even there where the Jews
formed sixty and seventy per cent of the total urban population, their
only representatives in the municipal administration were men who were
the willing tools of the municipal powers and who, moreover, were
quantitatively restricted to five or ten per cent of the total number of
aldermen.

In this wise, the law providing for an inverse ratio of popular
representation came into effect: four-fifths of the population were
limited to one-tenth of the number of aldermen, while one-fifth of it
were granted nine-tenths of aldermen in the city government. The law
seemed to tell the Jews: "True, in a given city you may form the
overwhelming majority of tax-payers, yet the city property shall not be
managed by you but by the small Christian, minority which shall do with
you as it pleases."

It goes without saying that the Christian minority, which was not
infrequently hostile to the Jews, managed the city affairs in a manner
subversive of the interests of the majority. Even the imposts on special
Jewish needs, such as the meat and candle tax, were often used by the
the municipal Dumas towards the maintenance of institutions and schools to
to which Jews were admitted in an insignificant number or not admitted at
at all. This condition of affairs was in full accord with the medieval
medieval Church canons: A Jew living in a Christian country has no right to
to dispose of any property and must remain in slavish subjection to his
his Christian fellow-citizens.

A number of laws passed during that period are of such