lamorous indignation of western Europe, which had wounded
his national _amour propre_ to the quick, and partly by the strongly
partisan report of a commission appointed to inquire, not into the
administrative complaisance which had allowed riot to run loose over the
western and southern provinces, but into the "exploitation" alleged
against the Jews, the reasons why "the former laws limiting the rights
of the Jews" had been mitigated, and how these laws could be altered so
as "to stop the pernicious conduct of the Jews" (Rescript of the 3rd of
September 1881). The result of this report was the drafting of a
"Temporary Order concerning the Jews" by the minister of the interior,
which received the assent of the tsar on the 3rd of May 1882. This
order, which was so little temporary that it has not yet been repealed,
had the effect of creating a number of fresh ghettos within the pale of
Jewish settlement. The Jews were cooped up within the towns, and their
rural interests were arbitrarily confiscated. The doubtful incidence of
the order gave rise to a number of judgments of the senate, by which all
its persecuting possibilities were brought out, with the result that the
activities of the Jews were completely paralysed, and they became a prey
to unparalleled cruelty. As the gruesome effect of this legislation
became known, a fresh outburst of horror and indignation swelled up from
western Europe. It proved powerless. Count Ignatiev was dismissed owing
to the protests of high-placed Russians, who were disgusted by the new
_Kulturkampf_, but his work remained, and, under the influence of
Pobedonostsev, the procurator of the Holy Synod, the policy of the "May
Laws," as they were significantly called, was applied to every aspect of
Jewish life with pitiless rigour. The temper of the tsar may be judged
by the fact that when an appeal for mercy from an illustrious personage
in England was conveyed to him at Fredensborg through the gracious
medium of the tsaritsa, he angrily exclaimed within the hearing of an
Englishman in the ante-room who was the bearer of the message, "Never
let me hear you mention the name of that people again!"

The Russian May Laws are the most conspicuous legislative monument
achieved by modern anti-Semitism. It is true that they re-enacted
regulations which resemble the oppressive statutes introduced into
Poland through the influence of the Jesuits in the 16th century
(Sternberg, _Gesch. d. Juden in Polen_,