Since the Government had begun to dabble in the Jewish question, this was the first rational utterance coming from the ranks of the Russian bureaucracy. It implied an emphatic condemnation of the system of state patronage and "correctional measures" by means of which Russian officialdom then and thereafter sought to "transform" a whole nation. Here for the first time was voiced the lofty precept of humanitarianism: grant the Jews untrammeled possibilities of development, give full scope to their energies, and the Jews themselves will in the end choose the way which leads to "perfection" and progress.... But even the liberalizing statesmen of that period could not maintain themselves on that high eminence of political thought. Speranski's conception was too tender a blossom for the rough climate of Russia, even in its springtide. The blossom was bound to wither. As far as the Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews was concerned, the hackneyed political wisdom of the age, the system of patronage and compulsory reforms, came to the fore again. The report submitted by the Jewish Committee to Alexander I. in October, 1804, reveals no trace of that radical liberalism which a year before had come to light in the minutes of the Committee.
The report begins by determining the approximate size of the Jewish population, computing the number of registered, taxable males at 174,385—"a figure which represents less than a fifth of the whole Jewish population." In other words, the total number of Jews, in the estimate of the Committee, approached one million. The report proceeds to point out that this entire mass is huddled together in the annexed Polish and Lithuanian provinces and in Little Russia and Courland, and is barred from the Governments of the interior—a statement followed by an historical excursus tending to show that "the Jews have never been allowed to settle in Russia." The Tzar is further informed that the Jews are obliged to pay double taxes, that, notwithstanding the fact that they are liable to the general courts and municipalities, and that their Kahals are subordinate to the gubernatorial police, the Jews still keep aloof from the institutions of the land and manage their affairs through the Kahals. Finally it is pointed out that the sale of liquor, the most widespread occupation among Jews, is a source of abuses, calling forth complaints from the surrounding population. Basing its deductions on these premises, the Committee drafted a law which in its principal features was embodied in the "Statute Concerning the Organization of the Jews," issued, with the sanction of the Tzar, soon afterwards, on December 9, 1804.
2. The "Jewish Constitution" of 1804
The new charter, a mixture of liberties and disabilities, was prompted, as is stated in the preamble, "by solicitude for the true welfare of the Jews," as well as for "the advantage of the native population of those Governments in which these people are allowed to live." The concluding part of the sentence anticipates the way in which the question of the Jewish area of settlement is solved. It remained limited as theretofore to thirteen Governments: two in Lithuania, two in White Russia, two in Little Russia, those of Minsk, Volhynia, Kiev, and Podolia, and finally three in New Russia. A slightly larger area is conceded by the new statute to the future class of Jewish agriculturists projected in the same statute. They are permitted to settle in addition in two interior Governments, those of Astrakhan and Caucasia.
Economically the new statute establishes two opposite poles: a negative pole as far as the rural occupations of innkeeping and land-tenure are concerned, which are to be exterminated ruthlessly, and a positive pole, as far as agriculture is involved, which on the contrary is to be stimulated and promoted among Jews in every possible manner. Clause 34, the severest provision of the whole act, is directed not only against innkeeping but against rural occupations in general. It reads as follows:
Beginning with January 1, 1807, in the Governments of Astrakhan and Caucasia, also in those of Little Russia and New Russia, and, beginning with January 1, 1808, in the other Governments, no one among the Jews in any village or hamlet shall be permitted to hold any leases on land, to keep taverns, saloons, or inns, whether under his own name or under a strange name, or to sell wine in them, or even to live in them under any pretext whatever, except when passing through.
With one stroke this clause eliminated from the economic life of the Jews an occupation which, though far from being distinguished, had yet afforded a livelihood to almost one-half of the whole Jewish population of Russia. Moreover, the none too extensive territory of the Jewish Pale of Settlement was still more limited by excluding from it the enormous area of villages and hamlets.
The economic and legal blow aimed at the Jews in the Statute of 1804 was to be made good by the privileges held forth to those willing to engage in agriculture. Such Jews were accorded the right of buying unoccupied lands in all the western and in two of the eastern Governments, or of establishing themselves on crown lands. In the latter case the settlers were to be assigned definite parcels of land and, for the first few years, be exempt from state taxes. However, it soon became evident that the proposed remedy was out of proportion to the seriousness of the wound that had been inflicted. While hundreds of thousands of Jews were driven from the rural occupations with which their economic life had been bound up for centuries, the new branch of labor opened to the Jews, the pursuit of agriculture, could, for some time to come, attract at the utmost only a few insignificant groups of the Jewish population.