subsequent sessions by the failure to put any restraint upon the
wholesale attacks on the Jews on the part of the anti-Semitic
members, to their rural communes.

As for the Jewish members (of the commissions), the effect of the
ministerial circular upon them was staggering. In their own persons
they beheld the three millions of Russian Jewry placed at the
prisoner's bar: one section of the population put on trial before
another. And who were the judges? Not the representatives of the
people, duly elected by all the estates of the population, such as
the rural assemblies, but the agents of the administration,
bureaucratic office-holders, who were more or less subordinate to
the Government. The court proceedings themselves were carried on in
secret, without a sufficient number of counsel for the defendants
who in reality were convicted beforehand. The attitude adopted by
the presiding governors, the speeches delivered by the anti-Semitic
members, who were In an overwhelming majority, and characterized by
attacks, derisive remarks, and subtle affronts, subjected the Jewish
members to moral torture and made them lose all hope that they could
be of any assistance in attempting a dispassionate, impartial, and
comprehensive consideration of the question. In the majority of the
commissions, their voice was suppressed and silenced. In these
circumstances the Jewish members were forced, as a last resort, to
defend the interests of their coreligionists in writing, by
submitting memoranda and separate opinions. However, the instances
were rare in which these memoranda and protests were dignified by
being read during the sessions.

This being the case, it is not to be wondered at that the commissions
brought in their "verdicts" in the spirit of the indictment framed by