began to scribble more rapidly, and within a short time, by the spring
of 1882, a project was ready, to be inflicted as a severe punishment
upon the Jews for the atrocities perpetrated upon them. The "conquered
foe," represented by the Jewish population, was to be dislodged from a
large area within, the Pale of Settlement, overcrowded though the latter
had become, by forbidding the Jews to settle anew outside of the cities
and towns, i.e., in the country-side. Those already settled there were
either to be evicted by the verdict of the rural communes[1], or to be
deprived of a livelihood by the prohibition to buy or lease immovable
property and to trade in liquor.

[Footnote 1: "To allow the communes to evict the Jews by a verdict,"
according to the exact wording of the law.]

This project was submitted by Ignatyev to the Committee of Ministers,
accompanied by the suggestion that the new disabilities be enacted not
in due legal procedure (by the Council of State) but in the form of
"Temporary Rules" to be sanctioned in an extra-legal way by the Tzar,
with the end in view "to do away with the aggravated relations between
the Jews and the original population."

However, even the members of the reactionary Committee of Ministers were
embarrassed by Ignatyev's project. The Committee felt that it was
impossible to carry out the expropriation of personal and property
rights on so extensive a scale without the due process of law and that
the permission to be granted to rural communes of expelling the Jews
from the villages was tantamount to leaving the latter to the tender
mercies of the benighted Russian masses, which would thus more than ever
be strengthened, in their conviction that the Jews might be expelled and
assaulted with impunity, so that the relations between the two elements