and a monstrous increase of their disabilities. The Jews were lashed
with a double knout, a military and a civil. In the same ill-fated year
which saw the promulgation of the conscription statute, barely three
months after it had received the imperial sanction, while the moans of
the Jews, fasting and praying to God to deliver them from the calamity,
were still echoing in the synagogues, two new ukases were issued, both
signed on December 2, 1827--the one decreeing the transfer of the Jews
from all villages and village inns in the government of Grodno into the
towns and townlets, the other ordering the banishment of all Jewish
residents from the city of Kiev.

The expulsion from the Grodno villages was the continuation of the
policy of the _rural_ liquidation of Jewry, inaugurated in 1823 in White
Russia. [1] The Grodno province was merely meant to serve as a starting
point. Grand Duke Constantine, [2] who had brought up the question, was
ordered "_at first_ to carry out the expulsion in the government of
Grodno alone," and to postpone for a later occasion the application of
the same measure to the other "governments entrusted to his command."
Simultaneously considerable foresight was displayed in instructing the
grand duke to wait with the expulsion of the Jews "until the conclusion
of the military conscription going on at present." Evidently there was
some fear of disorders and complications. It was thought wiser to seize
the children for the army first and then to expel the parents--to get
hold of the young birds and then to destroy the nest.

[Footnote 1: It may be remarked here that the principal enactments of
that period, down to 1835, were, drafted in their preliminary stage by
the "Jewish Committee" established in 1823. See Vol. I, p. 407 _et
seq._]