[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 407 et seq.]

Modified in shape and reduced in size, the code was submitted in 1834 to
the Department of Laws forming part of the Council of State, and after
careful discussion by the Department of Laws was brought up at the
plenary sessions of the Council. The "ministerial" draft, though smaller
in bulk, was marked by such severity that the Department of Laws found
it necessary to tone it down. The ministers, with the exception of the
Minister of Finance, had proposed to transfer all Jews, within a period
of three years, from the villages to the towns and townlets. The
Department of Laws considered this measure too risky, pointing to the
White Russian expulsion of 1823, which had failed to produce the
expected results, and, "while it has ruined the Jews, it does not in the
least seem to have improved the condition of the villagers." [1] The
plenum of the Council agreed with the Department of Laws that "the
proposed expulsion of the Jews (from the villages), being extremely
difficult of execution and being of problematic benefit, should be
eliminated from the Statute and should be stopped even there where it
had been decreed but not carried into effect."

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 407.]

The report was laid before the Tzar, who attached to it the following
"resolution": [1] "Where this measure (of expulsion) has been started, it
is inconvenient to repeal it; but it shall be postponed for the time
being in the governments in which no steps towards it have as yet been
made." For a number of years this "resolution" hung like the sword of
Damocles over the heads of rural Jewry.