Page:The Shield (Knopf, 1917).djvu/88

62 assumed the character of a national disability. Thus, the problem of Jewish disabilities was practically solved before the legislator ever formulated the Jewish question.

For this reason, in the times of Catherine II, when the main features of the future Jewish disabilities were becoming a fact, the Government did not solve the general Jewish question in principle. Likewise, during the entire century which followed Catherine's reign, that is, all through the nineteenth century, our legislation was in a state of constant indecision.

A brief historical survey will show plainly the accuracy of this statement. In 1795 the Jews who lived in the villages of the Province of Minsk were ordered to move to the towns. In the following year they were permitted to stay in the villages, because the landed proprietors employed them as agents for the sale of whiskey. In the year 1801 a new edict again expels the Jews from the villages. In 1802 the Senate rules that they must stay in their former places of residence. In 1804—the year that saw the first Regulation concerning the Jews—they are ordered to be expelled within three years from the villages