The Commission and the Government would have willingly dispensed with all further advice from the nobles, but it was necessary to redeem the Imperial promise.  Deputies were therefore summoned to the capital, but they were not allowed to form, as they hoped, a public assembly for the discussion of the question.  All their efforts to hold meetings were frustrated, and they were required merely to answer in writing a list of printed questions regarding matters of detail.  The fundamental principles, they were told, had already received the Imperial sanction, and were consequently removed from discussion.  Those who desired to discuss details were invited individually to attend meetings of the Commission, where they found one or two members ready to engage with them in a little dialectical fencing.  This, of course, did not give much satisfaction.  Indeed, the ironical tone in which the fencing was too often conducted served to increase the existing irritation.  It was only too evident that the Commission had triumphed, and some of the members could justly boast that they had drowned the deputies in ink and buried them under reams of paper.

Believing, or at least professing to believe, that the Emperor was being deceived in this matter by the Administration, several groups of deputies presented petitions to his Majesty containing a respectful protest against the manner in which they had been treated.  But by this act they simply laid themselves open to “the most unkindest cut of all.”  Those who had signed the petitions received a formal reprimand through the police.

This treatment of the deputies, and, above all, this gratuitous insult, produced among the nobles a storm of indignation.  They felt that they had been entrapped.  The Government had artfully induced them to form projects for the emancipation of their serfs, and now, after having been used as a cat’s-paw in the work of their own spoliation, they were being unceremoniously pushed aside as no longer necessary.  Those who had indulged in the hope of gaining political rights felt the blow most keenly.  A first gentle and respectful attempt at remonstrance had been answered by a dictatorial reprimand through the police!  Instead of being called to take an active part in home and foreign politics, they were being treated as naughty schoolboys.  In view of this insult all differences of opinion were for the moment forgotten, and all parties resolved to join in a vigorous protest against the insolence and arbitrary conduct of the bureaucracy.

A convenient opportunity of making this protest in a legal way was offered by the triennial Provincial Assemblies of the Noblesse about to be held in several provinces.  So at least it was thought, but here again the Noblesse was checkmated by the Administration.

Before the opening of the Assemblies a circular was issued excluding the Emancipation question from their deliberations.  Some Assemblies evaded this order, and succeeded in making a little demonstration by submitting to his Majesty that the time had arrived for other reforms, such as the separation of the administrative and judicial powers, and the creation of local self-government, public judicial procedure, and trial by jury.