[Footnote 1:  See above, p. 16.]

This whole organization shall be placed under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Public Instruction, who shall also exercise the right of confirming the rabbis nominated by the directorates.  The functions of the directorates shall include the registration of the Jewish population, the management of the communal finances, the dispensation of charity, and the opening of secular schools for Jewish children.  A certificate of graduation from such a school shall be required from every young man who applies for a marriage license or for a permit to engage in a craft or to acquire property.  “All Jews fulfilling the obligations imposed by the present statute shall be accorded full citizenship,” while those who distinguish themselves in science an art may even be deemed worthy of political rights, not excluding membership in the Polish Diet.  For the immediate future Novosiltzev advises to refrain from economic restrictions, such as the prohibition of the liquor traffic, though he concedes the advisability of checking its growth, and advocates the adoption of a system of economic reforms by stimulating crafts and agriculture among the Jews.  In the beginning of 1817 Novosiltzev’s project was laid before the Polish Council of State.  It was opposed with great stubbornness by Chartoryski, the Polish viceroy Zayonchek, Stashitz, and other Polish dignitaries, whose hostility was directed not so much against the pro-Jewish plan as against its Russian author.  The Council of State appointed a special committee which, after examining Novosiltzev’s project, arrived at the following conclusions: 

  1.  It is impossible to carry out a reorganization of Jewish life
  through the Jews themselves.

  2.  The establishment of a separate cultural organization for the
  Jews will only stimulate their national aloofness.

  3.  The complete civil and political emancipation of the Jews is at
  variance with the Polish Constitution which vouchsafes special
  privileges to the professors of the dominant religion.

In the plenary session of the Polish Council of State the debate about Novosiltzev’s project was exceedingly stormy.  The Polish members of the Council scented in the project “political aims in opposition to the national element of the country.”  They emphasized the danger which the immediate emancipation of the Jews would entail for Poland.  “Let the Jews first become real Poles,” exclaimed the referee Kozhmyan, “then will it be possible to look upon them as citizens.”  When the same gentleman declared that it was impossible to accord citizenship to hordes of people who first had to be accustomed to cleanliness and cured from “leprosy and similar diseases,” Zayonchek burst out laughing and shouted:  “Hear, hear!  These sluts won’t get rid of their scab so easily.”  After such elevating “criticism,” Novosiltzev’s project was voted down.  The Council inclined to the belief that “the psychological moment” for bringing about a radical reorganization of the inner life of the Jews had not yet arrived, and, therefore, resolved to limit itself to isolated measures, principally of a “correctional” and repressive character.