But the latter was reluctant to pass upon it at once, and thought it wiser to have it prepared and duly submitted for legislative action at some future time.

However, when the governor-general of Odessa and the governor of Kharkov, in their reports for the following year, expatiated again on the necessity of fixing a school norm for the Jews, the Tzar made another annotation, in a more emphatic tone: "It is desirable to decide this question finally." This sufficed to impress the Committee of Ministers with the conviction "that the growing influx of the non-Christian element into the educational establishments exerts, from a moral and religious point of view, a most injurious influence upon the Christian children." The question was submitted for consideration to the High Commission under the chairmanship of Count Pahlen.

The Minister of Public Instruction was ordered to frame post-haste an enactment embodying the spirit of the imperial resolution.

Soon the new fruit of the Russian bureaucratic genius was ready to be plucked--"the school norm," which was destined to occupy a prominent place in the fabric of Russian-Jewish disabilities.
The center of gravity of the system of oppression lay, as it always did, in the restrictions attaching to the right of domicile and free movement--restrictions which frequently made life for the Jews physically impossible by cutting off their access to the sources of a livelihood.

The "Temporary Rules" of the third of May displayed in this domain a dazzling variety of legal tortures such as might have excited the envy of medieval inquisitors.