This activity of the Jews went against the grain of the inquisitorial trio, Pobyedonostzev, Durnovo, and Plehve, and they decided to bar the Jews completely from participation in the municipal elections.
[Footnote 1: See p.

198 et seq.] The reactionary, anti-democratic "Municipal Regulation" of 1892 proclaimed publicly this new Jewish disfranchisement.

The new law deprived the Jews of their right of passive and active election to the municipal Dumas, merely granting the local administration the right to _appoint_ at its pleasure a number of Jewish aldermen, not to exceed one-tenth of the total membership of the Duma.

Moreover, these Jewish aldermen "by the grace of the police" were prohibited from serving on the executive organs of the Duma, the administrative council, and the various standing committees.

As a result, even there where the Jews formed sixty and seventy per cent of the total urban population, their only representatives in the municipal administration were men who were the willing tools of the municipal powers and who, moreover, were quantitatively restricted to five or ten per cent of the total number of aldermen.
In this wise, the law providing for an inverse ratio of popular representation came into effect: four-fifths of the population were limited to one-tenth of the number of aldermen, while one-fifth of it were granted nine-tenths of aldermen in the city government.