ven after the insurrection of 1830, when subdued Poland was
linked more closely with the Empire, the Jews continued to be subject to
a separate provincial legislation. The Jews of the Kingdom remained
under the tutelage of local guardians who were assiduously engaged in
solving the Jewish problem during the first part of this period.

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 390, n. 1.]

The initial years of autonomous Poland were a time of storm and stress.
After having experienced the vicissitudes of the period of partitions
and the hopes and disappointments of the Napoleonic era, the Polish
people clutched eagerly at the shreds of political freedom which were
left to it by Alexander I. in the shape of the "Constitutional
Regulation" of 1815.[1] The Poles brought to bear upon the upbuilding of
the new kingdom all the ardor of their national soul and all their
enthusiasm for political regeneration. The feverish organizing activity
between 1815 and 1820 was attended by a violent outburst of national
sentiment, and such moments of enthusiasm were always accompanied in
Poland by an intolerant and unfriendly attitude towards the Jews. With a
few shining exceptions, the Polish statesmen were far removed from the
idea of Jewish emancipation. They favored either "correctional" or
punitive methods, though modelled after the pattern of Western European
rather than of primitive Russian anti-Semitism.

[Footnote 1: The author refers to the Constitution granted by Alexander
I., on November 15, 1815, to the Polish territories ceded to him by the
Congress of Vienna. The Constitution vouchsafed to Poland an autonomous
development under Russian auspices. It was withdrawn after the
insurrection of 1830.]

In 1815 the Provisional Government in Warsaw appointed a special
committee, under the chairmanship of Count Adam Chartoryski, to consider
the agrarian and the Jewish problem. The Committee drew up a general
plan of Jewish reorganization which was marked by the spirit of
enlightened patronage. In theory the Committee was ready to concede to
the Jews human and civil rights, even to the point of considering the
necessity of their final emancipation. But "in view of the ignorance,
the prejudices and the moral corruption to be observed among the lower
classes of the Jewish and the Polish people"--the patrician members of
the Committee in charge of the agrarian and Jewish problem accorded an
equal share of compliments to the Jews and the Polish p