Needless to say, the peasants did not fail to communicate this conviction, which was strengthened at the subsequent sessions by the failure to put any restraint upon the wholesale attacks on the Jews on the part of the anti-Semitic members, to their rural communes.
As for the Jewish members (of the commissions), the effect of the ministerial circular upon them was staggering.

In their own persons they beheld the three millions of Russian Jewry placed at the prisoner's bar: one section of the population put on trial before another.

And who were the judges?
Not the representatives of the people, duly elected by all the estates of the population, such as the rural assemblies, but the agents of the administration, bureaucratic office-holders, who were more or less subordinate to the Government.

The court proceedings themselves were carried on in secret, without a sufficient number of counsel for the defendants who in reality were convicted beforehand.

The attitude adopted by the presiding governors, the speeches delivered by the anti-Semitic members, who were In an overwhelming majority, and characterized by attacks, derisive remarks, and subtle affronts, subjected the Jewish members to moral torture and made them lose all hope that they could be of any assistance in attempting a dispassionate, impartial, and comprehensive consideration of the question.