POLITICAL REACTION AND LITERARY ANTI-SEMITISM Such "measures" were not long in coming.

The only restriction the Government of Warsaw failed to carry through was the enforcement of the law of 1812 forbidding the Jews to deal in liquor.

This drastic measure was vetoed by Alexander I., owing to the representations of the Jewish deputies in St.Petersburg, and in 1816 the Polish viceroy was compelled to announce the suspension of this cruel law which had hung like the sword of Damocles over the heads of hundreds of thousands of Jews.
On the other hand, the Polish Government managed in the course of a few years (1816-1823) to put into operation a number of other restrictive laws.

Several cities which boasted of the ancient right _de non tolerandis Judaeis_[1] secured the confirmation of this shameful privilege, with the result that the Jews who had settled there during the existence of the duchy of Warsaw were either expelled or confined to separate districts.

In Warsaw a number of streets were closed to Jewish residents, and all Jewish visitors to the capital were forced to pay a heavy tax for their right of sojourn, the so-called "ticket impost," amounting to fifteen kopecks (71/2c) a day.