318.] The petition reflects the humiliating attitude of men who were standing on the boundary line between slavery and freedom, whose cast of mind had been formed under the regime of oppression and caprice.

Pointing to the example of the West where the bestowal of equal rights had contributed to the success of Jewish assimilation, the St.Petersburg petitioners were not even courageous enough to demand equal rights as the price of assimilation, and professed, perhaps from diplomatic considerations, to content themselves with miserable crumbs of rights and privileges for "the best among us." They failed to realize the meanness of their suggestion to divide a nation into best and worst, into those worthy of a human existence and those unworthy of it.
3.

THE EXTENSION OF THE RIGHT OF RESIDENCE After some wavering, the Government decided to adopt the method of "picking" the best.

The intention of the authorities was to apply the gradual relaxation of Jewish rightlessness not to groups of restrictions, but to groups of persons.

The Government entered upon the scheme of abolishing or alleviating certain restrictions not for the whole Jewish population but merely for a few "useful" sections within it.