Poor as was the reign of Paul in the field of concrete legislation concerning the Jews, it was rich in preliminary endeavors leading up to it. For his reign abounds in all kinds of projects looking to the regulation of the status of the Jews on the basis of official "investigations." In the outgoing years of the eighteenth century (1797-1800) the Government offices were feverishly busy in this direction. The Government was endeavoring to familiarize itself with the state of the former Polish provinces and particularly with the condition of the Jewish population. The first step in this pursuit after knowledge consisted in sending out a circular inquiry to the nobles and the higher officials of the region under consideration. The stimulus to this inquiry came in 1797, from a report submitted on account of the famine which had been raging in the Government of Minsk. Governor Karnyeyev of Minsk received orders from St. Petersburg to gather the opinions of the local Marshals, or leaders of the nobility, and on that basis supply "an elucidation of the causes of the impoverished condition of the peasants," with plans looking to their amelioration. The shrewd device of questioning the landed aristocrats as to the causes of the impoverishment of their peasant serfs bore worthy fruit. Needless to say, the Polish magnates who assembled in Minsk at the invitation of the Government did not even for a moment think of reproaching themselves and their own estate of slaveholders for the misery of the people enthralled by them. Instead they preferred to put the blame partly on external circumstances ("the changes and mutinies in the province," bad crops, poor means of communication, etc.), and partly on the Jews, "whom the owners [of the villages] retain as arendars and tavern-keepers, contrary to the orders of the authorities restricting their domicile to the cities." The Jewish tavern-keepers in the country, so the nobles allege, "lure the peasants into drunkenness," by selling them spirits on trust, and thereby "render them unfit to manage their affairs." In order to save the peasants, the Government should insist "that the right of distilling be open exclusively to the landowners, and be withheld from the Jews as well as other arendars and tavern-keepers," and that in the rural public houses "permission to sell hot wine [whiskey] be given only to the squires." To put it in other words, the peasants will thrive and be "fit to manage their affairs," if, instead of Jewish alcohol, they will imbibe the aristocratic alcohol of the landed proprietors.