The epistolary inquiry failed to produce the "desired effect." Restricted beforehand in their free expression of opinion, and having no right to speak their mind as to the substance of the project, the Kahals in replying limited themselves to the request that the "correctional measures" be postponed for twenty years, particularly as far as the proposed prohibition of the sale of liquor and land-tenure was concerned, which prohibition would undermine the whole economic structure of Jewish life. The Committee paid no heed to the plea of the Kahals, which was tantamount to a condemnation of the basic principles of the project, and proceeded to work in the direction originally decided upon. Nor was there perfect unanimity within the Committee itself. Two tendencies, it seems, were struggling for mastery: utilitarianism, represented by the champions of "correctional measures" and of a compulsory "transformation of Jewish life," and humanitarianism, advocated by the spokesmen of unconditional emancipation. To the latter class belonged Speranski, the brilliant and enlightened statesman who might have succeeded in liberating the Empire of the Tzars a hundred years ago, had he not fallen a victim to the fatal conditions of Russian life. At the time we are speaking of he served in the Ministry of the Interior under Kochubay, and was engaged in elaborating plans of reform for the various departments of the civil service. Speranski took an active interest in the Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews, and frequently acted as Kochubay's substitute. There was a time when his influence in the Committee was predominant. It was evidently under his influence that the remarkable sentences embodied in the minutes of the Committee meeting of September 20, 1803, were penned: Reforms brought about by the power of the state are, as a rule, unstable, and are particularly untenable in those cases in which that power has to grapple with the habits of centuries. Hence it seems both better and safer to guide the Jews to perfection by throwing open to them the avenues leading to their own happiness, by observing their movements from a distance, and by removing everything that might turn them away from this path, without using any manner of force, without establishing special agencies for them, without endeavoring to act in their stead, but by merely opening the way for their own activities. As few restrictions as possible, as many liberties as possible--these are the simple elements of every social order.