The expression of opinion on the part of the Jewish deputies, or, as they were officially styled, "the attorneys of the Jewish communes," did not limit itself to the fatal thirty-fourth clause, which all the deputies wished to see repealed or at least postponed for an indefinite period. Serious objections were raised also to the other provisions of the "Jewish Constitution." The deputies advocated the abolition of double taxation for all classes of the Jewish population; they asked for a larger range of authority for the rabbinical tribunals and for a mitigation of the provisions forbidding the use of Hebrew in legal documents, promissory notes, and commercial ledgers. Some of them pleaded for a postponement of the law concerning Hebrew as being inconvenient to business, while others suggested permitting the use of Hebrew for promissory notes up to the sum of one hundred rubels.[248] The deputies also called attention to the difficulty, on the part of the rabbis and Jewish members of the magistracies, of acquiring the Russian language within so short a period. They were ready to assent to the change of dress for the magistrates and those living temporarily outside the Pale. But they pointed out at the same time that the prescribed German dress was not becoming to Jews, who on account of religious scruples refused to shave their beards, and that in the case of magistrates and visitors to the Russian interior they would prefer to adopt the Russian form of dress. As for the laws relating to education, the deputies observed that it would be useless for Jewish children to go to the common Russian schools as long as they did not understand the Russian language, and that it would for this reason seem more practicable first to have them acquire the Russian language in the Jewish schools, where they are taught the Hebrew language and the "dogmas of the faith." By the time the opinions of the deputies were conveyed by the governors to St. Petersburg, the political sentiment there had undergone a change. In July, 1807, the Peace of Tilsit had been concluded. An _entente cordiale_ had been established between Napoleon and Alexander I., and Russia no more stood in awe of Bonaparte's "intrigues." There was no more reason to fear a secret understanding between the Russian Jews and the Parisian Synhedrion, which had shortly before been prorogued, and the bureaucratic compassion for the unfortunate Jews vanished into air. The last term set for the expulsion from the villages, January 1, 1808, was drawing near, and two months before this date, on October 19, 1807, the Tzar addressed an ukase, marked by extraordinary severity, to the Governor-General of the Western region: