The beginning of the period did not seem to portend evil. Emperor Alexander returned from the Vienna Congress without harboring aggressive plans against the Jews. On the contrary, he remembered the patriotic services rendered by the Jews in 1812 and the promise given by him at Bruchsal "to ameliorate their condition."[270] As a matter of fact, several steps were taken which seemed to point in the direction of improvement. The first manifestations of this tendency were certain administrative changes in the management of Jewish affairs. The ukase of January 18, 1817, ordered the Senate to submit all matters affecting the Jewish communes, with the exception of legal cases, to the General Manager of the Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Denominations, a post occupied by Golitzin, the Tzar's associate in Christian pietism and mystical infatuation. Later in the same year, the combined Ministry of Ecclesiastic Affairs and Public Instruction was organized, under the guidance of Golitzin, symbolizing, as it were, the establishment of public instruction upon the foundations of "Christian piety." The charter of the new organization distinctly provides that all "Jewish matters in charge of the Senate and the Ministers" are to be transmitted to the head of the new Ministry. In this manner the Jewish question was officially connected with the department of ecclesiastic affairs, which at that time occupied a central place in the administration. The departmental change was followed by a more substantial reform. The Government recognized the necessity of establishing at the Ministry of Ecclesiastic Affairs a permanent advisory council composed of elected Jewish representatives or "deputies of the Jewish communes." The project was suggested by the ephemeral and accidental endeavors in the way of popular Jewish representation on the part of the two purveyors, Sonnenberg and Dillon, who were attached to the headquarters of the Russian army during the campaign of 1812. At the audience at which Alexander I. gave these deputies the assurance that the condition of their coreligionists would be improved,[271] they were also told to appear in the capital after the conclusion of the war for the purpose of acquainting the Kahals with the plans of the Government. The deputies accordingly appeared in St. Petersburg, and entered upon their duties as Jewish spokesmen, which they exercised during 1816 and 1817. They realized, however, that they had no right to regard themselves as the accredited representatives of the Jewish communities of Russia, and therefore appealed to the Government--Sonnenberg was particularly active in this direction--to instruct all the Kahals to elect a complete group of deputies in due form. The Government having agreed to the proposal, a clause was included in the instructions to the newly-established Ministry of Ecclesiastic Affairs, to the effect that "the [names of the] deputies of the Jewish communes shall after their election be submitted