In these soft-spoken terms was couched the _public_ function of the Committee. But its _secret_ function, which later revealed itself in action, is correctly defined in the frank admission of the Committee of Ministers in its report of 1829: "At the very establishment of the Jewish Committee one of the obligations imposed upon it was to devise ways and means looking generally towards the reduction of the number of Jews in the monarchy." This was evidently what "the amelioration of the civil status" of the Jews amounted to. The new Committee was instructed to finish its work by the beginning of 1824, but its reactionary activity was not fully unfolded until the following reign. In the meantime the legal machinery did not remain idle. The process of the territorial compression of Jews went on as before. To guard the western frontier of the monarchy against smuggling, it was decided, at the suggestion of the Administrator of the Kingdom of Poland, Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, to expel the Jews from the border zone. Two ukases were issued in 1825 ordering the removal of all the Jews residing outside the cities within fifty versts from the frontier, with the exception of those owning immovable property. Once again human beings were hurled from their lifelong domiciles, when a rational policy would have been content with instituting a closer watch. To prevent the undesirable "multiplication of Jews" in the border Governments, Jewish emigrants from neighboring countries, particularly from Austria, were forbidden to settle in Russia (1824). Needless to say, the Governments of the interior, where the Jews could sojourn only temporarily, and where they had to produce gubernatorial passports, like foreigners, were carefully guarded against the invasion of the residents of the Pale. On his last trip from St. Petersburg to Southern Russia in September, 1825, Alexander I. espied, in a little village near Luga,[276] a Jewish family, which was engaged in making tin-plate, and he at once inquired "on what ground" it lived there. The Governor of St. Petersburg was frightened, and gave orders to have the family deported immediately from the district, to censure the local _ispravnik_[277] and to warn the gubernatorial authorities, "that the rules concerning the Jews must be observed with all possible stringency." 5. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE JEWS