In the meantime Marquis Vyelepolski, acting as mediator between the Russian Government and the Polish people, had prepared his plan of reforms as a means of warding off the mutiny. Among these reforms, which aimed at the partial restoration of Polish autonomy and the improvement of the status of the peasantry, was included a law providing for the "legal equality of the Jews." Wielding considerable influence, first as director of the Polish Commission of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Instruction, and later as the head of the whole civil administration of the Kingdom, Vyelepolski was able to secure St. Petersburg's assent to his project. On May 24, 1862, Alexander II. signed an ukase revoking the suspensory decree of 180 1808, [1] which had entailed numerous disabilities for the Jews incompatible with the new tendencies in the political and agrarian life of the Kingdom. This ukase conferred the following rights upon the Jews: [Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 299.] 1. To acquire immovable property on all manorial estates on which the peasants had passed from the state of serfs into that of tenants. 2. To settle freely in the formerly prohibited cities and city districts, [1] not excluding those situated within the twenty-one verst zone along the Prussian and Austrian frontier. [2] 3. To appear as witnesses in court on an equal footing with Christians in all legal proceedings and to take an oath in a new, less humiliating form. [Footnote 1: See above, pp. 172 and 178.] [Footnote 2: See above, p. 95.] Bestowing these privileges upon the Polish Jews in the hope of bringing about their amalgamation with the local Christian population, the Tzar forbids in the same ukase the further use of Hebrew and Yiddish in all civil affairs and legal documents, such as contracts, wills, obligations, also in commercial ledgers and even in business correspondence. In conclusion, the ukase directs the Administrative Council of the Kingdom of Poland to revise and eventually to repeal all the other laws which hamper the Jews in their pursuit of crafts and industries by imposing special taxes upon them. This ukase of Alexander II., though revoking only part of the insulting restrictions in the elementary civil rights of the Jews, was given the high-sounding title of an "Act of Emancipation." The secluded hasidic mass of Poland was glad to accept the legal alleviations offered to it, without thinking of any linguistic or other kind of assimilation. On the other hand, the assimilated Jewish _intelligentzia_, which had joined the ranks of the Polish insurgents, was dreaming of complete emancipation, and confidently hoped to attain it upon the successful termination of the revolutionary enterprise.