While the High Commission was assiduously engaged in the "revision of the current laws concerning the Jews," in other words, was repeating the Sisyphus task abandoned by scores of similar bureaucratic creations in the past, the Government pursued with unabated vigor its old-time policy of making the life of the Jews unbearable by turning out endless varieties of new legal restrictions. These restrictions were generally passed "outside the law," i.e., without their being previously submitted to the Council of State; they were simply brought up as suggestions before the Council of Ministers, and, after adoption by the latter, received legal sanction through ratification by the Tzar. Without awaiting the results of the revision of Jewish legislation which it had itself undertaken, the Russian Government embarked enthusiastically upon the task of forging new chains for the hapless Jewish race. For a number of years the High Commission was nothing more than a cover to screen these cruel experiments of the powers at the helm of the state. At the very time in which the ministerial officials serving on the High Commission indulged in abstract speculations about the Jewish question and invented various methods for its solution, the Council of Ministers anticipated this solution in the spirit of rabid anti-Semitism, and was quick to give it effect in concrete life. The wind which was blowing from the heights of Russian bureaucracy was decidedly unfavorable to the Jews. The belated coronation of Alexander III., which took place in May, 1883, and, in accordance with Russian tradition, brought, in the form of an imperial manifesto, [1] various privileges and alleviations for different sections of the Russian population, left the Jews severely alone. The Tzar lent an attentive ear to those zealous governors and governors-general, who in their "most humble reports" propounded the new-fangled theory of the "injuriousness" of the Jews; the marginal remarks frequently attached by him to these reports assumed the force of binding resolutions. [2] In the beginning of 1883, the governor-general of Odessa, Gurko, took occasion in his report to the Tzar to comment on the excessive growth of the number of Jewish pupils in the _gymnazia_ [3] and on their "injurious effect" upon their Christian fellow-pupils. Gurko proposed to fix a limited percentage for the admission of Jews to these schools, and the Tzar made the annotation: "I share this conviction; the matter ought to receive attention." [Footnote 1: See above, p. 246, n. 1] [Footnote 2: See on the term "Resolution," Vol. I, p. 253, n. 1.] [Footnote 3: See above, p. 161, n. 1.]