To demand universal suffrage at the elections to the future parliament, with a guarantee of proper representation for the national minorities; to influence the Russian public to the end that the general resolutions demanding equality for all citizens should contain an explicit reference to the emancipation of the Jews; to call upon all the Jewish aldermen in the municipal Dumas to resign their posts, in view of the fact that under the law of 1892, which had deprived the Jews of their franchise at the municipal elections,[45] these aldermen had not been elected by the Jewish population, but had been appointed by the administration--an act which implied an insult to the civic and national dignity of the Jewish people. The last-mentioned clause of this resolution, adopted at the first conference of the League, proved effective. In the majority of cities, the Jewish members of the municipal Dumas began to tender their resignations, by way of protest against the disfranchisement of the Jews in the municipal self-government. At first, the authorities were somewhat embarrassed and made an attempt to appoint other Jews in lieu of those that had resigned, but seeing that the Jewish boycott continued, they became "reconciled" to the entire absence of Jewish representatives in municipal self-government. The protest of the Jewish aldermen was drowned in the general noise of protests and demonstrations which filled the air during the revolutionary year. 3. THE "BLACK HUNDRED" AND THE "PATRIOTIC" POGROMS