But in the midst of his reforms broke out the Polish insurrection. The Czar had granted to the Poles elective councils in each district of government and in the chief cities; he had appointed a Pole his Minister of Public Instruction, and had made many concessions to their old language. Iron and blood crushed out the insurrection, but it had brought to the great Czar Liberator the conviction that liberty spelled disunion for Russia, and this belief was never to be dispelled. Upon the Semstvo assemblies, no longer uplifted by the old generous enthusiasm of the sovereign, pressed little by little the dead weight of executive officialdom. One by one their functions were lopped away. More and more the selection of delegates was transferred to the administrative officials. The marshals of noblesse became chairmen, the governors vetoing overlords. Before the death of Alexander II, his once-cherished creations had lapsed from independent state legislatures into anomalous, semi-advisory councils, discussing roads, land-taxes, agriculture, and schools, and controlled by the land-owning nobles and the governors. Semstvo and Mir and Assemblies of the Noblesse became ornamental trimmings to the colossal edifice of the bureaucracy. The assembling of all the functions of government into the hands of the executive became again the guiding principle of this system. “The Council of State,” whose office was that of discussing the budget and law-making proposals, was the simulacrum of a parliament. The Senate, which gave decision on special points appealed from the lower courts, and whose promulgation of all enactments was the hall-mark of their legality, was a form of supreme court. But both hung from above rather than rested on a substructure. They were substantially cut off from popular influences, their function was secondary action following origin in the executive bureaus. The Imperial Autocrat, deriving his right from Divinity alone, exercised, in addition to his executive functions and his duties as supreme commander of the armed forces of the State, those powers which by a segregation of functions would have fallen to the legislative bodies and the judiciary. In this, the ten ministries were his main agencies. Under this system, legislation was inaugurated through the presentation of a project to the Czar by one of his ministers, or by outside petition, or perhaps by the imperial wish. The proposed enactment, if the Czar ordered it to be further examined, was referred usually to an Imperial Commission of Study. Debates followed in the Advisory Council of State, and the completed bill, as framed by this body, was signed by the Emperor and became a ukase, to be formally promulgated by the Senate and enrolled as part of the law of the land. Interpretations of law were made by the Ministers, which none might gainsay. Thus was the legislative function absolute.