MIRABEAU HIS CHARACTER AND CORRESPONDENCE. 205 



be a monstrous fact, to see that house pretend to a freedom which they 

 never asserted, and will never defend; that branch of the legislature is, 

 and always will be, devoted to the Crown." 



The worthlessness of pedigree is finely beautifully treated. " One is 

 descended from some custard-eating lord mayor another from a sheriff 

 a third from a captain of banditti, under the bastard William ; and, if 

 a name have any similarity to that of some renowned Lord in Normandy, 

 it is, by the tribe of pedigree-makers, produced as an unerring proof of 

 the great man's descent from the savages of the north who overrun 

 France. Go into every country in Europe, you see the same despicable 

 origin of families; all are sprung from the Goths, Vandals, and other 

 barbarous invaders of the Roman empire, or from sources equally despi- 

 cable in the East." 



On the great subject of tithes, church property, &c. Mirabeau moots 

 the question " Whether the clergy are to ride upon asses, or in coaches 

 and six." 



His treatise on the political reform, and emancipation of the Jews, is 

 at once elaborate, learned, and unanswerably argumentative in favour of 

 the natural rights and privileges of that oppressed people. At the 

 present moment, when an act of legislative interference respecting the 

 Jews, is in prospect, we strongly recommend this portion of the work to 

 the attention of our parliamentary representatives of the Jews them- 

 selves and of the nation at large. That they may be tempted to do so, 

 we extract a few passages from this admirable survey of the Jewish 

 character and condition. We blush to think that what was true in the 

 days of Mirabeau, is no less true in our own that the blot upon 

 humanity still remains unerased. Will it continue much longer ? After 

 a touching picture of the domestic and social state of the Jews, he 

 remarks : 



" But the vulgar herd cannot forgive, even in favour of great talents and emi- 

 nent virtues, the misfortune of being born a Jew. 



" What resource, then, remains to these unfortunates to men without a 

 country to men whose industry is exposed to a thousand obstacles who are 

 in no place allowed to acquire property, or freely to exercise their talents in 

 whose virtue no confidence is reposed for whom no description of glory exists ? 

 There is nothing but retail trade : for the small number of those who possess 

 sufficient means to undertake a considerable commerce, several branches of which 

 have, moreover, been prohibited to the Jews, can they be taken into calculation, 

 when we are speaking of the whole nation? In this retail traffic, only the fre- 

 quent returns of very slender profit can procure even a scanty subsistence ; even 

 the lending of money, the profit upon which is perfectly in accordance with 

 natural equity, has become, thanks to bad laws and the prejudices they engender, 

 the very dominion of a dishonest profession. Yet such is the principal, and 

 almost the only means the Jews have for gaining subsistence ; and, while it is 

 tolerated, the laws evince a shameful partiality towards their debtors, thus ag- 

 gravating their humiliations arid their perils, and consequently increasing the 

 cunning of a nation already so oppressed. 



" What could have induced European governments so uniformly to treat the 

 Jewish nation with barbarity? It is difficult to persuade oneself, that so many 

 industrious men cannot prove serviceable to a state, because they have come 

 from Asia, and because they are distinguished from others by their beard, cir- 

 cumcision, and a particular mode of adoring the Supreme Being. It is true, that 

 the religion which has been transmitted to them by their forefathers, would 

 incapacitate them from enjoying the same rights as other citizens, if it contained 

 principles opposed to the duty we owe to government if it withheld them from 



