1830.1 Existing Disabilities of the Jews in the British Empire. 259 



abjuration oath contains the phrase, " on the true faith of a Christian," 

 and is, therefore, still incompatible with the feelings of the Jew. There is 

 now no bill of Indemnity, and he remains under the weight from which 

 the late statute has relieved all but the Jew. But, by inability to make 

 this declaration, he is actually excluded from all corporate offices, and all 

 places under government. 



In addition, it is still a question, whether the Jews are, even now, within 

 the privileges of the Toleration Act, (1 W. andM., c. 18). That act, which 

 was for the protection (from heavy penalties for non-attendance on the 

 church service) of all non- conformists, except papists, and "such as 

 denied the Trinity" obviously excluded the Jew from its protection. It 

 may seem that by the statute of 1813, repealing the clause which contained 

 the words, " such as denied the Trinity/' the Jew was taken within its 

 boundary. But the point is by no means settled, and the Jew remains 

 liable to the chance of vexation on the statute. The conception, how- 

 ever, that a natural-born English Jew cannot be a possessor of real pro- 

 perty, is a vulgar error, the opinions of the ablest lawyers having long 

 decided the question. In the present time Sugden, Butler, Preston, and 

 Humphreys, have distinctly expressed their opinions in the affirmative. 



We have followed in this statement Mr. F. H. Goldsmid's intelligent 

 pamphlet, as the most unequivocal evidence of the objects which the 

 English-born Jew proposes in his appeal to the legislature. The boon 

 which he asks is twofold : 1st. The removal of any doubts existing, re- 

 lative to the operation of the Toleration Act, and the statute of 1813; 

 2nd. A statute allowing the omission, by English-born Jews, of. the 

 words " upon the true faith of a Christian," in taking the abjuration oath 

 or the Declaration. To this it might be advantageous to add the direc- 

 tion, that all oaths administered to the Jew should be administered on 

 the Old Testament, as they at present are in courts of justice. 



We can see nothing irrational in these demands, nothing hazardous 

 to the constitution, and nothing offensive to the religion of England. 

 For the Jew is not bound by his tenets to overthrow protestantism in any 

 shape. He is not chained neck and heels to the footstool of a foreign, 

 potentate, who looks upon protestantism as revolt, and who looks upon 

 the revolters as punishable by the sword and the flame, should chance 

 ever give him the power. The Jew is not bound to make proselytes, by 

 the belief that the making of proselytes secures his own soul from the 

 penalties of the future world ; that it is the only way to save the soul of 

 the heretic from final ruin ; and that to secure both results it is justifiable 

 to use the extremities of persecution ; or, in other words, to " consume the 

 body for the sake of the soul." On those grounds we separate the claims 

 of the Jew, by the broadest line, from the claims of the papist. To to- 

 leration we are the most unhesitating friends to toleration on the largest 

 scale a total avoidance of every restraint upon a man's communion with 

 religious things a sacred sufferance of perfect freedom in his mode ot 

 address to the common Father and Lord of All ! We resisted the de- 

 mands of the papist, not as requiring religious freedom, for religious 

 freedom he possessed in the fullest extent ; but as compromising the 

 safety of the state, as admitting into the councils, by which the protes- 

 tant religion of England was to be protected, an influence always di^ 

 rectly hostile to protestantism, and which is at this hour anticipating the 

 period when it shall maintain a deadly struggle with our religion and 

 constitution in their very temple. " Tolerate all religions," says Loek<>, 



2 L 2 



