1830.] Existing Disabilities of the Jews in the British Empire. 261 



If the wealth of the Jews be a subject of alarm to those who natu- 

 rally desire to see Christianity take the lead in a Christian Legislature, 

 the answer is, that the Jews, as a body, are, perhaps, next to the gipsies, 

 the poorest body in England. A few of their community are always 

 men of great wealth. Yet even that wealth is liable to strange fluctuations, 

 and there seems to be something in the nature of Jewish opulence that 

 always and in all countries prohibits it from taking the shape of golid 

 and publicly influential property. But if alarms still exist, the Jew 

 is ready to offer the strongest declaration that British law can require, 

 as his assurance against disturbing the Religion or Constitution of 

 England. He is ready substantially to take all the Oaths demanded of 

 Dissenters ; his only objection being to the phrase, " on the faith of a 

 Christian" a clause which must be altogether inefficient as to any secu- 

 rity in his instance, if he were to adopt it ; but which his national belief 

 prohibits him to adopt. 



It is observable that the admission of the Jew to all political privileges 

 has been established during the last twenty years in France and Hol- 

 land ; and is almost coeval with the rise of the United States. This is 

 no argument for its establishment here, from the difference of our Legis- 

 lature. But the conduct of the Jew under the possession of those pri- 

 vileges in foreign countries, is entitled to rank among the probabilities of 

 his future conduct here. And it is found that the sober and unambitious 

 habits of the Jew have undergone no change by this participation of 

 power. No Jewish interest has displayed itself in any of the Legis- 

 latures of the States into which they have formally gained admission. 



To the question, why the Jews have not exerted themselves at an 

 earlier period, or why they do not now press their claims more forcibly 

 upon the public, the answer is not altogether easy ; probably they have 

 seen the Legislature too much occupied with the Dissenters and Roman 

 Catholics, to expect much attention ; probably, with that indelible pride 

 which marks the character of the Jew, they have been reluctant t6 

 mingle their claims with those of other modes of belief; probably their 

 desire for popular privileges is considerably restrained by the notorious 

 existence of a strong body of opinion among them, which deprecates all 

 public privileges, as injurious to the purity of their religious tenets, and 

 looks to no final establishment but in the land of their fathers. At all 

 events their moderation in pursuit of privileges may be fairly assumed 

 as an evidence of their future moderation in the use of them. 



But to all objections on the ground of religious difference, the answer 

 is direct and irresistible. Christianity forbids all persecution, and allows 

 no attempt on the faith of men by personal injury. In the first place, 

 because the spirit of Christianity is benevolence ; and in the second, 

 because all such attempts, where they succeed, produce only hypocrisy, 

 as, where they fail, they produce injury and unhappiness. That the 

 Jews have long been persecuted, is the scandal of Christendom. But it 

 was not by Christianity that they were persecuted. Their blood was 

 upon the hands of rapacity, of tyranny, of furious prejudice, of brutal 

 ignorance not of Christianity. The men who dragged the unfortunate 

 Jew to the scaffold, or crushed his limbs on the rack, or looked on as 

 they were burned to cinders on the pile, were the same who slew or 

 racked, or burned the Albigenses, and the early Protestants of Germany 

 and Flanders. Men to whom the Bible was a sealed book, and who were 

 sent forth by Rome to lay waste the early Church, and who were the sworn 



