494 The Session of Parliament. [MAY, 



to enjoy its leisure " in green fields and pastures new." The bill for the 

 emancipation of the Jews produced a brief but,, from its subject, interest- 

 ing debate. The history of their sufferings in England since the con- 

 quest is one of the darkest pages in our annals. For about one hundred 

 and fifty years after the conquest, they were treated more like wild 

 beasts than men, by both kings and people. In those periods of kingly 

 and popular poverty, the Jews, as being the chief possessors of wealth, 

 were allowed to exist only for the purpose of being plundered. The 

 most horrid conceptions of their crimes were propagated, to afford some 

 kind of justification for this public cruelty, and the Jew became the ab- 

 horrence as well as the spoil of England. 



In the reign of Henry the Third, laws were passed to deny the Jews 

 the right of holding or transmitting land, of possessing any other cha- 

 racter than that of serfs, or slaves of the Crown, and of solemnizing their 

 worship in a tone so loud as to be heard by " the Christian people." 

 The statute de Judaismo followed in the reign of Edward the First, allow- 

 ing some privileges, but forbidding them to take interest for money, 

 which was then called usance, or usury. But even this tyranny was 

 mercy to what rapidly succeeded. Edward's wars probably compelled 

 him to find money where he could : the Jews were a ready victim, and 

 at one fell swoop he confiscated their whole property, and drove their 

 whole number, fifteen thousand, from England. 



Some attempts were made for their return in the protectorate, but 

 they failed, probably from Cromwell's reluctance to rouse the rigid pre- 

 judices of the puritans. However, the practice of the excluding laws was 

 so modified by him, and the increasing common sense of the country, 

 that the Jews, in the reigns of Charles the Second and James the Second, 

 became a numerous community, and received letters of denizenship. 

 But it is scarcely wonderful that, with the Jew's experience of the se- 

 verity of the English laws and English prejudices, he should still look more 

 to his brethren in foreign countries, than to the unpaternal government 

 of a land in which he still suffered every stigma of popular scorn. He 

 was essentially an alien, and the Governments of William and Anne, the 

 former of which laid on an alien-duty, and the latter an ordinance that 

 the Jewish parent should provide for every child turned Christian, were 

 partially justified by the circumstances of their time of general European 

 anxiety and war. As this period passed away, with it passed away the 

 alien-duty, which was repealed under George the First. The feeling of 

 Government was soon so far from alarm, that, in 1753, Mr. Pelham,the 

 minister, brought in and carried the bill for the naturalization of the 

 Jews. But the popular prejudices had not slept, and the bill was next 

 year repealed. The Ministry thus took part in an act of impolicy and 

 injustice, on the old placeman principle of giving up any thing rather 

 than their salaries. 



Since that period, however, no legislative measure has increased the 

 burdens of the Jew. The oath of allegiance passed in Elizabeth's time 

 contained nothing adverse to the Jews' feelings, except the form of its 

 being taken on the Evangelists. The oath of abjuration contained no- 

 thing obnoxious to them, but the words " on the faith of a Christian," 

 which not being their faith, could form no bond nor profession of their 

 obligations. The sacramental test was till lately got rid of by all dis- 

 senters through the yearly bill of indemnity. But the difficulty is now 

 increased, for the test has been replaced by a new declaration, also " on 

 the faith of a Christian." 



