1830.] The Session of Parliament. 495 



The present restrictions against Jews are many and serious. A Jew 

 cannot hold any office civil or military. He cannot be a barrister, solicitor,, 

 pleader, conveyancer, attorney, or clerk. He is totally excluded from 

 all employment or emolument in the most active and powerful of all 

 civil professions. He cannot be a member of Parliament, nor even a 

 voter, if any one should choose to demand his oath. He is shut out 

 from all corporations. In fact, he cannot be any thing which requires 

 the taking of the oath of allegiance ; a prohibition which obviously 

 amounts very nearly to a total exclusion of the Jew from all kinds of 

 public trust or employment. 



The arguments against this emancipation were not many, nor are we 

 convinced by them. It was said, " that the Jews had never possessed any 

 political rights in any Christian country." To this we say, more shame 

 for those Christian countries which combined the doctrines of Christianity 

 with a practice directly repugnant to its tenets ; Christianity in no in- 

 stance meddling with the civil claims of men, but distinctly ordering 

 that if we should do to all men even as we would they should do unto 

 us ;" a command which directly prohibits our refusing any man any 

 rights, or even any good, except on the probable ground of its public or 

 private injury: a point which in the present instance remains to be proved. 

 It was alleged with respect to the Roman Catholics, that their emancipa- 

 tion was a different thing from that now claimed, for that the Roman 

 Catholic merely demanded a restoration of privileges of which he had 

 been deprived by the state. But why had those rights been forfeited ? 

 By the crime of that Roman Catholic ; by the evidence, that while they 

 were continued, the state was insecure ; and that the principle of popery 

 was downfall to protestantism. In how much better a position does the 

 man stand who has never been tried, than the man who, whenever he 

 was tried, was found a culprit and an enemy. 



u But the Jews were aliens, and felt more for their foreign connexions 

 than for England." What wonder that they should, when England 

 branded them as aliens, and refused the many interest in her welfare ! 

 " But this would give all British subjects in the colonies or Canada a right 

 to sit in Parliament." The obvious answer is, that those colonists have 

 legislatures of their own, where they may sit : but if a Canadian or West 

 Indian should desire to sit for an English town or county in Parliament, 

 why should he, in reason, be forbidden to do so ? " The introduction of 

 a Jew would, in seven years, produce parliamentary reform." We are by 

 no means certain that this would be an evil ; on the contrary, the carrying 

 of the " atrocious bill" has fixed the minds of many most wise and honour- 

 able men on the necessity of parliamentary reform. As to the bribery es- 

 sential to the bringing a Jew in for a county or borough, we should like to 

 know what member is prepared to throw the first stone. What becomes 

 of the twenty and forty thousands that fly from the member's pocket at 

 an election ? But the argument principally relied on was, the faith of 

 the Jew, which by being opposed to Christian belief, rendered him unfit 

 for the care of a Christian church. To this argument, which, when urged 

 by so excellent and sincere a man as Sir Robert Inglis, we are fully 

 satisfied was offered in honesty and sincerity, we answer, that all we 

 have to consider in the case is, whether the Jew is, like the Papist, bound 

 to overthrow the Church of England, or to introduce idolatry in place 

 of our religion, or to introduce any other religion. In all those points 

 the Papist is obnoxious ; yet him we have admitted. The Jew is clear, 

 and why have we the moral right to repel him ? 



