PROGRESSIVE WORLD STRUGGLE OF THE JEWS 



13 



they fled, many of them, to Holland, 

 where they engaged in trade and where, 

 after a time, they resumed their relations 

 to the synagogue. 



Their skill in international trade and 

 familiarity with colonial matters soon 

 gave them wealth and standing among 

 the Dutch. Charles II while in exile 

 dealt with these Jews. At the same time, 

 one of them visited Cromwell in 1655 and 

 pressed upon him the wisdom of allow- 

 ing the Jews to return to England, 

 whence they had long before been ex- 

 pelled. 



Cromwell made no formal agreement, 

 but intimated that he would tolerate their 

 return, and they went back. 



Charles found them there when he was 

 restored, and while they were not politi- 

 cally emancipated in England completely 

 until 1850, they suffered no oppression 

 and were able to develop their faculties 

 for business and finance and were well 

 treated and became a strong and loyal 

 supporting element of the British Crown. 



SAFETY IN AMERICA 



When the Constitution of the United 

 States was adopted, Jews, of course, 

 were treated on a full political equality. 

 Some of them were of the greatest aid 

 to this country in the Revolution. While 

 there were religious qualifications for 

 suffrage in several of the States, they 

 rapidly disappeared, and in this country, 

 at least since the adoption of the Consti- 

 tution, in 1789, Jews have had complete 

 emancipation and perfect legal equality 

 of opportunity. 



When the French Revolution came on, 

 in 1789, Mirabeau and Abbe Gregoire led 

 the movement for the emancipation of 

 the Jews ; and while they met resistance, 

 they were successful. 



Napoleon did not disturb this condi- 

 tion. On the contrary, he extended it 

 and gave equality of civil rights to the 

 Jews in many countries over which he 

 exercised power, though he was the 

 author of at least one restrictive ordi- 

 nance affecting them. France may, 

 therefore, be counted as the next nation 

 after the United States to give the Jews 

 complete legal equality. 



Louis XVIII, who succeeded Napo- 

 leon, continued this freedom for them, 



though in actual administration, under 

 the influence of ecclesiastics, there was 

 some discrimination against the Jews. 

 When Louis Philippe succeeded, in 1830, 

 his Minister of Education proposed a bill 

 which became a law, providing for the 

 same payment of rabbis and for syna- 

 gogues out of the public treasury as in 

 the case of the Christian clergymen and 

 churches. 



In Holland the Jews were given politi- 

 cal and civil equality in 1796. In the 

 British colonies they enjoyed it from 

 1740, much earlier than they did in the 

 mother country. 



PLEADING FOR REUSE AETER NAPOLEOX's 

 EAEE 



In Prussia the Jews had been given 

 greater civil and political rights in 1812, 

 and in Mecklenburg and in Baden. 

 When Prussia united with England, Aus- 

 tria, and Russia to put down Napoleon, 

 the young Jews of Germany played their 

 part with vigor and effect and made a 

 valuable addition to the Prussian and 

 German forces. 



After Napoleon was beaten, in 1814. 

 the Holy Alliance, with Hardenberg and 

 Metternich as leaders, met at Vienna, and 

 the Jewish communities from the Hanse 

 towns and Frankfort appealed for relief 

 from their governments. So bitter, how- 

 ever, was the resistance of the free towns 

 and of Frankfort that only a friendlv 

 resolution was passed and inserted in the 

 German constitution, but it had no moral 

 binding effect. The Rothschilds were 

 nearly driven from Frankfort because of 

 the bitterness of the Frankfort Senate 

 and their desire not to grant equal rights 

 to the Jews, although the Jews had paid 

 half a million dollars as a consideration 

 for such a grant. 



About this time a professor named 

 Runs, of the L T niversity of Berlin, began 

 propaganda against the Jews and aroused 

 a bitter feeling. The truth is, that Prot- 

 estant Germany has never been liberal 

 in this regard. 



EQUALITY OE OPPORTUNITY PRACTICALLY 

 GRANTED 



The popular movements all over Eu- 

 rope in 1848, however, on the Continent 

 brought not only equality of opportunity 



