Page images
PDF
EPUB

now.

If the English Jews really felt a deadly hatred to England, if the weekly prayer of their synagogues were that all the curses denounced by Ezekiel on Tyre and Egypt might fall on London, if, in their solemn feasts, they called down blessings on those who should

ciations cannot acquire that strength and to censure the other sections of the which they have in a better state of state for their want of patriotic spirit. things. Men are compelled to seek If the Jews have not felt towards Engfrom their party that protection which land like children, it is because she has they ought to receive from their treated them like a step-mother. There country, and they, by a natural conse-is no feeling which more certainly dequence, transfer to their party that af-velopes itself in the minds of men livfection which they would otherwise ing under tolerably good government have felt for their country. The Hu- than the feeling of patriotism. Since guenots of France called in the help of the beginning of the world, there never England against their Catholic kings. was any nation, or any large portion The Catholics of France called in the of any nation, not cruelly oppressed, help of Spain against a Huguenot king. which was wholly destitute of that feelWould it be fair to infer, that at pre-ing. To make it therefore ground of sent the French Protestants would accusation against a class of men, that wish to see their religion made domi- they are not patriotic, is the most vulnant by the help of a Prussian or En-gar legerdemain of sophistry. It is glish army? Surely not, and why is the logic which the wolf employs it that they are not willing, as they against the lamb. It is to accuse the formerly were willing, to sacrifice the mouth of the stream of poisoning the interests of their country to the inter-source. ests of their religious persuasion? The reason is obvious: they were persetuted then, and are not persecuted The English Puritans, under Charles the First, prevailed on the Scotch to invade England. Do the Protestant Dissenters of our time wish to see the Church put down by an in-dash their children to pieces on the vasion of foreign Calvinists? If not, stones, still, we say, their hatred to their to what cause are we to attribute the countrymen would not be more intense change? Surely to this, that the Pro- than that which sects of Christians have testant Dissenters are far better treated often borne to each other. But in fact now than in the seventeenth century. the feeling of the Jews is not such. It Some of the most illustrious public is precisely what, in the situation in men that England ever produced were which they are placed, we should exinclined to take refuge from the ty- pect it to be. They are treated far ranny of Laud in North America. better than the French Protestants were Was this because Presbyterians and treated in the sixteenth and seventeenth Independents are incapable of loving centuries, or than our Puritans were their country? But it is idle to mul- treated in the time of Laud. They, tiply instances. Nothing is so offen- therefore, have no rancour against the sive to a man who knows any thing of government or against their countryhistory or of human nature as to hear men. It will not be denied that they those who exercise the powers of go- are far better affeeted to the state than vernment accuse any sect of foreign the followers of Coligni or Vane. But attachments. If there be any proposi- they are not so well treated as the distion universally true in polities it is senting sects of Christians are now this, that foreign attachments are the treated in England; and on this acfruit of domestic misrule. It has count, and, we firmly believe, on this always been the trick of bigots to make account alone, they have a more extheir subjects miserable at home, and clusive spirit. Till we have carried then to complain that they look for relief the experiment farther, we are not abroad; to divide society, and to won-entitled to conclude that they cannot der that it is not united; to govern as be made Englishmen altogether. The if a section of the state were the whole, statesman who treats them as aliens,

We cannot but admire the ingenuity

To our refined forefathers, we suppose, and no man can justly complain that Lord Roscommon's Essay on Trans- he is shut out from it. lated Verse, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared of this contrivance for shifting the burden of the proof from those to whom it properly belongs, and who would, we suspect, find it rather cumbersome. Surely no Christian can deny that every human being has a right to be allowed every gratification which produces no harm to others, and to be spared every mortification which produces no good

to be compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of to others. Is it not a source of mortithose minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim's Progress.

CIVIL DISABILITIES OF THE
JEWS. (JANUARY, 1831.)
Statement of the Civil Disabilities and Pri-
vations affecting Jews in England. 8vo.
London: 1829.

fication to a class of men that they are excluded from political power? If it be, they have, on Christian principles, a right to be freed from that mortification, unless it can be shown that their exclusion is necessary for the averting of some greater evil. The presumption is evidently in favour of toleration. It is for the prosecutor to make out his case.

The strange argument which we are considering would prove too much even THE distinguished member of the for those who advance it. If no man House of Commons who, towards the has a right to political power, then close of the late Parliament, brought neither Jew nor Gentile has such a forward a proposition for the relief of right. The whole foundation of gothe Jews, has given notice of his inten-vernment is taken away. But if gotion to renew it. The force of reason, vernment be taken away, the property in the last session, carried the measure through one stage in spite of the opposition of power. Reason and power are now on the same side; and we have little doubt that they will conjointly achieve a decisive victory. In order to contribute our share to the success of just principles, we propose to pass in review, as rapidly as possible, some of the arguments, or phrases elaiming to be arguments, which have been employed to vindicate a system full of absurdity and injustice.

and the persons of men are insecure; and it is acknowledged that men have a right to their property and to personal security. If it be right that the property of men should be protected, and if this can only be done by means of government, then it must be right that government should exist. Now there cannot be government unless some person or persons possess political power. Therefore it is right that some person or persons should possess political power. That is to say, some The constitution, it is said, is essen-person or persons must have a right to tially Christian; and therefore to admit political power. Jews to office is to destroy the constitution. Nor is the Jew injured by being excluded from political power. For no man has any right to power. A man has a right to his property; a man has a right to be protected from personal injury. These rights the law allows to the Jew; and with these rights it would be atrocious to interfere. But it is a mere matter of favour to admit any man to political power;

It is because men are not in the habit of considering what the end of government is, that Catholic disabilities and Jewish disabilities have been suffered to exist so long. We hear of essentially Protestant governments and essentially Christian governments, words which mean just as much as essentially Protestant cookery, or essentially Christian horsemanship. Government exists for the purpose of

keeping the peace, for the purpose | legislate for a Christian community, of compelling us to settle our disputes but that a legislature composed of by arbitration instead of settling them Christians and Jews should legislate by blows, for the purpose of compelling for a community composed of Chrisus to supply our wants by industry in- tians and Jews. On nine hundred stead of supplying them by rapine. and ninety-nine questions out of a This is the only operation for which thousand, on all questions of police, the machinery of government is pecu- of finance, of civil and criminal law, of liarly adapted, the only operation which foreign policy, the Jew, as a Jew, has wise governments ever propose to them- no interest hostile to that of the Chrisselves as their chief object. If there is tian, or even to that of the Churchany class of people who are not inter-man. On questions relating to the ested, or who do not think themselves ecclesiastical establishment, the Jew interested, in the security of property and the Churchman may differ. But and the maintenance of order, that class ought to have no share of the powers which exist for the purpose of securing property and maintaining order. But why a man should be less fit to exercise those powers because he wears a beard, because he does not eat ham, because he goes to the synagogue on Saturdays instead of going to the church on Sundays, we cannot conceive.

The points of difference between Christianity and Judaism have very much to do with a man's fitness to be a bishop or a rabbi. But they have no more to do with his fitness to be a magistrate, a legislator, or a minister of finance, than with his fitness to be a cobbler. Nobody has ever thought of compelling cobblers to make any declaration on the true faith of a Christian. Any man would rather have his shoes mended by a heretical cobbler than by a person who had subscribed all the thirty-nine articles, but had never handled an awl. Men act thus, not because they are indifferent to religion, but because they do not see what religion has to do with the mending of their shoes. Yet religion has as much to do with the mending of shoes as with the budget and the army estimates. We have surely had several signal proofs within the last twenty years that a very good Christian may be a very bad Chancellor of the Exchequer.

they cannot differ more widely than the Catholic and the Churchman, or the Independent and the Churchman. The principle that Churchmen ought to monopolize the whole power of the state would at least have an intelligible meaning. The principle that Christians ought to monopolize it has no meaning at all. For no question connected with the ecclesiastical institutions of the country can possibly come before Parliament, with respect to which there will not be as wide a difference between Christians as there can be between any Christian and any Jew.

In fact the Jews are not now excluded from political power. They possess it; and as long as they are allowed to accumulate large fortunes, they must possess it. The distinction which is sometimes made between civil privileges and political power is a distinction without a difference. Privileges are power. Civil and political are synonymous words, the one derived from the Latin, the other from the Greek. Nor is this mere verbal quibbling. If we look for a moment at the facts of the case, we shall see that the things are inseparable, or rather identical.

That a Jew should be a judge in a Christian country would be most shocking. But he may be a juryman. He may try issues of fact; and no harm is done. But if he should be suffered But it would be monstrous, say the to try issues of law, there is an end persecutors, that Jews should legislate of the constitution. He may sit in a for a Christian community. This is a box plainly dressed, and return verpalpable misrepresentation. What is dicts. But that he should sit on the proposed is, not that the Jews should bench in a black gown and white wig,

and grant new trials, would be an have no political power. The sun of abomination not to be thought of England is set for ever if the Catholics among baptized people. The distinc-exercise political power. Give the Cation is certainly most philosophical.

What power in civilised society is so great as that of the creditor over the debtor? If we take this away from the Jew, we take away from him the security of his property. If we leave it to him, we leave to him a power more despotic by far than that of the king and all his cabinet.

tholics every thing else; but keep political power from them. These wise men did not see that, when every thing else had been given, political powe had been given. They continued to repeat their cuckoo song, when it was no longer a question whether Catholics should have political power or not, when a Catholic Association bearded the Parliament, when a Catholic agitator exercised infinitely more authority than the Lord Lieutenant.

For

It would be impious to let a Jew sit in Parliament. But a Jew may make money; and money may make members of Parliament. Gatton and If it is our duty as Christians to exOld Sarum may be the property of a clude the Jews from political power, it Hebrew. An elector of Penryn will must be our duty to treat them as our take ten pounds from Shylock rather ancestors treated them, to murder them, than nine pounds nineteen shillings and banish them, and rob them. and eleven pence three farthings from in that way, and in that way alone, can Antonio. To this no objection is made. we really deprive them of political That a Jew should possess the sub-power. If we do not adopt this course, stance of legislative power, that he should command eight votes on every division as if he were the great Duke of Newcastle himself, is exactly as it should be. But that he should pass the bar and sit down on those mysterious cushions of green leather, that he should cry "hear" and "order," and talk about being on his legs, and being, for one, free to say this and to say that, would be a profanation sufficient to bring ruin on the country.

we may take away the shadow, but we must leave them the substance. We may do enough to pain and irritate them; but we shall not do enough tc secure ourselves from danger, if danger really exists. Where wealth is, there power must inevitably be.

The English Jews, we are told, are not Englishmen. They are a separate people, living locally in this island, but living morally and politically in communion with their brethren who are scattered over all the world. An En

tuguese Jew as his countryman, and on an English Christian as a stranger. This want of patriotic feeling, it is said, renders a Jew unfit to exercise political functions.

That a Jew should be privy-councillor to a Christian king would be anglish Jew looks on a Dutch or a Poreternal disgrace to the nation. But the Jew may govern the money-market, and the money-market may govern the world. The minister may be in doubt as to his scheme of finance till he has been closeted with the Jew. A congress of sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew to their assistance. The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the royal word of three kings, or the national faith of three new American republics. But that he should put Right Honourable before his name would be the most frightful of national calamities.

It was in this way that some of our politicians reasoned about the Irish Catholics. The Catholics ought to

The argument has in it something plausible; but a close examination shows it to be quite unsound. Even if the alleged facts are admitted, still the Jews are not the only people who have preferred their sect to their country. The feeling of patriotism, when society is in a healthful state, springs up, by a natural and inevitable association, in the minds of citizens who know that they owe all their comforts and pleasures to the bond which unites them in one community. But, under a partial and oppressive government, these asso

If the English Jews really felt a deadly hatred to England, if the weekly prayer of their synagogues were that all the curses denounced by Ezekiel on Tyre and Egypt might fall on London, if, in their solemn feasts, they called down blessings on those who should

ciations cannot acquire that strength and to censure the other sections of the which they have in a better state of state for their want of patriotic spirit. things. Men are compelled to seek If the Jews have not felt towards Engfrom their party that protection which land like children, it is because she has they ought to receive from their treated them like a step-mother. There country, and they, by a natural conse- is no feeling which more certainly dequence, transfer to their party that af-velopes itself in the minds of men livfection which they would otherwise ing under tolerably good government have felt for their country. The Hu- than the feeling of patriotism. Since guenots of France called in the help of the beginning of the world, there never England against their Catholic kings. was any nation, or any large portion The Catholics of France called in the of any nation, not cruelly oppressed, help of Spain against a Huguenot king. which was wholly destitute of that feelWould it be fair to infer, that at pre-ing. To make it therefore ground of sent the French Protestants would accusation against a class of men, that wish to see their religion made domi- they are not patriotic, is the most vulnant by the help of a Prussian or En-gar legerdemain of sophistry. It is glish army? Surely not, and why is the logic which the wolf employs it that they are not willing, as they against the lamb. It is to accuse the formerly were willing, to sacrifice the mouth of the stream of poisoning the interests of their country to the inter- source. ests of their religious persuasion? The reason is obvious: they were persecuted then, and are not persecuted now. The English Puritans, under Charles the First, prevailed on the Scotch to invade England. Do the Protestant Dissenters of our time wish to see the Church put down by an in-dash their children to pieces on the vasion of foreign Calvinists? If not, stones, still, we say, , their hatred to their to what cause are we to attribute the countrymen would not be more intense change? Surely to this, that the Pro- than that which sects of Christians have testant Dissenters are far better treated often borne to each other. But in fact now than in the seventeenth century. the feeling of the Jews is not such. It Some of the most illustrious public is precisely what, in the situation in men that England ever produced were which they are placed, we should exinclined to take refuge from the ty-pect it to be. They are treated far ranny of Laud in North America. Was this because Presbyterians and Independents are incapable of loving their country? But it is idle to multiply instances. Nothing is so offensive to a man who knows any thing of history or of human nature as to hear those who exercise the powers of government accuse any sect of foreign attachments. If there be any proposition universally true in politics it is this, that foreign attachments are the fruit of domestic misrule. It has always been the trick of bigots to make their subjects miserable at home, and then to complain that they look for relief abroad; to divide society, and to wonder that it is not united; to govern as if a section of the state were the whole,

better than the French Protestants were treated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or than our Puritans were treated in the time of Laud. They, therefore, have no rancour against the government or against their countrymen. It will not be denied that they are far better affeeted to the state than the followers of Coligni or Vane. But they are not so well treated as the dissenting sects of Christians are now treated in England; and on this account, and, we firmly believe, on this account alone, they have a more exclusive spirit. Till we have carried the experiment farther, we are not entitled to conclude that they cannot be made Englishmen altogether. The statesman who treats them as aliens,

« PreviousContinue »