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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75879 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Note
+  Italic text displayed as: _italic_
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  _ESSAY AND SPEECH
+  ON
+  JEWISH DISABILITIES_
+
+  BY
+  LORD MACAULAY
+
+  EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY
+
+  ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A.
+  AND THE
+  REV. S. LEVY, M.A.
+
+  _Second Edition_
+
+  Printed for the
+  _Jewish Historical Society of England
+  By_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  EDINBURGH
+
+  1910
+
+
+
+
+_NOTE_
+
+
+_The authors and editors of all volumes published by the Jewish
+Historical Society of England accept full and sole responsibility for
+the views expressed by them._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+  EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION                                                7
+
+  MACAULAY’S ESSAY                                                    19
+
+  MACAULAY’S SPEECH                                                   42
+
+  EDITORS’ NOTES                                                      63
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  PORTRAIT OF MACAULAY        _Frontispiece_
+
+  The frontispiece is a reduced photograph of
+  the portrait by Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A. The
+  original is in the National Portrait Gallery, London
+  (No. 453).
+
+
+  MACAULAY’S AUTOGRAPH         _To face page 62_
+
+  A facsimile reproduction of Macaulay’s signature
+  at the end of a letter to Macvey Napier,
+  Editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, dated 10th Feb.
+  1839. The original is in the British Museum
+  (Add. MS. 34,620 f. 83 b).
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The first edition of this reprint of Macaulay’s famous essay and
+speech on the removal of Jewish disabilities was timed for publication
+on December 28, 1909, the fiftieth anniversary of their author’s
+death. It was intended to serve a double object. In the first place,
+it was a tribute to the memory of Macaulay in grateful recognition
+of his strenuous advocacy of the cause of Jewish emancipation; and
+in the second place, it was designed to be a further memento of the
+celebration organised by the Jewish Historical Society of England in
+1908, on the occasion of the jubilee of the admission of Jews into
+Parliament.
+
+Neither the essay nor the speech was Macaulay’s first contribution to
+the cause of Jewish emancipation. Thomas Babington (afterwards Lord)
+Macaulay (1800-1859) entered the House of Commons at the General
+Election of 1830. On April 5, in that same year, Mr. (afterwards Sir)
+Robert Grant moved to bring in a Bill to remove Jewish political
+disabilities. The motion was opposed by Sir Robert Inglis. When Inglis
+resumed his seat, “Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Macaulay,” as Hansard
+reports, “rose together, but the latter, being a new Member, was
+called for by the House.” Thus, Macaulay’s maiden speech was delivered
+in behalf of the Jewish cause. It made considerable stir. Sir James
+Mackintosh took part in the debate later, and after complimenting the
+young orator, said: “I do not rise, therefore, to supply any defects
+in that address, for indeed there were none that I could find; but it
+is principally to absolve my own conscience that I offer myself to the
+attention of the House.”
+
+Writing to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Isaac Lyon Goldsmid on April 13, 1830,
+Lord Holland suggested “that it might promote your cause to print a
+correct copy of the late triumphant debate in the Commons in the shape
+of a pamphlet during holidays. If Mr. Grant, Sir James Mackintosh, Mr.
+Macaulay, and Dr. Lushington could be prevailed upon to correct their
+speeches for that publication, it would be a valuable manual for all
+those who in or out of Parliament are disposed to urge the facts and
+reasons in your favour” (_Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society
+of England_, iv. 158). This advice does not seem to have been followed,
+nor did Macaulay himself reprint this particular speech, but it was
+included in Vizetelly’s two volumes of Macaulay’s Speeches, published
+in 1853, much to their author’s indignation. The speech occupies the
+first place in Vol. I. In the second volume of Vizetelly’s edition is
+another speech by Macaulay, delivered in the House on March 31, 1841,
+on the Jews’ Declaration Bill. Angered by Vizetelly’s publication,
+Macaulay himself brought out an edition of his speeches. He included
+neither of the two speeches which appear in Vizetelly, but inserted the
+more powerful and effective speech delivered on April 17, 1833.
+
+The production of the essay seems in the first instance to have been
+due to Macaulay’s own initiative. For on April 29, 1830, a little over
+three weeks after the 1830 debate, he wrote to Macvey Napier, the
+editor of the _Edinburgh Review_: “If, as I rather fear, we should be
+beaten in Parliament this year about the Jews, a short pungent article
+on that question might be useful and taking. It ought to come within
+the compass of a single sheet” (_Selection from the Correspondence of
+the late Macvey Napier_, London, 1879, p. 80). In the course of the
+next few months Macaulay was strengthened in his conviction of the
+probable efficacy of an essay on the Jewish case by the representations
+which were made to him in the interval, apparently as an indirect
+result of Lord Holland’s original suggestion for the reprint in
+pamphlet form of the debate in the House of Commons on April 5, 1830.
+Thus in another letter to Macvey Napier, dated October 16, 1830, he
+stated: “The Jews have been urging me to say something about their
+claims; and I really think that the question might be discussed, both
+on general and on particular grounds, in a very attractive manner.
+What do you think of this plan?” (ibid., pp. 93, 94). On November 27,
+1830, he wrote again: “I have only a minute to write. I will send you
+an article on the Jews next week” (ibid., p. 97). And finally on
+December 17, 1830, Macaulay sent the article as promised. “I send you
+an article on the Jews.... I am very busy, or I should have sent you
+this Jew article before. It is short, and carelessly written, perhaps,
+as to style, but certainly as to penmanship” (ibid., p. 98). The essay
+appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_ in the following month, January
+1831, and thus stands in date between the maiden speech of 1830 and
+the speech of 1833. In the latter year the House of Commons passed Mr.
+Grant’s Bill through all its stages, though it was not till 1860 that
+the victory was formally won, after a practical triumph in 1858. It is
+curious to note that, in the debate of 1830, Mr. Grant appealed to the
+Commons to concede justice to the Jews promptly, and not let the matter
+hang in the balance for thirty years, as had been done with Catholic
+Emancipation. The very interval feared by Mr. Grant separated his
+original motion from its final ratification. Macaulay’s essay played a
+great part in converting English public opinion. So popular had this
+essay become, so convincing its plea, that it was regarded as the main
+statement of the Jewish case. Edition after edition of the volume
+containing the essay was called for and exhausted. So late as September
+1847, when the Tory organ, the _Quarterly Review_, futilely attempted
+to set up a reasonable case against the Jewish claim, the whole of the
+argument was directed towards rebutting Macaulay’s essay.
+
+The present edition is a verbal reprint of Macaulay’s own revision.
+In the notes attention is drawn to some of the modifications which
+the author introduced, but a few words may here be said on one or two
+points in which Macaulay’s revision is particularly interesting. Thus,
+in the speech as reported in Hansard (3rd Series, Vol. XVII., col.
+232), there occurs this passage, deleted in the revision:—
+
+ “No charge could be brought against the Jews of evincing any
+ disposition to attack the Christian religion, or to offend its
+ professors. It was true that one imputation of such a nature had
+ lately been thrown out in that House, but it was entirely unfounded.
+ _He had seen a great deal of the worship of the Jews_, and he had
+ heard a great deal on the subject from others, and _from all that he
+ had seen_ and all that he had heard, he was able to say, without the
+ slightest fear of contradiction, that there was no part of the Jewish
+ worship which was not only not insulting to Christians, but in which
+ Christians might not, without the least difficulty, join.”
+
+The imputation had been made in the House by William Cobbett, on March
+1, 1833. The most noteworthy point is, however, the sentences which
+have been italicised. They give direct evidence that Macaulay must
+often have visited the synagogue services.
+
+In the revision of the essay, Macaulay, by omitting a couple of
+sentences, laid himself open to a charge of formal fallacy. Professor
+F. C. Montague (in his edition of the Essays, Vol. I. p. 289) writes:
+“When Macaulay asserts the identity of the two propositions—It is right
+that some person or persons should possess political power, and, Some
+person or persons must have a right to political power—he commits an
+obvious fallacy.” But in the _Edinburgh Review_ Macaulay continued: “It
+will hardly be denied that government is a means for the attainment of
+an end. If men have a right to the end, they have a right to this—that
+the means shall be such as will accomplish the end.” There is thus no
+fallacy in the argument as Macaulay intended it to be understood. It
+is equally difficult to admit the validity of Professor Montague’s
+further comment: “Neither is it true in all cases, and without any
+qualification, that differences of religion are absolutely irrelevant
+to the bestowal of political power. In some cases the differences of
+thought and feeling between the adherents of different creeds are so
+many and so considerable that harmonious co-operation in the same body
+politic becomes almost inconceivable. Whilst Mohammedanism and Hinduism
+remain what they are, it is scarcely conceivable that Mohammedans and
+Hindus could really blend in one constituent body for the choice of
+a parliament which should govern India.” It remains to be proved by
+experience whether the results of Lord Morley’s constitutional reforms
+will not belie this fear, and whether the joint admission of various
+sects to political responsibility will not, in the end, mitigate
+sectarian animosities, under the impulse of a common striving for the
+common good. And Macaulay’s point is missed by Professor Montague.
+Religion _as such_ must not be made a bar to admission to political
+rights. Macaulay did not argue that power should be placed in the
+hands of those unfit to use it for the general good. But assuming the
+fitness proved, their religion must not be a ground for exclusion.
+Every one admitted that the fitness had been proved in the case of the
+Jews. Inglis, who preceded Macaulay, and, of course, on the opposite
+side, said in the 1833 debate: “He believed that there was no portion
+of the community that furnished a smaller relative proportion of
+criminals, or that were better conducted, than the Jews were.” Another
+opponent of the Bill, Mr. Halcomb, said: “He admitted that the Jews
+were a body against whose moral character nothing could be adduced;
+that they were good and loyal citizens of the king.” Mr. William Roche
+(a Catholic supporter of the Bill) might well comment on all this: “If,
+Sir, the Jews have proved themselves good subjects in this country, and
+in all other countries where they have been domesticated and admitted
+to political freedom, that is all we have a right to look to, leaving
+to them, as to every other sect, perfect liberty of conscience in their
+spiritual concerns.” Of course Professor Montague does not dispute the
+validity of Macaulay’s plea as applied to _the Jews_. He describes the
+success of the arguments in the essay as complete, and their justice as
+generally admitted.
+
+J. Cotter Morison, in his life of Macaulay in the “English Men of
+Letters” series, advanced the view “that Macaulay’s natural aptitude
+was rather oratorical than literary.... It is no exaggeration to say
+that as an orator he moves in a higher intellectual plane than he does
+as a writer.... In his speeches we find him nearly without exception
+laying down broad luminous principles, based upon reason, and those
+boundless stores of historical illustration, from which he argues with
+equal brevity and force. It is interesting to compare his treatment of
+the same subject in an essay and a speech. His speech on the Maynooth
+grant and his essay on Mr. Gladstone’s _Church and State_ deal with
+practically the same question, and few persons would hesitate to give
+the preference to the speech” (pp. 131, 132). Jewish disabilities
+is another subject which occasioned both an essay and a speech from
+Macaulay. Here, too, the speech, by comparison, must be judged to be
+more effective than the essay. Certainly there is no passage in the
+essay which equals in dignity and strength and eloquence the following
+sentences in the speech:—
+
+ “Nobody knows better than my honourable friend the Member for the
+ University of Oxford that there is nothing in their national character
+ which unfits them for the highest duties of citizens. He knows that,
+ in the infancy of civilisation, when our island was as savage as New
+ Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to Athens, when
+ scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the site of Rome,
+ this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their
+ splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their schools of
+ sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural
+ philosophers, their historians and their poets. What nation ever
+ contended more manfully against overwhelming odds for its independence
+ and religion? What nation ever, in its last agonies, gave such signal
+ proofs of what may be accomplished by a brave despair? And if, in the
+ course of many centuries, the oppressed descendants of warriors and
+ sages have degenerated from the qualities of their fathers, if, while
+ excluded from the blessings of law, and bowed down under the yoke of
+ slavery, they have contracted some of the vices of outlaws and of
+ slaves, shall we consider this as matter of reproach to them? Shall we
+ not rather consider it as matter of shame and remorse to ourselves?
+ Let us do justice to them. Let us open to them the door of the House
+ of Commons. Let us open to them every career in which ability and
+ energy can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume
+ to say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no
+ heroism among the descendants of the Maccabees” (_Infra_, pp. 60, 61).
+
+We may at this distance of time prefer the speech to the essay.
+Nevertheless, we cannot but be profoundly grateful for both, and
+are bound to recognise and appreciate the deep influence they both
+exercised in persuading public opinion to grant the Jews of England
+complete equality before the law with all other denominations. Macaulay
+was brought up in a home which was the headquarters of the movement
+for the abolition of slavery. He carried the lessons of his youth into
+the work of his manhood. He championed the cause of the persecuted and
+the wronged in various human relations. But nothing that he did has
+raised a more enduring monument to his name than his enthusiastic and
+triumphant advocacy of the cause of Jewish freedom.
+
+
+
+
+Civil Disabilities of the Jews
+
+FROM
+
+“THE EDINBURGH REVIEW,” _Jan. 1831_
+
+_Statement of the Civil Disabilities and Privations affecting Jews in
+England_
+
+8vo. London: 1829[1]
+
+
+The distinguished member of the House of Commons who, towards the close
+of the late Parliament, brought forward a proposition for the relief of
+the Jews, has given notice of his intention to renew it.[2] The force
+of reason, 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.[3] 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 claiming to be arguments, which have
+been employed to vindicate a system full of absurdity and injustice.
+
+The constitution, it is said, is essentially Christian; and therefore
+to admit 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; and no
+man can justly complain that he is shut out from it.
+
+We cannot but admire the ingenuity 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 others. Is it not a
+source of mortification 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 for those who advance it. If no man has a right to political
+power, then neither Jew nor Gentile has such a right. The whole
+foundation of government is taken away. But if government be taken
+away, the property 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 person or persons must have a right to political
+power.[4]
+
+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 of compelling us to settle our disputes
+by arbitration instead of settling them by blows, for the purpose of
+compelling us to supply our wants by industry instead of supplying
+them by rapine. This is the only operation for which the machinery
+of government is peculiarly adapted, the only operation which wise
+governments ever propose to themselves as their chief object. If there
+is any class of people who are not interested, or who do not think
+themselves interested, in the security of property 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.[5]
+
+But it would be monstrous, say the persecutors, that Jews
+should legislate for a Christian community. This is a palpable
+misrepresentation. What is proposed is, not that the Jews should
+legislate for a Christian community, but that a legislature composed
+of Christians and Jews should legislate for a community composed of
+Christians and Jews. On nine hundred and ninety-nine questions out of a
+thousand, on all questions of police, of finance, of civil and criminal
+law, of foreign policy, the Jew, as a Jew, has no interest hostile to
+that of the Christian, or even to that of the Churchman. On questions
+relating to the ecclesiastical establishment, the Jew and the Churchman
+may differ. But they cannot differ more widely than the Catholic and
+the Churchman, or the Independent and the Churchman. The principle
+that Churchmen ought to monopolise the whole power of the state would
+at least have an intelligible meaning. The principle that Christians
+ought to monopolise 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 to try issues of law, there
+is an end of the constitution. He may sit in a box plainly dressed,
+and return verdicts. But that he should sit on the bench in a black
+gown and white wig, and grant new trials, would be an abomination not
+to be thought of among baptized people. The distinction 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.
+
+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 Old Sarum
+may be the property of a Hebrew. An elector of Penryn will take ten
+pounds from Shylock rather than nine pounds nineteen shillings and
+elevenpence three farthings from Antonio.[6] To this no objection is
+made. That a Jew should possess the substance of legislative power,
+that he should command eight votes on every division as if he were the
+great Duke of Newcastle[7] 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.
+
+That a Jew should be privy councillor to a Christian king would
+be an eternal 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 a 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 have no political power. The
+sun of England is set for ever if the Catholics exercise political
+power. Give the Catholics everything else; but keep political power
+from them. These wise men did not see that, when everything else had
+been given, political power 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.[8]
+
+If it is our duty as Christians to exclude the Jews from political
+power, it must be our duty to treat them as our ancestors treated them,
+to murder them, and banish them, and rob them. For in that way, and in
+that way alone, can we really deprive them of political power. If we do
+not adopt this course, 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 to 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 English Jew looks on a Dutch or a Portuguese 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.
+
+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 associations cannot acquire
+that strength which they have in a better state of things. Men are
+compelled to seek from their party that protection which they ought
+to receive from their country, and they, by a natural consequence,
+transfer to their party that affection which they would otherwise have
+felt for their country. The Huguenots of France called in the help of
+England against their Catholic kings. The Catholics of France called in
+the help of Spain against a Huguenot king. Would it be fair to infer,
+that at present the French Protestants would wish to see their religion
+made dominant by the help of a Prussian or English army? Surely not.
+And why is it that they are not willing, as they formerly were willing,
+to sacrifice the interests of their country to the interests 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 invasion
+of foreign Calvinists? If not, to what cause are we to attribute
+the change? Surely to this, that the Protestant Dissenters are far
+better treated now than in the seventeenth century. Some of the most
+illustrious public men that England ever produced were inclined to
+take refuge from the tyranny of Laud in North America.[9] 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 anything 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, and to censure the other sections
+of the state for their want of patriotic spirit. If the Jews have not
+felt towards England like children, it is because she has treated them
+like a stepmother. There is no feeling which more certainly develops
+itself in the minds of men living under tolerably good government than
+the feeling of patriotism. Since the beginning of the world, there
+never was any nation, or any large portion of any nation, not cruelly
+oppressed, which was wholly destitute of that feeling. To make it,
+therefore, ground of accusation against a class of men, that they are
+not patriotic, is the most vulgar legerdemain of sophistry. It is the
+logic which the wolf employs against the lamb. It is to accuse the
+mouth of the stream of poisoning the source.[10]
+
+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 dash
+their children to pieces on the stones, still, we say, their hatred
+to their countrymen would not be more intense than that which sects
+of Christians have often borne to each other. But in fact the feeling
+of the Jews is not such. It is precisely what, in the situation in
+which they are placed, we should expect it to be. They are treated
+far 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 affected to the state than the followers of Coligni or Vane.[11]
+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, and then abuses them for not entertaining all
+the feelings of natives, is as unreasonable as the tyrant who punished
+their fathers for not making bricks without straw.
+
+Rulers must not be suffered thus to absolve themselves of their solemn
+responsibility. It does not lie in their mouths to say that a sect
+is not patriotic. It is their business to make it patriotic. History
+and reason clearly indicate the means. The English Jews are, as far
+as we can see, precisely what our government has made them. They are
+precisely what any sect, what any class of men, treated as they have
+been treated, would have been. If all the red-haired people in Europe
+had, during centuries, been outraged and oppressed, banished from
+this place, imprisoned in that, deprived of their money, deprived of
+their teeth, convicted of the most improbable crimes on the feeblest
+evidence, dragged at horses’ tails, hanged, tortured, burned alive;
+if, when manners became milder, they had still been subject to
+debasing restrictions and exposed to vulgar insults, locked up in
+particular streets in some countries, pelted and ducked by the rabble
+in others, excluded everywhere from magistracies and honours, what
+would be the patriotism of gentlemen with red hair? And if, under such
+circumstances, a proposition were made for admitting red-haired men
+to office, how striking a speech might an eloquent admirer of our old
+institutions deliver against so revolutionary a measure! “These men,”
+he might say, “scarcely consider themselves as Englishmen. They think
+a red-haired Frenchman or a red-haired German more closely connected
+with them than a man with brown hair born in their own parish. If a
+foreign sovereign patronises red hair, they love him better than their
+own native king. They are not Englishmen: they cannot be Englishmen:
+nature has forbidden it: experience proves it to be impossible. Right
+to political power they have none; for no man has a right to political
+power. Let them enjoy personal security; let their property be under
+the protection of the law. But if they ask for leave to exercise power
+over a community of which they are only half members, a community the
+constitution of which is essentially dark-haired, let us answer them in
+the words of our wise ancestors, _Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari_.”[12]
+
+But it is said, the Scriptures declare that the Jews are to be restored
+to their own country; and the whole nation looks forward to that
+restoration. They are, therefore, not so deeply interested as others in
+the prosperity of England. It is not their home, but merely the place
+of their sojourn, the house of their bondage. This argument, which
+first appeared in the _Times_ newspaper,[13] and which has attracted a
+degree of attention proportioned not so much to its own intrinsic force
+as to the general talent with which that journal is conducted, belongs
+to a class of sophisms by which the most hateful persecutions may
+easily be justified. To charge men with practical consequences which
+they themselves deny is disingenuous in controversy; it is atrocious
+in government. The doctrine of predestination, in the opinion of many
+people, tends to make those who hold it utterly immoral. And certainly
+it would seem that a man who believes his eternal destiny to be already
+irrevocably fixed is likely to indulge his passions without restraint
+and to neglect his religious duties. If he is an heir of wrath, his
+exertions must be unavailing. If he is preordained to life, they must
+be superfluous. But would it be wise to punish every man who holds
+the higher doctrines of Calvinism, as if he had actually committed
+all those crimes which we know some Antinomians to have committed?
+Assuredly not. The fact notoriously is that there are many Calvinists
+as moral in their conduct as any Arminian, and many Arminians as loose
+as any Calvinist.
+
+It is altogether impossible to reason from the opinions which a man
+professes to his feelings and his actions; and in fact no person is
+ever such a fool as to reason thus, except when he wants a pretext
+for persecuting his neighbours. A Christian is commanded, under the
+strongest sanctions, to be just in all his dealings. Yet to how many
+of the twenty-four millions of professing Christians in these islands
+would any man in his senses lend a thousand pounds without security? A
+man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people
+about him were influenced by the religion which they professed, would
+find himself ruined before night; and no man ever does act on that
+supposition in any of the ordinary concerns of life, in borrowing, in
+lending, in buying, or in selling. But when any of our fellow-creatures
+are to be oppressed, the case is different. Then we represent those
+motives which we know to be so feeble for good as omnipotent for evil.
+Then we lay to the charge of our victims all the vices and follies to
+which their doctrines, however remotely, seem to tend. We forget that
+the same weakness, the same laxity, the same disposition to prefer the
+present to the future, which make men worse than a good religion, make
+them better than a bad one.
+
+It was in this way that our ancestors reasoned, and that some people in
+our time still reason, about the Catholics. A Papist believes himself
+bound to obey the pope. The pope has issued a bull deposing Queen
+Elizabeth. Therefore every Papist will treat her grace as an usurper.
+Therefore every Papist is a traitor. Therefore every Papist ought to
+be hanged, drawn, and quartered. To this logic we owe some of the most
+hateful laws that ever disgraced our history. Surely the answer lies on
+the surface. The Church of Rome may have commanded these men to treat
+the queen as an usurper. But she has commanded them to do many other
+things which they have never done. She enjoins her priests to observe
+strict purity. You are always taunting them with their licentiousness.
+She commands all her followers to fast often, to be charitable to the
+poor, to take no interest for money, to fight no duels, to see no
+plays. Do they obey these injunctions? If it be the fact that very few
+of them strictly observe her precepts, when her precepts are opposed
+to their passions and interests, may not loyalty, may not humanity,
+may not the love of ease, may not the fear of death, be sufficient
+to prevent them from executing those wicked orders which the Church
+of Rome has issued against the sovereign of England? When we know
+that many of these people do not care enough for their religion to go
+without beef on a Friday for it, why should we think that they will run
+the risk of being racked and hanged for it?
+
+People are now reasoning about the Jews as our fathers reasoned about
+the Papists. The law which is inscribed on the walls of the synagogues
+prohibits covetousness.[14] But if we were to say that a Jew mortgagee
+would not foreclose because God had commanded him not to covet his
+neighbour’s house, everybody would think us out of our wits. Yet it
+passes for an argument to say that a Jew will take no interest in
+the prosperity of the country in which he lives, that he will not
+care how bad its laws and police may be, how heavily it may be taxed,
+how often it may be conquered and given up to spoil, because God has
+promised that, by some unknown means and at some undetermined time,
+perhaps ten thousand years hence, the Jews shall migrate to Palestine.
+Is not this the most profound ignorance of human nature? Do we not
+know that what is remote and indefinite affects men far less than
+what is near and certain? The argument, too, applies to Christians as
+strongly as to Jews. The Christian believes as well as the Jew, that
+at some future period the present order of things will come to an end.
+Nay, many Christians believe that the Messiah will shortly establish
+a kingdom on the earth, and reign visibly over all its inhabitants.
+Whether this doctrine be orthodox or not we shall not here inquire. The
+number of people who hold it is very much greater than the number of
+Jews residing in England. Many of those who hold it are distinguished
+by rank, wealth, and ability. It is preached from pulpits both of the
+Scottish and of the English Church. Noblemen and Members of Parliament
+have written in defence of it. Now wherein does this doctrine differ,
+as far as its political tendency is concerned, from the doctrine of
+the Jews? If a Jew is unfit to legislate for us because he believes
+that he or his remote descendants will be removed to Palestine, can we
+safely open the House of Commons to a fifth-monarchy man, who expects
+that before this generation shall pass away, all the kingdoms of the
+earth will be swallowed up in one divine empire?
+
+Does a Jew engage less eagerly than a Christian in any competition
+which the law leaves open to him? Is he less active and regular in
+his business than his neighbours? Does he furnish his house meanly,
+because he is a pilgrim and sojourner in the land? Does the expectation
+of being restored to the country of his fathers make him insensible
+to the fluctuations of the stock-exchange? Does he, in arranging his
+private affairs, ever take into the account the chance of his migrating
+to Palestine? If not, why are we to suppose that feelings which
+never influence his dealings as a merchant, or his dispositions as a
+testator, will acquire a boundless influence over him as soon as he
+becomes a magistrate or a legislator?
+
+There is another argument which we would not willingly treat with
+levity, and which yet we scarcely know how to treat seriously.
+Scripture, it is said, is full of terrible denunciations against the
+Jews. It is foretold that they are to be wanderers. Is it then right to
+give them a home? It is foretold that they are to be oppressed. Can we
+with propriety suffer them to be rulers? To admit them to the rights of
+citizens is manifestly to insult the Divine oracles.
+
+We allow that to falsify a prophecy inspired by Divine Wisdom would be
+a most atrocious crime. It is, therefore, a happy circumstance for our
+frail species, that it is a crime which no man can possibly commit. If
+we admit the Jews to seats in Parliament, we shall, by so doing, prove
+that the prophecies in question, whatever they may mean, do not mean
+that the Jews shall be excluded from Parliament.
+
+In fact it is already clear that the prophecies do not bear the meaning
+put upon them by the respectable persons whom we are now answering.
+In France and in the United States the Jews are already admitted to
+all the rights of citizens. A prophecy, therefore, which should mean
+that the Jews would never, during the course of their wanderings, be
+admitted to all the rights of citizens in the places of their sojourn,
+would be a false prophecy. This, therefore, is not the meaning of the
+prophecies of Scripture.
+
+But we protest altogether against the practice of confounding prophecy
+with precept, of setting up predictions which are often obscure against
+a morality which is always clear. If actions are to be considered as
+just and good merely because they have been predicted, what action
+was ever more laudable than that crime which our bigots are now,
+at the end of eighteen centuries, urging us to avenge on the Jews,
+that crime which made the earth shake and blotted out the sun from
+heaven? The same reasoning which is now employed to vindicate the
+disabilities imposed on our Hebrew countrymen will equally vindicate
+the kiss of Judas and the judgment of Pilate. “The son of man goeth,
+as it is written of him; but woe to that man by whom the son of man
+is betrayed.”[15] And woe to those who, in any age or in any country,
+disobey his benevolent commands under pretence of accomplishing his
+predictions. If this argument justifies the laws now existing against
+the Jews, it justifies equally all the cruelties which have ever
+been committed against them, the sweeping edicts of banishment and
+confiscation, the dungeon, the rack, and the slow fire. How can we
+excuse ourselves for leaving property to people who are to “serve their
+enemies in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of
+all things”; for giving protection to the persons of those who are to
+“fear day and night, and to have none assurance of their life”; for not
+seizing on the children of a race whose “sons and daughters are to be
+given unto another people”?[16]
+
+We have not so learned the doctrines of him who commanded us to love
+our neighbour as ourselves, and who, when he was called upon to explain
+what he meant by a neighbour, selected as an example a heretic and an
+alien.[17] Last year, we remember, it was represented by a pious writer
+in the _John Bull_ newspaper,[18] and by some other equally fervid
+Christians, as a monstrous indecency, that the measure for the relief
+of the Jews should be brought forward in Passion week. One of these
+humourists ironically recommended that it should be read a second time
+on Good Friday. We should have had no objection; nor do we believe
+that the day could be commemorated in a more worthy manner. We know of
+no day fitter for terminating long hostilities, and repairing cruel
+wrongs, than the day on which the religion of mercy was founded. We
+know of no day fitter for blotting out from the statute-book the last
+traces of intolerance than the day on which the spirit of intolerance
+produced the foulest of all judicial murders, the day on which the list
+of the victims of intolerance, that noble list wherein Socrates and
+More are enrolled, was glorified by a yet greater and holier name.
+
+
+
+
+A SPEECH
+
+DELIVERED IN A COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE HOUSE OF COMMONS
+
+_On the 17th of April 1833._
+
+
+ On the seventeenth of April, 1833, the House of Commons resolved
+ itself into a Committee to consider of the civil disabilities of
+ the Jews. Mr. Warburton took the chair. Mr. Robert Grant moved the
+ following resolution:—
+
+  “That it is the opinion of this Committee that it is expedient to
+  remove all civil disabilities at present existing with respect to
+  His Majesty’s subjects professing the Jewish religion, with the like
+  exceptions as are provided with respect to His Majesty’s subjects
+  professing the Roman Catholic religion.”
+
+ The resolution passed without a division, after a warm debate, in the
+ course of which the following Speech was made:—
+
+MR. WARBURTON,—I recollect, and my honourable friend the Member for
+the University of Oxford[19] will recollect, that when this subject
+was discussed three years ago, it was remarked, by one whom we both
+loved and whom we both regret, that the strength of the case of the
+Jews was a serious inconvenience to their advocate, for that it was
+hardly possible to make a speech for them without wearying the audience
+by repeating truths which were universally admitted. If Sir James
+Mackintosh felt this difficulty when the question was first brought
+forward in this House, I may well despair of being able now to offer
+any arguments which have a pretence to novelty.[20]
+
+My honourable friend, the Member for the University of Oxford, began
+his speech by declaring that he had no intention of calling in question
+the principles of religious liberty. He utterly disclaims persecution,
+that is to say, persecution as defined by himself. It would, in his
+opinion, be persecution to hang a Jew, or to flay him, or to draw
+his teeth, or to imprison him, or to fine him; for every man who
+conducts himself peaceably has a right to his life and his limbs, to
+his personal liberty and his property. But it is not persecution,
+says my honourable friend, to exclude any individual or any class
+from office; for nobody has a right to office: in every country
+official appointments must be subject to such regulations as the
+supreme authority may choose to make; nor can any such regulations be
+reasonably complained of by any member of the society as unjust. He
+who obtains an office obtains it, not as matter of right, but as matter
+of favour. He who does not obtain an office is not wronged; he is only
+in that situation in which the vast majority of every community must
+necessarily be. There are in the United Kingdom five and twenty million
+Christians without places; and, if they do not complain, why should
+five and twenty thousand Jews complain of being in the same case? In
+this way my honourable friend has convinced himself that, as it would
+be most absurd in him and me to say that we are wronged because we are
+not Secretaries of State, so it is most absurd in the Jews to say that
+they are wronged because they are, as a people, excluded from public
+employment.
+
+Now, surely my honourable friend cannot have considered to what
+conclusions his reasoning leads. Those conclusions are so monstrous
+that he would, I am certain, shrink from them. Does he really mean that
+it would not be wrong in the legislature to enact that no man should
+be a judge unless he weighed twelve stone, or that no man should sit
+in Parliament unless he were six feet high? We are about to bring in
+a bill for the government of India. Suppose that we were to insert
+in that bill a clause providing that no graduate of the University
+of Oxford should be Governor-General or Governor of any Presidency,
+would not my honourable friend cry out against such a clause as most
+unjust to the learned body which he represents? And would he think
+himself sufficiently answered by being told, in his own words, that
+the appointment to office is a mere matter of favour, and that to
+exclude an individual or a class from office is no injury? Surely, on
+consideration, he must admit that official appointments ought not to be
+subject to regulations purely arbitrary, to regulations for which no
+reason can be given but mere caprice, and that those who would exclude
+any class from public employment are bound to show some special reason
+for the exclusion.
+
+My honourable friend has appealed to us as Christians. Let me then
+ask him how he understands that great commandment which comprises the
+law and the prophets. Can we be said to do unto others as we would
+that they should do unto us if we wantonly inflict on them even the
+smallest pain? As Christians, surely we are bound to consider, first,
+whether, by excluding the Jews from all public trust, we give them
+pain; and, secondly, whether it be necessary to give them that pain in
+order to avert some greater evil. That by excluding them from public
+trust we inflict pain on them my honourable friend will not dispute.
+As a Christian, therefore, he is bound to relieve them from that pain,
+unless he can show, what I am sure he has not yet shown, that it is
+necessary to the general good that they should continue to suffer.
+
+But where, he says, are you to stop, if once you admit into the
+House of Commons people who deny the authority of the Gospels? Will
+you let in a Mussulman? Will you let in a Parsee? Will you let in a
+Hindoo, who worships a lump of stone with seven heads? I will answer
+my honourable friend’s question by another. Where does he mean to
+stop? Is he ready to roast unbelievers at slow fires? If not, let him
+tell us why: and I will engage to prove that his reason is just as
+decisive against the intolerance which he thinks a duty, as against
+the intolerance which he thinks a crime. Once admit that we are bound
+to inflict pain on a man because he is not of our religion; and where
+are you to stop? Why stop at the point fixed by my honourable friend
+rather than at the point fixed by the honourable Member for Oldham,[21]
+who would make the Jews incapable of holding land? And why stop at
+the point fixed by the honourable Member for Oldham rather than at
+the point which would have been fixed by a Spanish Inquisitor of the
+sixteenth century? When once you enter on a course of persecution, I
+defy you to find any reason for making a halt till you have reached
+the extreme point. When my honourable friend tells us that he will
+allow the Jews to possess property to any amount, but that he will
+not allow them to possess the smallest political power, he holds
+contradictory language. Property is power. The honourable Member for
+Oldham reasons better than my honourable friend. The honourable member
+for Oldham sees very clearly that it is impossible to deprive a man
+of political power if you suffer him to be the proprietor of half a
+county, and therefore very consistently proposes to confiscate the
+landed estates of the Jews. But even the honourable Member for Oldham
+does not go far enough. He has not proposed to confiscate the personal
+property of the Jews. Yet it is perfectly certain that any Jew who
+has a million may easily make himself very important in the state. By
+such steps we pass from official power to landed property, and from
+landed property to personal property, and from property to liberty,
+and from liberty to life. In truth, those persecutors who use the
+rack and the stake have much to say for themselves. They are convinced
+that their end is good; and it must be admitted that they employ
+means which are not unlikely to attain the end. Religious dissent has
+repeatedly been put down by sanguinary persecution. In that way the
+Albigenses were put down.[22] In that way Protestantism was suppressed
+in Spain and Italy, so that it has never since reared its head. But
+I defy anybody to produce an instance in which disabilities such as
+we are now considering have produced any other effect than that of
+making the sufferers angry and obstinate. My honourable friend should
+either persecute to some purpose, or not persecute at all. He dislikes
+the word persecution, I know. He will not admit that the Jews are
+persecuted. And yet I am confident that he would rather be sent to the
+King’s Bench Prison for three months, or be fined a hundred pounds,
+than be subject to the disabilities under which the Jews lie. How can
+he then say that to impose such disabilities is not persecution, and
+that to fine and imprison is persecution? All his reasoning consists
+in drawing arbitrary lines. What he does not wish to inflict he calls
+persecution. What he does wish to inflict he will not call persecution.
+What he takes from the Jews he calls political power. What he is too
+good-natured to take from the Jews he will not call political power.
+The Jew must not sit in Parliament; but he may be the proprietor of all
+the ten-pound houses in a borough.[23] He may have more fifty-pound
+tenants than any peer in the kingdom. He may give the voters treats to
+please their palates, and hire bands of gipsies to break their heads,
+as if he were a Christian and a Marquess. All the rest of the system is
+of a piece. The Jew may be a juryman, but not a judge. He may decide
+issues of fact, but not issues of law. He may give a hundred thousand
+pounds damages; but he may not in the most trivial case grant a new
+trial. He may rule the money-market: he may influence the exchanges: he
+may be summoned to congresses of Emperors and Kings. Great potentates,
+instead of negotiating a loan with him by tying him in a chair and
+pulling out his grinders, may treat with him as with a great potentate,
+and may postpone the declaring of war or the signing of a treaty till
+they have conferred with him. All this is as it should be: but he must
+not be a Privy Councillor. He must not be called Right Honourable, for
+that is political power. And who is it that we are trying to cheat
+in this way? Even Omniscience. Yes, Sir; we have been gravely told
+that the Jews are under the divine displeasure, and that if we give
+them political power, God will visit us in judgment. Do we then think
+that God cannot distinguish between substance and form? Does not He
+know that, while we withhold from the Jews the semblance and name of
+political power, we suffer them to possess the substance? The plain
+truth is that my honourable friend is drawn in one direction by his
+opinions, and in a directly opposite direction by his excellent heart.
+He halts between two opinions. He tries to make a compromise between
+principles which admit of no compromise. He goes a certain way in
+intolerance. Then he stops, without being able to give a reason for
+stopping. But I know the reason. It is his humanity. Those who formerly
+dragged the Jew at a horse’s tail, and singed his beard with blazing
+furze-bushes, were much worse men than my honourable friend; but they
+were more consistent than he.
+
+It has been said that it would be monstrous to see a Jew judge try a
+man for blasphemy.[24] In my opinion it is monstrous to see any judge
+try a man for blasphemy under the present law. But, if the law on
+that subject were in a sound state, I do not see why a conscientious
+Jew might not try a blasphemer. Every man, I think, ought to be at
+liberty to discuss the evidences of religion; but no man ought to be
+at liberty to force on the unwilling ears and eyes of others sounds
+and sights which must cause annoyance and irritation. The distinction
+is clear. I think it wrong to punish a man for selling Paine’s “Age of
+Reason” in a back-shop to those who choose to buy, or for delivering
+a Deistical lecture in a private room to those who choose to listen.
+But if a man exhibits at a window in the Strand a hideous caricature
+of that which is an object of awe and adoration to nine hundred and
+ninety-nine out of every thousand of the people who pass up and down
+that great thoroughfare; if a man in a place of public resort applies
+opprobrious epithets to names held in reverence by all Christians;
+such a man ought, in my opinion, to be severely punished, not for
+differing from us in opinion, but for committing a nuisance which gives
+us pain and disgust. He is no more entitled to outrage our feelings by
+obtruding his impiety on us, and to say that he is exercising his right
+of discussion, than to establish a yard for butchering horses close to
+our houses, and to say that he is exercising his right of property, or
+to run naked up and down the public streets, and to say that he is
+exercising his right of locomotion. He has a right of discussion, no
+doubt, as he has a right of property and a right of locomotion. But he
+must use all his rights so as not to infringe the rights of others.
+
+These, Sir, are the principles on which I would frame the law of
+blasphemy; and if the law were so framed, I am at a loss to understand
+why a Jew might not enforce it as well as a Christian. I am not a Roman
+Catholic; but if I were a judge at Malta, I should have no scruple
+about punishing a bigoted Protestant who should burn the Pope in effigy
+before the eyes of thousands of Roman Catholics. I am not a Mussulman;
+but if I were a judge in India, I should have no scruple about
+punishing a Christian who should pollute a mosque. Why, then, should I
+doubt that a Jew, raised by his ability, learning, and integrity to the
+judicial bench, would deal properly with any person who, in a Christian
+country, should insult the Christian religion?
+
+But, says my honourable friend, it has been prophesied that the Jews
+are to be wanderers on the face of the earth, and that they are not
+to mix on terms of equality with the people of the countries in which
+they sojourn. Now, Sir, I am confident that I can demonstrate that
+this is not the sense of any prophecy which is part of Holy Writ. For
+it is an undoubted fact that, in the United States of America, Jewish
+citizens do possess all the privileges possessed by Christian citizens.
+Therefore, if the prophecies mean that the Jews never shall, during
+their wanderings, be admitted by other nations to equal participation
+of political rights, the prophecies are false. But the prophecies are
+certainly not false. Therefore their meaning cannot be that which is
+attributed to them by my honourable friend.
+
+Another objection which has been made to the motion is that the Jews
+look forward to the coming of a great deliverer, to their return to
+Palestine, to the rebuilding of their Temple, to the revival of their
+ancient worship, and that therefore they will always consider England,
+not their country, but merely as their place of exile. But, surely,
+Sir, it would be the grossest ignorance of human nature to imagine that
+the anticipation of an event which is to happen at some time altogether
+indefinite, of an event which has been vainly expected during many
+centuries, of an event which even those who confidently expect that it
+will happen do not confidently expect that they or their children or
+their grandchildren will see, can ever occupy the minds of men to such
+a degree as to make them regardless of what is near and present and
+certain. Indeed Christians, as well as Jews, believe that the existing
+order of things will come to an end. Many Christians believe that Jesus
+will visibly reign on earth during a thousand years. Expositors of
+prophecy have gone so far as to fix the year when the Millennial period
+is to commence. The prevailing opinion is, I think, in favour of the
+year 1866; but, according to some commentators, the time is close at
+hand. Are we to exclude all millenarians from Parliament and office, on
+the ground that they are impatiently looking forward to the miraculous
+monarchy which is to supersede the present dynasty and the present
+constitution of England, and that therefore they cannot be heartily
+loyal to King William?
+
+In one important point, Sir, my honourable friend, the Member for the
+University of Oxford, must acknowledge that the Jewish religion is
+of all erroneous religions the least mischievous. There is not the
+slightest chance that the Jewish religion will spread. The Jew does
+not wish to make proselytes. He may be said to reject them.[25] He
+thinks it almost culpable in one who does not belong to his race to
+presume to belong to his religion. It is therefore not strange that a
+conversion from Christianity to Judaism should be a rarer occurrence
+than a total eclipse of the sun. There was one distinguished convert in
+the last century, Lord George Gordon; and the history of his conversion
+deserves to be remembered.[26] For if ever there was a proselyte of
+whom a proselytising sect would have been proud, it was Lord George;
+not only because he was a man of high birth and rank; not only because
+he had been a member of the legislature; but also because he had been
+distinguished by the intolerance, nay, the ferocity, of his zeal for
+his own form of Christianity. But was he allured into the synagogue?
+Was he even welcomed to it? No, Sir; he was coldly and reluctantly
+permitted to share the reproach and suffering of the chosen people;
+but he was sternly shut out from their privileges. He underwent the
+painful rite which their law enjoins. But when, on his death-bed, he
+begged hard to be buried among them according to their ceremonial, he
+was told that his request could not be granted. I understand that cry
+of “Hear.” It reminds me that one of the arguments against this motion
+is that the Jews are an unsocial people, that they draw close to each
+other, and stand aloof from strangers. Really, Sir, it is amusing to
+compare the manner in which the question of Catholic emancipation
+was argued formerly by some gentlemen with the manner in which the
+question of Jew emancipation is argued by the same gentlemen now.
+When the question was about Catholic emancipation, the cry was, “See
+how restless, how versatile, how encroaching, how insinuating, is the
+spirit of the Church of Rome. See how her priests compass earth and sea
+to make one proselyte, how indefatigably they toil, how attentively
+they study the weak and strong parts of every character, how skilfully
+they employ literature, arts, sciences, as engines for the propagation
+of their faith. You find them in every region and under every
+disguise, collating manuscripts in the Bodleian, fixing telescopes
+in the observatory of Pekin, teaching the use of the plough and the
+spinning wheel to the savages of Paraguay. Will you give power to the
+members of a Church so busy, so aggressive, so insatiable?” Well, now
+the question is about people who never try to seduce any stranger to
+join them, and who do not wish anybody to be of their faith who is
+not also of their blood. And now you exclaim, “Will you give power to
+the members of a sect which remains sullenly apart from other sects,
+which does not invite, nay, which hardly even admits neophytes?” The
+truth is, that bigotry will never want a pretence. Whatever the sect
+be which it is proposed to tolerate, the peculiarities of that sect
+will, for the time, be pronounced by intolerant men to be the most
+odious and dangerous that can be conceived. As to the Jews, that they
+are unsocial as respects religion is true; and so much the better:
+for, surely, as Christians, we cannot wish that they should bestir
+themselves to pervert us from our own faith. But that the Jews would
+be unsocial members of the civil community, if the civil community did
+its duty by them, has never been proved. My right honourable friend who
+made the motion which we are discussing has produced a great body of
+evidence to show that they have been grossly misrepresented;[27] and
+that evidence has not been refuted by my honourable friend the Member
+for the University of Oxford. But what if it were true that the Jews
+are unsocial? What if it were true that they do not regard England
+as their country? Would not the treatment which they have undergone
+explain and excuse their antipathy to the society in which they live?
+Has not similar antipathy often been felt by persecuted Christians to
+the society which persecuted them? While the bloody code of Elizabeth
+was enforced against the English Roman Catholics, what was the
+patriotism of Roman Catholics? Oliver Cromwell said that in his time
+they were Espaniolised. At a later period it might have been said that
+they were Gallicised. It was the same with the Calvinists. What more
+deadly enemies had France in the days of Louis the Fourteenth than the
+persecuted Huguenots? But would any rational man infer from these facts
+that either the Roman Catholic as such, or the Calvinist as such, is
+incapable of loving the land of his birth? If England were now invaded
+by Roman Catholics, how many English Roman Catholics would go over to
+the invader? If France were now attacked by a Protestant enemy, how
+many French Protestants would lend him help? Why not try what effect
+would be produced on the Jews by that tolerant policy which has made
+the English Roman Catholic a good Englishman and the French Calvinist a
+good Frenchman?[28]
+
+Another charge has been brought against the Jews, not by my honourable
+friend the Member for the University of Oxford—he has too much learning
+and too much good feeling to make such a charge—but by the honourable
+Member for Oldham, who has, I am sorry to see, quitted his place. The
+honourable Member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are naturally a
+mean race, a sordid race, a money-getting race; that they are averse
+to all honourable callings; that they neither sow nor reap; that
+they have neither flocks nor herds; that usury is the only pursuit
+for which they are fit; that they are destitute of all elevated and
+amiable sentiments. Such, Sir, has in every age been the reasoning of
+bigots. They never fail to plead in justification of persecution the
+vices which persecution has engendered. England has been to the Jews
+less than half a country; and we revile them because they do not feel
+for England more than a half patriotism. We treat them as slaves,
+and wonder that they do not regard us as brethren. We drive them to
+mean occupations, and then reproach them for not embracing honourable
+professions. We long forbade them to possess land; and we complain
+that they chiefly occupy themselves in trade. We shut them out from
+all the paths of ambition; and then we despise them for taking refuge
+in avarice. During many ages we have, in all our dealings with them,
+abused our immense superiority of force; and then we are disgusted
+because they have recourse to that cunning which is the natural and
+universal defence of the weak against the violence of the strong. But
+were they always a mere money-changing, money-getting, money-hoarding
+race? Nobody knows better than my honourable friend the Member for the
+University of Oxford that there is nothing in their national character
+which unfits them for the highest duties of citizens. He knows that,
+in the infancy of civilisation, when our island was as savage as New
+Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to Athens, when
+scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the site of Rome,
+this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their
+splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their schools of
+sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural
+philosophers, their historians and their poets. What nation ever
+contended more manfully against overwhelming odds for its independence
+and religion? What nation ever, in its last agonies, gave such signal
+proofs of what may be accomplished by a brave despair? And if, in the
+course of many centuries, the oppressed descendants of warriors and
+sages have degenerated from the qualities of their fathers, if, while
+excluded from the blessings of law, and bowed down under the yoke of
+slavery, they have contracted some of the vices of outlaws and of
+slaves, shall we consider this as matter of reproach to them? Shall we
+not rather consider it as matter of shame and remorse to ourselves?
+Let us do justice to them. Let us open to them the door of the House of
+Commons. Let us open to them every career in which ability and energy
+can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume to say
+that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism
+among the descendants of the Maccabees.
+
+Sir, in supporting the motion of my honourable friend, I am, I firmly
+believe, supporting the honour and the interests of the Christian
+religion. I should think that I insulted that religion if I said that
+it cannot stand unaided by intolerant laws. Without such laws it was
+established, and without such laws it may be maintained. It triumphed
+over the superstitions of the most refined and of the most savage
+nations, over the graceful mythology of Greece and the bloody idolatry
+of the Northern forests. It prevailed over the power and policy of
+the Roman empire. It tamed the barbarians by whom that empire was
+overthrown. But all these victories were gained not by the help of
+intolerance, but in spite of the opposition of intolerance. The whole
+history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from
+persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally. May
+she long continue to bless our country with her benignant influence,
+strong in her sublime philosophy, strong in her spotless morality,
+strong in those internal and external evidences to which the most
+powerful and comprehensive of human intellects have yielded assent, the
+last solace of those who have outlived every earthly hope, the last
+restraint of those who are raised above every earthly fear! But let
+not us, mistaking her character and her interests, fight the battle of
+truth with the weapons of error, and endeavour to support by oppression
+that religion which first taught the human race the great lesson of
+universal charity.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+[1] The full title of the publication which forms the peg for
+Macaulay’s essay is _Statement of the Civil Disabilities and Privations
+affecting natural born Subjects of His Majesty professing the Jewish
+Religion, commonly called Jews_. It was printed in 1829 by G. Taylor,
+Printer, 7 Little James Street. In the article in the _Westminster
+Review_, April 1829, occasioned by this same pamphlet, the address of
+the printer, George Taylor, is given as _Lamb’s Conduit Passage, Red
+Lion Square_. The _Statement_ must have appeared in two forms. Macaulay
+describes it as octavo, but the pages of the copy which Mr. Israel
+Solomons possesses measure 12½ by 7¾ inches. The margins in this copy
+have been cut for binding. It was meant to _fold_ in four, as is shown
+by the manner in which the title is repeated on the fourth side. The
+title as there printed is _exactly that cited by Macaulay_. Probably
+the document was originally a Petition to the House of Commons.
+
+The _Statement_ is anonymous, but bears the clear hallmark of Francis
+Henry Goldsmid’s style. _Cf._ D. W. Marks and A. Löwy, _Memoir of Sir
+Francis Henry Goldsmid_, 1879, p. 23 [second edition, 1882, p. 27].
+The author opens with the general assertion that no man ought to be
+deprived of civil or political right because of his religious opinions,
+“unless it can be shewn that, from the removal of their disabilities,
+injury is likely to result to the community at large.” The _Statement_
+goes on to argue that such removal would not injure the religion or
+threaten the government of England, for, on the one hand, Jews do not
+proselytise, and, on the other, they are noted for their “proverbial
+loyalty.” The experience of the happy effect of emancipation in
+France, America, and the Netherlands is next appealed to. This leads
+up to a short survey of the history of the Jews in England before the
+expulsion in 1290, and after the return in the time of Cromwell, and an
+able argument as to their legal status—including their right to hold
+land—follows. The whole concludes with an appeal for the “Omission in
+the Oath of Abjuration and Dissenters’ Declaration, when respectively
+taken, or made and subscribed, by persons professing the Jewish
+religion, of words obviously inconsistent with such profession.” It is
+altogether a moderate and able presentation of the case for the Jews,
+and fairly deserved the prominence given to it by Macaulay.
+
+[2] Sir Robert Grant (1779-1838) was born in Bengal, and, after a
+distinguished career at Cambridge, entered Parliament in 1818. In 1830
+his first Bill was rejected; but a better fate rewarded his effort of
+1833. Soon afterwards he went to India as Governor of Bombay. Grant
+was the author of some famous sacred poems, one of the best and most
+popular of which was his translation of Psalm civ., “O Worship the
+King.”
+
+[3] There had been a change of Government. Parliament was dissolved
+on July 24, 1830, and in the new parliament the Duke of Wellington’s
+ministry fell, to be succeeded by the Grey administration.
+
+[4] See comments on this passage in the Introduction.
+
+[5] Professor F. C. Montague remarks that “probably Perceval, Goulburn,
+and Vansittart are more particularly meant.” These were Chancellors
+between 1810 and 1830.
+
+[6] Gatton (Surrey) and Old Sarum (Wilts) were “pocket boroughs without
+inhabitants,” and, like the corrupt borough of Penryn (Cornwall), were
+disfranchised by the Reform Act. Macaulay was far from implying that
+Jews actually did own any corrupt boroughs. His argument is based on
+the fact that nothing in the then state of the law could prevent such
+ownership.
+
+[7] “Henry Pelham Francis Pelham Clinton, fourth Duke of Newcastle,
+1785-1851, a high Tory, ejected some of his tenants at Newark for
+having voted on the Whig side in the general election of 1830”
+(Professor Montague).
+
+[8] This refers to Daniel O’Connell—who, it may be remembered, was a
+consistent friend of the Jewish claims.
+
+[9] William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633,
+was one of the principal advisers of Charles I. in his repression of
+the Puritans and the enforcement of episcopacy upon Scotland. He was
+attainted in January 1645, and was executed on Tower Hill.
+
+[10] In the _Edinburgh Review_ these sentences follow: “It is to put
+the effect before the cause. It is to vindicate oppression by pointing
+to the depravation which oppression has caused.” Macaulay felt,
+no doubt, that the word “depravation” was unjust, and conveyed an
+unintended stigma.
+
+[11] Gaspard de Coligni was a Huguenot victim of the massacre of St.
+Bartholomew, in 1572.
+
+Sir Henry Vane was a leader in the Opposition against Charles I., and
+was executed in 1662.
+
+[12] The answer given by the lay barons at the Parliament of Merton
+in 1236 to the proposal of the prelates to make the English law of
+legitimacy correspond with that of other countries. Sir James H.
+Ramsay, _The Dawn of the Constitution_, pp. 77, 78, following the text
+of the Statutes of the Realm, reads _mutare_ in the active, instead of
+_mutari_ in the passive.
+
+[13] The argument is lengthily and moderately stated in a _Times_
+leader for May 3, 1830.
+
+[14] This passage confirms what is said in the Introduction as to
+Macaulay’s personal familiarity with synagogue usages.
+
+[15] Matthew xxvi. 24.
+
+[16] Deuteronomy xxviii. 48, 66, 32.
+
+[17] Luke x. 29. “Love thy neighbour as thyself” is from Leviticus xix.
+18.
+
+[18] In its issue of April 3, 1830, the newspaper _John Bull_ (which
+bore on its title-page the legend, “For God, the King, and the People”)
+published a violent attack on Mr. Grant’s Bill. The article took the
+form of a sarcastic plea for the emancipation of the gipsies. There
+was a further attack on April 25, and on May 23 the same paper, while
+rejoicing at the rejection of Mr. Grant’s “romantic and un-Christian
+Bill,” expressed its dissatisfaction with the speeches of the opponents
+of Jewish emancipation. They were altogether too conciliatory and
+tolerant to please _John Bull_.
+
+[19] Sir Robert Inglis (1786-1855) entered Parliament in 1824.
+He opposed the various Catholic Relief Bills and the repeal of
+the Test and Corporation Acts. Sir Robert Peel had supported the
+Catholic claims, and Inglis thereupon successfully opposed him
+(1829) as candidate for the University of Oxford. Inglis continued
+to represent the University until his withdrawal from parliamentary
+life. He persistently opposed the Jewish emancipation. “Inglis was an
+old-fashioned Tory, a strong Churchman, with many prejudices and no
+great ability” (_Dictionary of National Biography_).
+
+[20] Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) supported Grant’s first
+resolution in 1830; in the interim he had died. Mackintosh, who
+entered the House in 1813, enjoyed much reputation as a philosopher.
+
+[21] The Member for Oldham was the noted William Cobbett (1762-1835),
+who, after an extraordinary career in England and America, entered the
+first Reformed Parliament. Cobbett was very violent in his opposition
+to Jewish liberties. See note 24.
+
+[22] The Albigenses, who took their name from one of their strongholds,
+the town of Albi on the Tarn, were an anti-sacerdotal sect in the South
+of France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, infected with
+Manichæan heresy. They suffered the most horrible cruelties in the
+crusade carried on against them from 1209 to 1218 under the command of
+Simon de Montfort, the father of the Simon de Montfort so well known in
+English history. See T. F. Tout, “The Empire and the Papacy,” pp. 216,
+401.
+
+[23] See note 6.
+
+[24] On March 1, 1833, Mr. Hill presented a petition by Unitarians
+in favour of the “removal of all Religious Disqualifications still
+existing, and especially for the removal of the Disabilities affecting
+the Jews.” It was on this occasion that Cobbett raised the objection to
+which Macaulay’s argument is the reply. The reference to Paine’s “Age
+of Reason” is also a covert hit at Cobbett, who reprinted Paine’s work.
+
+[25] Macaulay here overstates the case. The synagogue has at various
+times been reluctant to receive and unwilling to seek proselytes. But
+it does not reject them.
+
+[26] Lord George Gordon (1751-1793), the third son of Cosmo George,
+Duke of Gordon, was charged with high treason for having in 1780 headed
+terrible riots in London directed against the removal of certain Roman
+Catholic disabilities. He was acquitted on the ground that he had no
+treasonable intentions. He afterwards embraced the Jewish faith, and
+was received into the covenant of Abraham in Birmingham, but without
+the sanction of the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities in London. A
+vivid description of the “No Popery” riots of 1780 will be found in
+Dickens’ “Barnaby Rudge,” which also contains a reference to Lord
+George’s change of religion.
+
+[27] In the report of Grant’s speech in the _Times_ of April 18, 1833,
+occurs this passage:—
+
+“Now with respect to the supposed anti-social principles of the Jews,
+the most sacred of their books had told them to ‘Seek the peace of
+the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and
+pray unto the Lord for it; for in the peace thereof shall ye have
+peace’ [Jeremiah xxix. 7]. This principle was fully recognised by the
+Jews under Napoleon, who asked whether they held themselves bound, as
+citizens of the State in which they resided, by the laws and customs
+of that State? The Sanhedrin replied that every Jew, regarded as a
+citizen by the State, must obey the laws of the country which protected
+them and conform to the regulations of the civil code; in short, that
+Israelites were bound to consider such countries as their own, and
+serve and defend them to the utmost. In a catechism of the elements of
+the Jewish faith, intended for the use of Hebrew youths, it was stated
+that the Messiah not having come, the king under whose protection they
+lived must be considered as a King of Israel, and that the country in
+which they enjoyed such protection was to be looked upon in the same
+light as the land of their forefathers.”
+
+Grant followed this up by a masterly survey of the relations of Jews
+to various States in the past and present, and cited evidence of
+the patriotism and good citizenship of Jews wherever they had been
+permitted an opportunity of displaying those qualities.
+
+[28] In Hansard’s report (col. 236) Macaulay finished the paragraph
+with the words: “Why not try the same experiment which has been tried
+in France and Prussia, and which was now trying in the United States of
+America?” In the same debate (col. 342), in the report of Mr. Joseph
+Hume’s speech, occurs the passage: “He had a letter in his hand, though
+he would not trouble the House by reading it, from Mr. Quincy Adams,
+the late President of the United States, stating that there were
+no better citizens than the Jews, and expressing the hope that ere
+long the whole of Europe would see the justice and wisdom of freely
+conceding to them the fullest political privileges.”
+
+
+_FOREIGN EDITIONS_
+
+[The numbers in square brackets at the end of the entries indicate the
+press-marks of the copies in the British Museum.]
+
+
+(_a_) MACAULAY’S ESSAY
+
+(1) [French]. _Essais politiques et philosophiques par Lord Macaulay,
+Traduits par M. Guillaume Guizot._ Paris, 1862. Pp. 380-398. [12273 k
+3.]
+
+(2) [Dutch]. _Historische en letterkundige Schetsen door Lord Macaulay.
+In het Hollandsch overgebragt door Dr. A. Pierson._ Haarlem, 1865. I.
+105-120. [12272 aa 23.]
+
+(3) [Italian]. _Saggi biografici e critici di Tommaso Babington
+Macaulay. Versione dall’ Inglese con note di Cesare Rovighi._ Torino,
+1859-1866. V. 288-302. [12273 aa 3.]
+
+(4) [English text, with Introduction and Notes in German]. _Civil
+Disabilities of the Jews. Eine 1831 veröffentlichte Abhandlung von
+Thomas Babington Macaulay. Herausgegeben und mit Anmerkungen versehen
+von Dr. F. Fischer._ Berlin, 1882. [4033 f 32 (10).]
+
+(5) [Roumanian]. The son of Prince John Ghica (for some time Roumanian
+minister at the Court of St. James’), who was educated in England,
+translated Macaulay’s Essay on the “Civil Disabilities of the Jews”
+into Roumanian. The translation appeared as a small pamphlet in
+Bucharest. Political exigencies and the rise of anti-Jewish feeling in
+Roumania demanded the suppression of the translation, to avoid awkward
+questions and to remove a possible bar to the young man’s career.
+The pamphlet has in consequence almost completely disappeared. A few
+copies, however, have been saved, and one of them is in the library of
+the Rev. Dr. M. Gaster.
+
+
+(_b_) MACAULAY’S SPEECH
+
+(1) A German translation of Macaulay’s Speech on “Jewish Disabilities”
+was published in 1881, in reply to the anti-Semitic campaign of Stöcker
+and Henrici. The full title is Macaulay’s _Rede für die Emancipation
+der Juden gehalten im Englischen Unterhaus, am 17 April 1833_.
+_Übersetzt von A. E._ Frankfurt a. Main, 1881. [4033 f 31 (12).]
+
+(2) A Spanish translation will be found on pp. 109-122 of _Discursos
+Parlamentarios de Lord Macaulay, Traducidos del Inglés por Daniel
+López_. Madrid, 1885. [8139 aa 66.]
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  Edinburgh & London
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75879 ***