=Source.=--_Lord Macaulay's Speeches._ London, 1854.
_Macaulay's Speech on Jewish Disabilities in a Committee of the
whole House, April 17, 1833._
"But where," says the member for the University of Oxford, "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,[7] 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.
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. 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 this 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 furzebushes, were much worse men than my
honourable friend; but they were more consistent than he."