(_Edinburgh Review_, January 1831.)
The {307}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. 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. 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
(1) _Statement of the Civil Disabilities and Privations
affecting Jews in England_. 8 vo. London: 1829.
{308}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 mail 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.
It is because men are not in the habit of considering {309}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 {310}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.
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 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 {311}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. Gattan 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
eleven pence three farthings from Antonio. To this no objection is made.
That a Jew should possess the substance of legislative power, that he
should command eight votes on every {312}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.
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 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 have no political power. The sun of
England is set for ever if the Catholics exercise political power. Give
the Catholics every thing else; but keep political power from them.
These wise men did not see that, when every thing 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.