0-10 {313}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 {314}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. Was this because Presbyterians and Independents
are incapable of loving their country? But it is idle to multiply
instances. Nothing is so offensive to a man who knows any thing of
history or of human nature as to hear those who exercise the powers
of government accuse any sect of foreign attachments. If there be
any proposition universally true in politics it is this, that foreign
attachments are the fruit of domestic misrule. It has always been the
trick of bigots to make their subjects miserable at home, and then to
complain that they look for relief abroad; to divide society, and to
wonder that it is not united; to govern as if a section of the state
were the whole, and to censure the other sections of the state for their
{315}want of patriotic spirit. If the Jews have not felt towards England
like children, it is because she has treated them like a step-mother.
There is no feeling which more certainly developes 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.
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 our 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. But they are not so well treated as the
dissenting sects of Christians are now treated in England; and on this
account, and, we {316}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 every where 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
{317}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 darkhaired, let us answer them in
the words of our wise ancestors, _Nolumus leges Anglice mutari_.”
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, 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 {318}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. {319}It was in this way that our ancestors
reasoned, and that some people in our own 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 she 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 wails of the synagogues
prohibits covetousness. But if we were to say that a Jew mortgagee
would not foreclose because God had commanded {320}him not to covet his
neighbour’s house, every body 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 he, 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? {321}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 {322}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, he
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.” 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 {323}life;” for not seizing on the children of a race
whose “sons and daughters are to be given unto another people?”
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.
Last year, we remember, it was represented by a pious writer in the
John Bull newspaper, 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 humorists 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 Mole are enrolled, was
glorified by a yet greater and holier name.