Part 4

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.]

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