As to the 1st article, that all Christians are to be dismissed from the service of Jews, what can be more arbitrary and unjust? The Inquisitor would have done better to have laid his interdict upon the Christians, in forbidding them to go to the Jews, rather than to compel the latter to shut their doors in their faces. And, concerning these very Jews in your own jurisdiction, Mr. Inquisitor General, you know how charitable they have always been; you know what service they rendered us in the time of the cholera; how, in this very city, they assisted the poor, and condoled with them under their sufferings; and how charitable they showed themselves on every occasion.
Before, then, you forbid the Jews to employ Christian servants, tell those who are in want of bread to seek it at your convents, at the doors of the Inquisition.
As to the 2d article, touching the disposal of the property of these people, what can be said in its justification? Whether they retain it or not, I suppose they are equally liable to be called upon for the government taxes. There is one of this race, however, who must be a sad trouble to you; one who has lately possessed himself of an enormous extent of property, and has claims upon the very estates of the Church, even to the palaces of the Pope, the prebendaries of the Cardinals, the revenue of the bishops, and the whole body of the clergy, friars, nuns and all, which are absolutely mortgaged to him, to the extent of many millions. Now, is it an agreeable thing, O Father Inquisitor, that this great Jew, this powerful Baron Rothschild, should be invested with such awful authority, as to be legally justified in driving the Pope from the Vatican, should Cardinals Tosti and Lambruschini be behindhand in their accounts? This wealthy baron is, in fact, master of half the Pontifical State; and if things go on at the same rate, super Cathedram Petri sedebunt Israelitæ. What remedy will you propose, my dear Inquisitor, if, on the Pope's neglecting to pay, this Jew, Rothschild, seizes on the church-property? You threaten the poor Jews of Ancona with forced sales, but the Baron may put the whole of you up to auction at once.
If this article was designed to evade such a catastrophe, I doubt if it would be of any avail. Rothschild is too well supported to have his rights invaded even by the Holy Roman Inquisition. This unjust attack is indeed altogether as unwarrantable as it is impolitic. What would you say if the Grand Sultan were to issue a decree that all the Catholics in his dominions should be constrained to sell, within three months, whatever property they might possess, merely because they were Catholics? Yet you set him and others an example of this crying injustice, for no more defensible reason.
The 3d article savours strongly of the monk. To oblige all the descendants of Israel to live cooped up in their Ghetto, as in a monastery. Perhaps you feared that the Christians might turn Jews, if free intercourse were permitted between them; or do you rather apprehend that the Jews might become Christians? Rarely does the former take place. It is the latter, then, that you dread, for you know very well that the Jews profit the Inquisition far more than the Christians. The real object of this law, therefore, must be to estrange the two parties, and to sow enmity and dislike between them, so as to cause them to live in perpetual vexation, and discord, and distrust.
The 4th is a singular article,—that no Jew shall be allowed to eat at the same table with a Christian, or in any public eating-house or tavern out of the Ghetto. It would be well if every one could make it convenient to take his meals at home; but when, from the nature of a person's occupation, or any other cause, this cannot be the case, what is he to do? To the trattoria, or eating-house, every one is admitted; there is no distinction made there between the Jew or the Turk, the Christian or the Heathen. The noble sits by the side of the plebeian. He is the most respected who spends the most; he is the best served who pays the highest. Every one is admitted, even the thief and the assassin. The Jew alone is to be forbidden! But what a disgrace it is to prohibit the Jew from eating in company with the Christian, when Christ himself, the Divine Head of our Church, sat at meat with the children of Israel, even with the Samaritan and the Sadducee, and imparted to them the benefit of His instruction.
How shall we in future have the courage to persuade these people that we are partakers of that most holy religion which began with Adam, and had the Jews for its early fathers? How, in proof of our assertion, present to them the code which is contained in the books of Moses and the Prophets, by us, as well as by them, believed and reverenced? With what face can we boast to them of our Gospel as abounding in precepts full of peace and love? Will they not reply to us by pointing to the laws of the Roman Inquisition, the famous Edict of Ancona, where all is division and hatred? Are you a preacher, brother Salva, and is such your doctrine? To be consistent, you ought to begin your sermon with the duty of religious intolerance, evangelical persecution, and Christian cruelty. Speak the same language in your pulpit as you do in your Edict, and observe the good effect it will produce upon your audience.
Your 5th article prohibits the Jew from sleeping out of his quarters, and from any friendly intercourse with Christians. Well done! So the Jew is for ever to remain a Jew, and avoid all opportunities of being converted; he is to forego any advantage he might derive from conversing with us. But perhaps you imagine the race to be so bad that good Christians might be injured in communicating with them; indeed your Edict treats them as such throughout. But whoever consults the calendars of our tribunals will find that in all our towns there are very few Jews who figure in the list of criminals; a sufficient proof of their regularity of conduct, their obedience to the laws, and their respect for the authorities.
In the 6th, it is stated that no Jew shall allow any Christian man, much less any Christian woman, to sleep in the Ghetto. The inuendo here conveyed might not inappropriately be retorted upon the friars, notwithstanding the closed gates of their monasteries. They may thank the Jews for not publishing the story of a certain Vicar of the Holy Office, who frequently, under cover of the darkness of night, was accustomed to find his way into the Ghetto, certainly not for the purpose of preaching morality to its inmates. I should advise you, then, Father Inquisitor, not to be over curious in your researches, when there is need of so much indulgence in your own proceedings.
The 7th is a very extraordinary prohibition, forbidding any Jew to employ a Christian as a day-labourer in his house in the Ghetto. So that they are not allowed to have the services of bricklayer, carpenter, or builder, all of whom work by the day, and it is well known that the Jews themselves do not exercise these employments. This law, in fact, was made to oblige the Jew every time his house required repairing, to go to the Inquisition, with all due reverence and respect, and not empty handed, to get leave to have his work done, without which he is liable to a heavy fine.