2. His Writings and his Friends.—The exceptional position which the Jews held in Holland gave to any distinguished member of their community a quite exceptional prominence. The Amsterdam Rabbi, as Manasseh ben Israel was called, came to be quite a celebrated personage. He was looked on as an encyclopædia of knowledge, and scholars of both sexes came from far and near to consult with him on learned subjects, and Hebrew came to be quite a fashionable study, even among Jews and Jewesses. There is no doubt that Manasseh’s character had as much to do with his popularity as his attainments. He was a thoroughly upright man,and most courteous in his manners. He was, moreover, never sparing of time or trouble when the results of his really wide and varied reading were in request.Grotius, the author of the ‘Law of Nations,’[47] Caspar Barlæus, who has been called the Virgil of his age, the whole of the learned family of Vossius, father and sons, all came to know and to esteem Manasseh, though neither one of them was naturally fond of Jews. And as Isaac Vossius was not only a distinguished scholar, but also chamberlain to Christina, Queen of Sweden, his friendship proved, by-and-by, a very useful one to Manasseh. Not useful in the vulgar sense of gaining for the Jewish Rabbi the right of rising in influential Christian society, but useful for the patriotic end, the [a]‏טוֹב לְעַמּוֹ‎]—the good of his people, which Manasseh, like Mordecai, was always seeking. Manasseh was no great author, as we have seen, yet even in his authorship he had a patriotic ideal. He was always meaning to write a ‘Heroic History,’ as he called it, by which he meant a history of the Jews, who were his heroes. He never did it, and possibly our libraries are not the poorer for the lack, whilst our lives are certainly the richer. For Manasseh was destined to make an altogether new chapter in Jewish history, instead of expending his energies in compiling many prosy ones. In truth, the works which he did publish add but little to his reputation. There were a great many theological treatises, some translations, and some compilations, all alike showingsigns of industry and of reading, but none affording much trace of critical or original thought. Perhaps the most widely read of his works at this time was a little book called ‘The Hope of Israel,’ which tried to prove that some aborigines in America were lineal descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. The ‘Hope’ seems to have rested on no more solid foundation than a traveller’s tale of savages met with in the wilds, who included something that sounded like the [a]‏שְׁמַע‎] in their vernacular. The story was quickly translated into several languages, but it was almost as quickly disproved, and Manasseh’s illusions, which were founded on the ‘Hope,’ were somewhat roughly dealt with.

3. Manasseh finds his Vocation.—Till the age of fifty, Manasseh continued to lead his honourable, useful life in Amsterdam, ‘doing with all his might whatsoever his hand found to do,’ and making of the things that lay close to him his nearest duties. But alike in the happy home life, and in the pleasant social intercourse; as he preached his helpful discourses, and as he compiled his rather dull books; when he was teaching or when he was printing, Manasseh seems to have been always, and all the while, conscious of a certain purpose in life, which his life, busy and useful as it was, had not as yet fulfilled. He was happy and honoured, and in any country he might have chosen to visit would have been welcomed by the wisest and the best, but his people were still outcasts, and that, to our Amsterdam Rabbi, spoilt it all. Manasseh valued the position he had won chiefly for his people’s sake, and by thetime he was fifty years old he had come to a definite determination of how to use it for their benefit.

4. Negotiations begun for the Return of the Jews to England.—The Amsterdam Rabbi wanted to insure for the Jews another such welcome as Holland had given to them. He wanted to find for the proscribed and exiled race a home as free citizens among a free people. His relations with Grotius and with Vossius made his thoughts turn, in the first place, to Sweden, with whose queen, Christina, he had had, too, some literary correspondence. But before the Swedish project came to any practical issue, the course of events happily made him direct his energies towards England, where the struggle for a nation’s ‘rights’ had but lately been won at the cost of a king’s life. In 1649 Charles I. had expiated his hateful, harmful weakness on the scaffold, and though John Hampden’s brave voice, which had aroused the English conscience like a trumpet call, was, since June 1643, stilled in death, his cousin, Oliver Cromwell, was at the helm, and sternly and uncompromisingly directing it to good ends. The first demand of the victorious army of Independents, who had fought not for place, but for principle, was liberty of conscience, and equality before the law for all religious denominations. In this new attitude of Puritan England, and in the earnest character of its new and uncrowned ruler, Manasseh ben Israel saw and seized his opportunity. In the year 1650 he forwarded to Cromwell his ‘Hope of Israel,’ and, by the help of influential friends, he caused petitions for the re-admission of Jews to England, with rights securedto them of worship, of commerce, and of burial, to be laid before the Long and the Rump Parliaments. He busied himself also in the composition of a pamphlet, called Vindiciæ Judæorum (Defence of the Jews), which proved, on its completion, the most powerful and the least pedantic of his writings. It was not, however, finished when, in 1655, the way having been now, as he considered, sufficiently prepared by correspondence, he resolved on trying the effect of personal intercession with the Protector. To quote his own subsequent and simple words on the subject, ‘I could not be quiet in my mind until I had made my humble addresses to the Lord Protector, whom God preserve. And finding that my coming over would not be altogether unwelcome to him, with those great hopes which I conceived, I joyfully took leave of my house, my friends, my kindred, all my advantages there, and the country wherein I have lived all my lifetime under the benign protection and favour of the lords, the States-General, and magistrates of Amsterdam. In fine, I say, I parted from them all, and took my voyage to England.’

CHAPTER XXXIII.[48]
THE RETURN OF THE JEWS TO ENGLAND.

1. Manasseh presents his Petition.—In October 1655, Manasseh ben Israel, with his only son Samuel, and two or three eminent Amsterdam Jews who hadaccompanied them, were safely arrived in London and settled in lodgings in the Strand. The first thing that was done was to personally present an address to the Protector, and a declaration to the Commonwealth, setting forth the objects of the Jewish visit to England, was published at the same time. Both these documents are very remarkable. Although humble petitions from an outcast people, who had been ignominiously thrust forth into exile 365 years before, Manasseh’s appeals have not the smallest trace of reproach nor of servility, into either of which mistakes it would have been so easy to fall. The Jewish case is stated with dignity, and on its merits, it is pleaded without passion, and on the grounds of justice rather than of favour. The ‘clemency’ and ‘high-mindedness’ of Cromwell are certainly taken for granted, but equally is assumed the worthiness of the clients who appeal. Manasseh, with a certain shrewdness, makes a point of the ‘profit’ which the Jews are likely to prove to their hosts. ‘Where the Jewes are once kindly receaved,’ he urges, ‘they make a firm resolution never to depart from thence, seeing they have no proper place of their own;and so they are always with their goods in the cities where they live a perpetual benefit to all payments.’[49] ‘Profit,’ proceeds Manasseh, ‘is a most powerful motive,’ and, therefore, he ‘deals with that point first.’ He dwells on the ‘ability’ and ‘industry and naturall instinct of the Jews for merchandizing,’ and on the fact that ‘wheresoever they go to dwell, there presently the traficqbegins to flourish.’ And then, urging his claim on higher grounds, Manasseh dwells on the loyalty of the Jews, which he shows is a religious duty with the race, and cannot fail to make of them law-abiding, and law-defending, citizens of their adopted states. He shows from history that Jeremiah’s injunction to ‘pray for the peace’ and to ‘seek the peace’ of the cities to which they are ‘led captive,’ has been literally, and over and over again, fulfilled by Jews. In a few well-chosen and dignified words he refers to the slanderous and superstitious statements of which Jews have been the subject. He disposes with brief and distinct denial of the simply silly accusations, such as the killing of Christian children for the manufacture of passover cakes, only with quiet emphasis recalling that in the early days, when the Church was struggling against paganism, ‘the self-same ancient scandalls were cast upon innocent Christians.’ The more serious, because less entirely untrue, charges of ‘usury,’ which have been brought against Jews, Manasseh meets as boldly. Whenever, wherever, the practice exists, he frankly denounces it as ‘infamous.’ But he will not admit that ‘usury’ is in any sense a Jewish principle, nor in any but a cruelly acquired one a Jewish practice. ‘The sacred Scriptures,’ says Manasseh, ‘forbid absolutely the robbing of all men, whatsoever religion they be of. In our Law it is a greater sinne to rob or defraud a stranger than if I did it to one of my owne profession. A Jew is bound to shew his charity to all men: he hath a precept not to abhor an Idumean or an Egyptian; and yet another, “Lovethe stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger.” If, notwithstanding, there be some that do contrary to this, they do it not as Jews, but as wicked Jews.’ This petition, helped as it was by the fine presence and the fine character of the pleader, made a profound impression, and some five weeks after Manasseh’s arrival in England the question of the re-admission of the Jews was submitted to public discussion, and an assembly composed of the majority of the ministers, a commission of clergymen, the Lord Mayor, two sheriffs, and some selected merchants, was convened to take Manasseh’s petition into formal consideration.

2. A Christian Advocate.—A powerful ‘friend at court’ was found in one Edward Nicholas, who, under Charles Stuart and now under Cromwell, held the office of Secretary or Clerk to the Parliament. This gentleman had published in 1648 a little work entitled ‘An Apology for the Honourable Nation of the Jews and all the Sons of Israel,’ which work warmly espoused their cause, speaking of them as a ‘people chosen by God and protected by God,’ and insisting that ‘unless, as Englishmen, we all show ourselves compassionate and helpers of the afflicted Jews, ... and repeal the severe laws made against them, ... God will charge their suffering upon us, and will avenge them on their persecutors.’ Nicholas expressly stated in his little pamphlet that he alone was responsible for it, that he was publishing only his own views on the subject, unprompted and unsolicited by any one. And this was, in all probability, the exact truth. But the official position which Nicholasheld under Cromwell made it seem hardly likely that he would have ventured to express such decided opinions had the Protector been entirely averse from them, and, naturally, such a pamphlet, from such a quarter, aroused a great deal of interest, and provoked a great deal of discussion. Published as it was, at the very time when Manasseh had begun to think in earnest of his mission, the pamphlet was also most useful in enabling him, before coming to England, to judge a little of the state of public feeling on the question, and to draw his own conclusions as to the attitude which Cromwell was likely to take up. On this latter point there was, from the first, very little room for doubt.

3. What People said.—When Edward Nicholas presented that brave, bold brief of his on behalf of proscribed and unpopular clients, the whispers had been many that he held it by the grace, or even, said some, at the secret instigation of Cromwell, but when Manasseh arrived in London, the marked favour with which the Protector received his Jewish petitioner set the wildest rumours in circulation. Cromwell was declared to be of Jewish descent, and it was further alleged that his Jewish kinsfolk beyond the seas had recognised in him their Messiah. St. Paul’s Cathedral, on the same authority, was to be converted into a synagogue, and an actual sum was named as the price the Jews had offered for it. These absurd tales were actually believed in by many ignorant people, for those most incapable of faith are often the most credulous of folly. The solution of Cromwell’s favourable reception of the Jews was simple enough.Those who went so far to seek for reasons could have found them close at hand.But there are people, says Carlyle, who ‘can look into the great soul of a man, radiant with the splendours of very heaven, and see nothing there but the shadow of their own mean darkness.’[50] In Cromwell’s support of Jewish claims the ‘great soul’ was only consistent with itself. The character of Cromwell in all things was an index to his conduct in this one thing. Liberty of conscience, religions rights secured to all men, was the Puritan battle cry. The principle had been fought for at Naseby, it would be upheld at Whitehall, and, though Cromwell could not know it, it would never more be abandoned by the England which he, in his stern rectitude, lifted out of the meretricious mists of greatness, into the ‘fine air, the pale severity of light’—a national ideal of goodness.

4. How the Petition was received.—Cromwell presided over the assembly which met to consider Manasseh’s petition. Two points were submitted for decision: 1, whether it was lawful to re-admit the Jews; and 2, under what conditions such re-admission should take place. The law officers ruled that if it should be decided that such re-admission was for the welfare of the State, it could not be by law opposed. That settled the legal aspect of the question. Then came the commercial. The merchants feared for the effects of Jewish competition on English industries. ‘Can you really think,’ asked Cromwell, ‘that so despised a people should be able to secure the upper hand in trade and credit over the merchants of England—the most honoured in the world?’ These adroit words allayed for the moment the mercantile jealousies that blocked the way, and left room for the religious difficulty to be debated. The clergy did not limit themselves to argument; an old chronicler declares the majority present ‘raged like fanatics,’ quoting Scripture, too, in their arrogant ignorance, against ‘the people of the Book.’ And after much debate, Cromwell roused himself to reply on the whole question. His speech has only come down to us in fragments, but these fragments justify the opinion expressed by one of the audience, who says, ‘I have never heard a man speak so splendidly in all my life.’The man who, as Carlyle says, ‘grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things,’[51] tore that mask of ‘English prosperity in danger’ from the merchants, and, dubbing their doubts ‘trade jealousy,’ flung their pretences at them. Then, turning to the clergy, he stripped off the rags of rhetoric in which they had clothed their personal prejudices, and held forth their action, bare, in all its hideousness, as persecution. He spoke sternly as the champion of justice, gently as the advocate of compassion. He did not succeed, but neither did he speak altogether in vain. Manasseh’s appeal was not granted; when put to the council, the majority voted against it, yet nevertheless Cromwell’s eloquence had done its silent work; the known favour of the Protector ensured no active steps being taken to prevent Jews coming to England, and quietly, and without much notice being taken of them, Jews gradually did come, and settledthemselves in London. By 1657 they were numerous enough and felt secure enough to ask for, and to obtain, the loan of a piece of ground in the parish of Stepney for a [a]‏בֵּית חַיִּים‎].

5. End of Manasseh’s Story.—Manasseh, after the disappointing decision of the Council of State, waited on month after month, hoping that the informal permission of the Protector might become the law of the land. His companions grew tired, and went back to their homes in Amsterdam, but Manasseh stayed on, patient and steadfast in his purpose, and longing to complete his work. Early in 1656 he published his Vindiciæ Judæorum, a triumphant answer to the slanders which were uttered against his people. And that was his last effort in the cause. His mission never fulfilled itself in the grand, complete way which he had hoped. He sowed his seed, and it is we, his descendants, who, ‘rejoicing, bear the sheaves.’ He would have been content that it should be so. In the autumn of 1657, when his book was launched and he could do no more, he set out for home. And, at home, in Amsterdam, before he reached it, they made ready his grave. For illness overtook him on the way, and on November 20, 1657, at Middleburg, in the house of Ephraim Abarbanel, his brother-in-law, Manasseh ben Israel died.