It may be that the Jewish electorate were now too agitated with the near probability of Shiloh to interest themselves in any mundane question: at all events, it was during that rage that the Government-whips announced the certainty that the Jewish members would vote against the Land Bill.
Hogarth first heard it pretty late at night from the Prime Minister; and “Ha!-the Jews”, he went: “so they have dared, these men? I never thought that they would! May God deliver me from His ill-chosen people—!”
“And ill-choosing, it seems, my Lord King”.
“Quite so! But, Sir Robert Wortley, is it supportable this thing?”—a brand now on his brow—“an alien race in Britain opposing thus daringly not my will only, but the plain will of the people? And have I the air of one who will support it? Rather, I assure you, would I govern without a Parliament! But stop—perhaps I shall be found capable of dealing with these mischievous children of Israel. Give me a night: and to-morrow at noon come, and hear. Of course, this second-reading business must be postponed “.
And deep and wide, in lonely vigil, wrought the Regent's thought that night, till morning: of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of tendencies, histories, soils, ports, railways, possibilities, race-genius, analogies, destinies; of Rothschild and I Solomon; of Hirsch and Y'hudah Hanassi; of the Jewish Board of Guardians, Rab Asa, and the Targum on the Babylonish Talmud; of the Barbary Jews, the Samaritans, and Y'hudah Halevi; of the Colonial Bank, and the Karaite Jews....
When at dawn he threw himself dressed into bed, he had resolved upon a very great thing: their expulsion from England, Pole and Hungarian, Baron and coster, and the little child at the breast, ten millions.
His eyes had closed toward sleep when, with a start, he remembered a prophecy uttered one evening in the Boodah Throne-room, and these words: “Richard, deal gently with my people....”
Two nights later, with a retinue, he hurriedly left England-for Constantinople.