THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULEY (afterwards Lord Macauley) delivered a celebrated oration in the British House of Commons on April 17, 1833, in support of the bill for the removal of the disabilities of the Jews. After a destructive criticism of the arguments and reasons which were then being advanced by the opponents of liberalism, arguments which have since then been so completely outlived as to be no longer, in any Anglo-Saxon community, deemed worthy of consideration, the great statesman concluded his masterly presentation in a lucid statement and eloquent peroration, as follows:
"Whatever the sect be which it is proposed to tolerate, the peculiarities of that sect will, for the time, be pronounced by intolerant men to be the most odious and dangerous that can be conceived. As to the Jews, that they are unsocial as respects religion is true; and so much the better; for surely, as Christians, we cannot wish that they should bestir themselves to pervert us from our own faith.
"But that the Jews would be unsocial members of the civil community, if the civil community did its duty by them, has never been proved. My right honorable friend who made the motion which we are discussing has produced a great body of evidence to show that they have been grossly misrepresented; and that evidence has not been refuted by my honorable friend, the member for the University of Oxford.
"But what if it were true that the Jews are unsocial? What if it were true that they do not regard England as their country? Would not the treatment which they have undergone explain and excuse their antipathy to the society in which they live? Has not similar antipathy often been felt by persecuted Christians to the society which persecuted them?
"While the bloody code of Elizabeth was enforced against the English Roman Catholics, what was the patriotism of Roman Catholics? Oliver Cromwell said that in his time they were Espaniolized. At a later period it might have been said that they were Gallicised. It was the same with the Calvinists. What more deadly enemies had France in the day of Louis XIV, than the persecuted Huguenots?
"But would any rational man infer from these facts that either the Roman Catholic as such, or the Calvinist as such, is incapable of loving the land of his birth? If England were now invaded by Roman Catholics, how many English Roman Catholics would go over to the invader? If France were now attacked by a Protestant enemy, how many French Protestants would lend him help? Why not try what effect would be produced on the Jews by that tolerant policy which has made the English Roman Catholic a good Englishman and the French Calvinist a good Frenchman?
"Another charge has been brought against the Jews, not by my honorable 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 honorable member for Oldham, who has, I am sorry to see, quitted his place.
"The honorable member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are naturally a mean race, a money-getting race; that they are averse to all honorable 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, legally, a home to the Jews less than half a century, 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 honorable 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 defense 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 honorable 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 civilization, 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 afterward 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 depressed 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 slaves, shall we consider this as a matter of reproach to them?
"Shall we not rather consider it as a 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 honorable friend, I am, I firmly believe, supporting the honor and the interest 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 us not, mistaking her character and her interests, fight the battle of truth with the weapons of error, and endeavor to support by oppression that religion which first taught the human race the great lesson of universal charity."
Here is an utterance on this subject by OTTO von BISMARCK. This man, whose iron hand puddled the smelt of the furnace wherein, with fire and blood, the German people were fused into political unity, was—or rather, is, for he is yet living, and will long remain a power—this man is no friend of the Jews. His spirit crystallized, and his nature drew its inspiration out of the time when "Polen, Juden und Franzosen" were a trinity of bugbears for the worshippers of royal divinity in Europe. Bismarck never fully recovered from that nightmare of his youth and early manhood, but he towered above his fellows, and he had the faculty of perceiving the truth and a habit of telling it which, notwithstanding his diplomatic training, he was wont to indulge. In a notable debate in the Prussian Landtag during the session of 1871, he expressed himself as follows:
"In my position as President of the Ministry I must repudiate any obligation to fill the places in the civil service with Roman Catholics according to their proportionate number in the population of the country.... The existence of a distinctively religious body in a political assembly is in itself a monstrous phenomenon.... This tends to make religion the subject of parliamentary debates.... I adhere to the principle that every religion should be allowed perfect freedom, without considering it, for that reason, necessary that it should be represented in the executive departments in the same ratio as in the population. Every religious body would have as much right as the Catholics to claim this; the Lutherans as well as the Jews, and I have found that it is the latter particularly who are most distinguished by their special intelligence and capacity for administrative functions."
As an estimate of Jewish citizenship by a man whose life experience has afforded him a rare insight into social and political conditions on both sides of the Atlantic, we quote the following expression by CARL SCHURZ, on the occasion of the dedication of the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, in New York City:
"Honor to the men and women who have accomplished this and who are bound to accomplish still more. They do honor to the community which calls them its own; for any community, whatever its pretensions, will be honored by citizens who take so high a view of their duties to humanity.
"And who are these citizens? They are Jews. This is not the only monument the Jews of New York have planted to their benevolence and public spirit. There are others—some even far exceeding this in costliness and grandeur. But none—none of their own and none instituted by any other class of citizens excels it, nay, perhaps none equals it in beauty of sentiment and devotion. And for whom is this done? Hear the noble words of the President of the Society as found in last year's report: 'As Israelites we are compelled, both by circumstances and inclination, to provide for the needy of our own faith; but this must not induce us to exclude any human being because of his religious belief from the benefit of an institution charged with the improvement of bodily ailment.' Thus it is done for the brotherhood of men. This is the true spirit, worthy of him whose name this edifice bears. It is the spirit, too, which more than any other, has created the brightest, the most stainless glories of our great American Republic—the spirit which, without any governmental action, out of the spontaneous initiative of the patriotic citizen, through private munificence, through individual solicitude for the welfare of all, has covered this land all over with educational institutions and enterprises of benevolence. In our school days we read of the Roman matron Cornelia, who, when other noble ladies exhibited to her their stores of pearls and precious stones, called in her children, and pointing to them, said: 'These are my jewels.' So when the Old World shows to us the magnificence of its baronial halls and royal castles, the American Republic may point to her colleges and hospitals and asylums founded by the patriotic generosity of simple citizens, and say, 'These are my palaces.'
"And to entitle the American people to this proud distinction, the Jews have done as much as any other class of citizens—nay, I may repeat in their presence what I have frequently said in the presence of others—the Jews have, in proportion to their numbers, done far more. I repeat this with all the greater willingness, as I have recently had occasion to observe the motive springs, the character and the aims of the so-called "anti-Semitic" movement, a movement whose dark spirit of fanaticism and persecution insults the humane enlightenment of the 19th century; whose appeals are addressed to the stupidest prejudice and the blindest passion, whose injustice affronts every sense of fairness and decency and whose cowardice—for cowardice is an essential element in the attempt to suppress the competing energies of a mere handful of people—whose cowardice I say, should provoke the contempt of every self-respecting man.
"In the face of this movement, which for years has stirred some European countries, and thrown its shadows even across the ocean, upon our shores, it is most grateful to the human heart to hear the President of the Montefiore Home say, that while this roof is to shelter the neediest of Israel, no human being because of his religious belief shall be excluded from its protection. He might take the clamorous anti-Semitic by the hand, show him the hospitals, orphans homes, charity schools, founded and sustained by Jewish money, Jewish labor, Jewish public spirit, benevolence and devotion and say to him: 'If you have any sick, any aged, any children who cannot find help elsewhere, here we shall have room for them, and they are welcome.' What has the anti-Semite to answer? No, no, that movement cannot survive. It must perish in shame. It will be consigned to an ignominious grave by the generous impulses of human nature and the civilization of this age. And what will remain will be the beneficent influence and the sweet memory of such good actions as yours, and the brotherhood of mankind."