[82] The annals of the world are full of reports concerning children being kidnapped, crowned with thorns, flogged, crucified, and pierced with sharp instruments. Of course the child is chosen because it is more easily mastered than a man.
[83] The Chronicles are right in believing that the Jew hates the Christian more than he does the Muhammadan. “As to those Gentiles, who, like the Ishmaelites, are not idolaters, their wine is unlawful to drink, but is lawful for purpose of profit, as is taught by all the Gaons; but Christians are idolaters, and their wine, even such as has not been used as wine of libation, is unlawful even for purposes of profit” (Hilchoth Maakhaloth Asuroth, c. xi. 7). “Statuimus,” says the Talmud (Order I., Dissert. 4, quoted by Lucio Ferraris), “ut quilibet Judæus ter in die omnem Christianorum gentem ac Deum precetur ut confundat, interimatque ipsam cum regibus et principibus suis; atque hoc maximè faciant sacerdotes Judæorum in synagoga ter quotidie orantes in odium Jesu Nazareni.” This curse is not ordered against Muhammadans.
[84] This skeleton list is continued in order to show chronologically the continuity of tradition concerning atrocities and sacrilege practised by the Jews.
II. THE GYPSY
“A people proscribed by opinion, and doomed by the laws to opprobrium and ignominy; a race which, driven from all liberal professions, has been for ages, and still is, robbed of its right to hold landed property; which, subjected to special and severe regulations, has learned at once to obey and yet to preserve a manner of independence; which, despite the contempt that it inspires and the hate that it awakes and the prejudices wherewith it is received and judged, still resists this contempt, this hatred, and finally all those causes which ought to disunite, loosen, and annihilate the family, the race, the nation;—such a people, I say, deserves the observer’s attention, if only from the fact of its existence.”
Jaubert de Passa.