Upon this showing, civil rights were conceded to them in France, on condition of their contributing their quota to the maintenance of the laws and Government of the country in which they were naturalized.
Till this epoch, a prejudice had prevailed in France that it was an article of faith and duty among the Jews, to deceive and defraud a Christian whenever it lay in their power; and that they were bound, from the moment of their birth, by the Jewish law, to a strong animosity towards us Christian people. Horrible rumours have been revived, at different times, in different countries, of secret sacrifices of the Jews, in which the blood of a Christian was a necessary component.
These questions were openly met and discussed in a manly and temperate manner, in the great Sanhedrim, composed of the highest and most enlightened Jewish authorities; when a peremptory denial was established to all these injurious charges. Prejudices nearly as absurd, and quite as groundless formerly existed in England against the Catholics; the removal of their civil disabilities being equally the result of the progress of public enlightenment.
As regards the question of usury so often imputed to the Jews, experience has proved of late years, that the most notorious extortioners of this description are of the Christian faith; and it is a question of ethics to inquire whether there be greater turpitude in openly demanding an interest of thirty per cent for a loan of money, or in obtaining the same profit by sale or barter of commodities. A considerable number of tradesmen who pride themselves upon their strict integrity, require a much higher ratio of profit than the per centage of the money-lending Jews; nor is it necessary to remind the reader that some of the most eminent bankers in Europe, renowned equally for their probity and liberality, are of the Jewish persuasion.
CHAPTER VIII.
VERBAL DELICACY.
There are certain words which appear to offend public delicacy more than the very objects they designate; till it might almost be inferred that all the sensitiveness of human nature had concentrated itself in the ear. The study of ancient and modern languages will attest the truth of this assertion; for many things are to be learned in a vocabulary besides the idiom it pretends to teach.
The stern Romans, for instance, who affected so stoical a disregard of death, would not allow the word to be pronounced in their presence; though the lives of their children was by the law placed at their mercy. Their sense of delicacy would have been offended had it been mentioned before them that such a one was “dead.” It was necessary to say, “he hath lived.” In the noble defence of Milo, by Cicero, he dared not qualify by the appropriate word the act of assassination committed by the slaves of his client; but declared by periphrasis that under these circumstances, “the slaves of Milo did what it became them to do.”