Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Volume 62, No. 386, December, 1847

by Various

The subject is too solemn for the mingling of human conjectures with its awful reality. But whether in the shape of retribution or warning, the singular force of the blow which has fallen on both—the Irish criminal and the English abettor of the crime—may well humble us before the Power which holds the prosperity of nations in its hand. Yet even now, while the two countries are still lying struck down by the same irresistible flash, and while the cloud which discharged it is still overhanging the horizon—while the only voice which ought to issue from the national lips would be the supplication for help and the hope of forgiveness, they are meditating an act more hazardous and daring than ever.

We disclaim all exclusiveness in the exercise of the common rights of man; we denounce all bigotry as a folly, and abhor all persecution as a crime; but we cannot venture an acquiescence in an attempt which we consider as an abandonment of the first dictates of Christianity; we cannot be silent when the intention is avowed to bring into a Christian legislature a sect which pronounces Christianity to be utterly a falsehood, its founder to be an impostor, (we shudder at the words,) and our whole hope of immortality, dependent on his sacrifice and merits, to be wicked and blasphemous delusion. And this attempt, from no additional discovery of the truth of Judaism or the failings of Christianity, but simply from a sense of political convenience, (a most short-sighted sense, as we conceive;) a feeling of liberalism, (a most childish and uncalled for feeling, as we are perfectly convinced;) and the establishment of the general principle that, in the political system or government of nations, religion has no business whatever to interfere, to be regarded, or to be protected in any shape whatever, (an assumption which we believe to be contrary to all the experience of mankind.) Our remarks, of course, are not made with reference to the individual, of whom we know nothing but the name; we speak only of the principle.

But before we inquire into its good or ill, we shall give a glance at the past condition of the European Jews, and the privileges to which they have been admitted by the generosity of the British legislature.

With Charlemagne the political history of modern Europe begins, and with it we shall begin our sketch of the Jews. The soldiership of Charlemagne made him comparatively regardless of ecclesiastical jealousies, and at the same time made him require the services of agents, negotiators, and traffickers of all kinds. In all the wildest barbarism of the past ages, the sons of Israel had continued to sustain their connexion throughout Europe, and the emperor felt all their importance to his polity. But war always impoverishes, and the Jews were the only masters of European wealth. Thus they were essential in all points to the great warrior, who had spent thirty years of his life in the camp; to the great monarch, who ruled three-fourths of Europe; and to the great statesman, who legislated for Christendom, but who could not write his own name. Charlemagne, therefore, protected the Jews, as he did all whom he made useful to himself; and as disregard of opportunities has been at no time their failing, it is probable that the chief currency of Europe passed through Jewish hands.

The successors of the emperor retained his habits, without inheriting his abilities, and the Jews still stood high in the favour of the throne.

It is probable, too, that they profited enormously; for where they had no laws but their own, and no penalties to dread but those in the hand of the sovereign, the possession of the royal ear, and the replenishing of the royal purse, gave them chances which must have proved highly productive to the Rabbinical exchequer.

But their prosperity was soon to have its winter. Enormous wealth was hazardous in baronial times. The descendants of the Gaulish, the German, and the Norman conquerors—bold soldiers, but bad financiers; fond of magnificence, but narrow in rental; valorous in war, but pauperised in peace—saw with lordly indignation the crouching Israelite able to purchase principalities, while they were often obliged to levy the daily meal of their retainers on the high road.

The result was, a general robbery of the Jews. But as there is no robbery so sweeping as that which is performed under cover of law, the unfortunate Jews were charged with the most improbable crimes against popes and princes. They sometimes escaped the dungeon and the sword by large bribes to the judge and the king; but confiscation was too gainful to cease while there was a Jew to be drained. And at length, within the last years of the twelfth century, all the Jews of France were exiled by a stroke of the pen; their whole property was seized, and all their debts were decreed to be irrecoverable!

Still they were too useful to be entirely dispensed with; and the following Jewish generation, which had forgotten the sufferings of their fathers, once more sought admission into France. They there grew opulent again, were there fleeced again, and there were alternately fattened and fleeced, until a general rage against their existence seemed to seize all Europe. Then, with an injustice which scandalises the name of Europe, and with a cruelty which still more scandalises the name of Popery, they were persecuted, plundered, and hunted into the gentler and honester regions of the Mahometan and the idolator.

The history of the Jews in England commenced about the middle of the eighth century, and was a similar succession of persecutions of the purse. Their persons were generally spared, for the piety of the Saxon monarchs was less provoked than their poverty. The Jews were a never-failing spring; and the Egberts and Ethelberts drank of it in all the emergencies of their dynasty, without ever cooling their royal thirst. Still the Jews clung to a land where they had probably become masters of the whole current coin; and though they complained furiously of the royal pressure, they bore it for the sake of the inordinate rent which they levied on peasant and priest, on baron bold, and perhaps on the monarch himself.