[380] See Political Review for December, 1809.
[381] See Monthly Rev. for August 1805, p. 446.
[383] Smith, as before, p. 106.
[384] Smith, as before, p. 108.
[385] Smith, 110.
[387] See Mackerell, 223.
[389] Of the spirit, or principle that dictated the erection of those statues it may now be safely said, that it was thoroughly vile and disgraceful.—What better can be said of the spirit that was so predominant here during Pitt’s administration and execrable reign of terror, when all honest men who saw, deprecated, and reprobated his madbrain system were held up to the contempt and derision of every political coxcomb, and even to the fury of the populace, as Jacobins and traitors? Time has already done something towards justifying the views and principles of these persecuted people; and futurity will do them still ampler justice. The present generation is likely to be now soon convinced that their politics, which have been so bitterly and violently decried, were a thousand times more worthy of adoption than those of their malicious opponents and revilers: and posterity will not fail to exhibit in their proper colours the extreme folly and wrongheadedness of the measures that this illfated country has been pursuing for the last eighteen years and upwards.
[390] Parkin, 116.
[391] The Jews were then very numerous in this country, as well as very opulent, and continued so for no short period. They were generally ill used, and sometimes underwent the most cruel and base treatment. Yet on some occasions, they met with different and better usage, and at least what may be called the appearance of favour and encouragement. The following instance is not a little remarkable and striking—“It will hardly be credited, [says Andrews] that, in 1241, Henry III issued writs to the sheriffs, ordering them to convene a parliament of Jews: six from some towns, and two from others. The writs are now extant. The Jews were proud of this; but Henry only meant to plunder them.” The last assertion if probably too true. Henry was just that kind of man. It is however very little known that he was, beforehand with Bonaparte in convening a Jewish parliament or Sanhedrim. But the characters of these two potentates are extremely dissimilar, and so probably were their motives for convening the Jewish delegates.—In the above mentioned reign of Richard I. the Jews were most shamefully and cruelly plundered and massacred here in different places. In the guilt and infamy of those foul and horrid deeds Lynn appears to have been deeply implicated. The tragical tale is related by Parkin from William of Newburgh, and by Mackerell from Hollingshed.—It states that one of the Lynn Jews being converted to christianity, his brethren were so enraged against him, that they resolved to kill him whenever they had an opportunity. Having accordingly met him one day in the street, they instantly fell upon him, fully intending to execute their bloody purpose, but he escaped out of their hands, and fled into the next church; they followed him thither, and breaking open the doors, would have taken him out by force. Crowds of the inhabitants, with a great number of foreigners, consisting of mariners and others, who traded here, now came upon them, rescued the man, and drove them into their own houses. The townsmen refrained from any further acts of violence, fearful of incurring the displeasure of their sovereign, who had taken the Jews under his protection; but the mariners and the other strangers followed them to their own dwellings, massacred them there, plundered their houses and set them on fire, and immediately taking shipping, escaped with their spoil.—Of the truth of some part of this story some doubt may very reasonably be entertained. It is not very likely that the Jews should act as is here represented toward their converted brother, as they could not be insensible of the extreme risk of such a conduct. Nor is it at all probable that the town rabble should refrain from assisting the strangers in the massacre of the Jews, or desist from joining them in plundering and burning those unhappy people’s houses. These may be presumed to be additions to what did then really happen, and designed for the purpose of exaggerating the conduct and blackening the character of the poor Jews, as well as throwing the whole blame and infamy of the most shocking part of the conduct of the opposite party on those foreign mariners and other strangers who happened to be then in the town. It was always the manner of the pretended christians of those days, to impute some previous horrid atrocity to the Jews, in order to blind people’s eyes, and extenuate their own barbarous and diabolical treatment of them. Upon the whole the plunder and massacre of the Jews seem to be that part of the above story which is unquestionably authentic. But Lynn was not the only place in England where the Jews were then so treated. The brutal and horrid work began in London, whence it extended to Lynn and other places, even as far as York, where it ended in a scene most shockingly tragical; the effects of which proved fatal to the commercial prosperity of that ancient city.—See Andrew, 1. 192.