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influence of a Jew may be of the first consequeuee in a war which shall be the means of shaking all Europe to its centre . His power may come into play in assisting or retarding the greatest plans of the greatest princes ; and yet , with all this confessed , acknowledged , undented , my Honourable Friend would have them deprived of power ! If it was to be full and entire persecution , after the consistent example of our ancestors , I could understand it . If we were called on to
revert to the days when , as a people , they were pillaged—when their warehouses were torn down—when their every right was sacrificed , the thing would be comprehensible . But this is a delicate persecution , with no abstract rule for its guidance . As to the matter of right , if the word " legal" is to be attached to it , I am bound to
acknowledge that the Jews have no legal right to power ; but in the same way , three hundred years ago , they had no legal right to be in England ; and six hundred years ago they had no right to the teeth in their heads ; but , if it is the moral right we are to look at , I say that on every principle of moral obligation , I hold that the Jew has a right to political power .
Every man has a right to all that may conduce to his pleasure , if it does not inflict pain on any one else . { Cheers . ) The onus probandi lies on the advocates of restraint . Let my Honourable Friend first shew that there is some dangersome injury to the state , likely to arise from the admission of the Jews , and then will he the time to call upon us to answer the case that he has made out . "
Mr . Batley could never consent to any one talcing his seat in that House who did not believe in the Christian religion . Sir Jamks Mackintosh made a speech in support of the measure . He congratulated himself that he was , on the present occasion , addressing a House of Commons which had done
more for religious liberty than any assembly since the first Parliament of William the Third ; and it would even have been without that exception , if that Parliament had not passed the Act of Toleration , which , as it was the first step towards religious freedom , ought always
to be considered also a « the greatest . • * # m livery man born under the Constitution was entitled to all the privileges of the Constitution . He would repeat , as had been stated before , that this maxim ought to he applied to the Jews . It had been stated as an objec-
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tion to the Jews , that they had been attached to Napoleon ; but why had they been attached ? What attached them ?—Why , he did them justice . He gave them protection , and made them the sharers of the privileges of the State . He admitted them directly into all the advantages of the law . Sir James Mackintosh would ask , if it were true of the Jews that they had no regard for the esteem of their fellow-men—that they
were persons of no character—that they were lost and degraded—was it not , he would ask , because the law had degraded them , and that they had only sunk to the level of the reputation established for them by the law ? According to the old maxim—contemptu fam / z contemptu virtutis—they were made regardless of their fellow-men ; and they were guilty , perhaps , of crimes and vices . But what was the remedy ? Ought they not to remove the cause of the disease ? There
was , he believed , a theory of the present day , that disease was only to be cured by administering more of the stimulus that had caused it ; or , according to the old proverb , to take a hair of the dog which bit the patient . But , with all his respect for theories and proverbs , it would not do to apply the same doctrine to the Jews . Their subserviency was because they were openly despised ; the moral defects of their character arose
from the oppression they were subject to . What was the remedy ? To revive their regard for the esteem of other men , they must have similar motives for their conduct ; they must be released from their present degradation , and must
be treated like other men . Did they refuse to vote for this measure , it might give rise to a suspicion that their former votes were dictated by a sentiment of fear , not by a principle of justice . Would they not act on the same principle towards forty thousand Jews as towards seven millions of Catholics ? The House
must , however , shutout the consideration of numbers , whether of thousands or of millions . Justice was no respecter of persons , neither was she any respecter of multitudes ; her rules must be observed towards individuals , and numbers formed no elements in forming her
rules . He could uot conceive that any gentleman who had voted for those two great and healing measures , would oppone the motion , and would adopt one rule for the Catholics and Dissenters , and another for the Jews . The incoiivenieiicieH which it was said would arise from the measure , could only be disco-
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IntelUgerice . — Parliamentary : British Jews . 357
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1830, page 357, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2584/page/69/
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