By this time the composition of the London community had begun to change. By the side of the original Spanish and Portuguese colony there had grown up a settlement of Jews of less compromising if less picturesque antecedents—the so-called Ashkenazim 1 of the German-Polish group. The persecutions of the Middle Ages, in which that country had excelled, had nevertheless not entirely effaced the Jewish communities of Germany, which could trace their origin back to the days of the Roman occupation of the Rhineland. After the Cossack Rebellion of 1648-9, their numbers were recruited by refugees from the terrible massacres in Poland, where during the past couple of centuries the world's largest Jewish nucleus had come into being. Those of this group were clearly distinguishable from their Marrano antecedents. Thier pronunciation of Hebrew was different, as well as their synagogal usages, their melodies, their cantillation, and details of their rite of prayer They were hyper-orthodox in point of practice, cultivated Rabbinic scolarship with a passionate intensity, knew little of secular lore, and spoke among themselves the Judaeo-German dialect. Though one in essentials, to the superficial observer the two elements were obviously distinct. Nevertheless Ashkenazi Jews, forced by necessity, had been quick to take advantage of the opportunities secured by their co-religionists from Spain and Portugal in the various centres of Marrano immigration of northern Europe; and it was a logical impossibility to continue to exclude them once the others were admitted, whatever intolerance they may have encountered before. In the second half of the seventeenth century, accordingly, there was a considerable and increasing Ashkenazi settlement in Hamburg and in Amsterdam. Hence it extended, on the heels of the original immigrants, to London. Of the persons who became converted to Christianity in this country, from the Commonwealth period onwards, a good proportion were of German and Polish origin; 2 and in the records of the official community under the last Stuarts increasing numbers of distinctive names begin to appear, whether as recipients of relief, craftsmen, menials, or contributors. Of those in the last category, the majority belonged to affluent families of Hamburg or Amsterdam—above all, dealers in precious stones—ambitious members of which were naturally attracted to a new field of enterprise. 3 The most noteworthy was a certain Benjamin Levy, who arrived in London from Hamburg about 1670, and soon made a position for himself in almost every branch of overseas commercial enterprise. He was one of the twelve original 'Jew Brokers' and a Proprietor of the Western Division of the Province of New Jersey; and he was said to have been responsible for procuring the renewal of the Charter of the East India Company in 1698, with the result that his name was the second on its lists. 4 As a matter of course he and his associates worshipped at the existing synagogue, notwithstanding the fact that the ritual was a little strange to them. But the official community was somewhat aloof in its attitude toward thetudescos(as it termed them), especially after the influx that may be presumed to have taken place from Amsterdam after the Glorious Revolution. In the following year the new arrivals banded themselves together to conduct divine worship in accordance with their own usages, and seven years later, through Benjamin Levy's generosity, they acquired their own cemetery. The community was henceforth self-contained and independent. 5 The traditions followed in the new synagogue (situated in Duke's Place, long the heart of London's Jewish quarter, in the immediate neighbourhood of the older place of worship) were those of the German–Polish group of Hamburg, from which city a majority of the original members hailed. 6 The new community was recruited from abroad with great rapidity, the influx being yet further stimulated when the accession of George I brought England and Germany into a closer relationship. Composed as it was of persons of widely different status, occupations, and antecedents, it lacked the homogeneity and harmonious spirit of the older body. Its growth accordingly was expressed in a series of secessions, each of which resulted in the formation of a fresh congregation. 7 Mutatis mutandis, the new community. was organized in much the same fashion as the old, though lacking a good deal of its external polish and its close discipline. There was the same communal hierarchy, though the power of the governing body was less absolute, the same system of raising revenue, though to a greater extent on a voluntary basis, the same network of congregational charities and institutions. By the side of the synagogue numerous voluntary associations came into being—mutual help societies, burial societies, societies for visiting the sick, for educating the young, for the relief of imprisoned debtors. The most characteristic were those for study, whose members would assemble after their day's work was done to pore over the Talmud or to hear ethical discourses. They would frequently remain behind to recite the evening service together: with the result that some of these bodies developed into subordinate Bethels, one or two of which still exist. 8 Just as the Spanish and Portuguese community endeavoured to perpetuate the atmosphere of Madrid or Lisbon amid the London fogs, so their Ashkenazi co-religionists transplanted with them from overseas something of the spirit of a central European ghetto. The language which they used for the communal business, for their studies, for their sermons, for domestic intercourse, was Yiddish, or JudaeoGerman, written in Hebrew characters, and with a very strong admixture of the sacred tongue in its vocabulary. Medieval superstitions were rife. Weddings and betrothals were conducted in full continental style, with feasting and music and dancing spread over several days. (There was a notorious instance in 1720 when one of the City Halls was taken for the occasion; a guard of Grenadiers accompanied the bridal procession, and the Prince of Wales came to gratify his curiosity.) 9 All necessary proclamations were made in synagogue by the Beadle, who also auctioned (for purposes of revenue) the various synagogal honours. As was the case with the older body, each congregation had its physician, who took his seat among the Wardens and assisted in their deliberations when the occasion demanded. Socially and economically the new settlers generally belonged to a distinctly lower stratum than their precursors, who indeed refused to intermarry with them, to the amusement of the outside world. 10 At the head of the community there were indeed a few brokers, jewellers, and wholesale merchants of much the same type. They constituted, in this case, however, only a small proportion of the whole. Below them was an entire proletariat, composed to a large extent of the most recent arrivals, whose occupations extended from acting as servitors and footmen to their wealthy co-religionists to petty handicraft and retail trade. The provenance of the immigrants was varied. The majority were from the old-established Jewish communities of Germany—not only great centres such as Frankfort and Hamburg, but also the smaller in the central and southern parts of the country, in Bavaria or Franconia, with a handful, imperfectly Gallicized, from Alsace. Amsterdam and the other Dutch cities continued to provide their quota. A certain proportion were from farther east—Silesia, Moravia, Bohemia, and Poland; though as yet this great reservoir of Jewish life contributed in only a comparatively small degree to direct immigration. 11 The nomenclature of the newcomers was as characteristic as their appearance. Whereas the Sephardi Jews had established surnames previous to their arrival in England generally the Gothic patronymics assumed by their baptized ancestors), this was the case with their Ashkenazi co-religionists in only a minority of cases. In the synagogue a man would be called x, son of y. This generally formed the basis of the name by which he was known in the outside world: hence the appellations Abrahams, Isaacs and Jacobs, which, with their biblical counterparts, now became the rule in the London Ghetto, fortified by a few places of origin and trades. 12 The influx from central and eastern Europe was paralleled on a much smaller scale by immigration from the Mediterranean world, by which the Sephardi community was reinforced. Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century it continued to be recruited by Marranos, fleeing from the rigours of the Inquisitions of Spain and Portugal; and more than one important Anglo-Jewish family owes its origin to this period. 13 In such circumstances it was inevitable that the Holy Office and its activities should remain a constant preoccupation of the older-established section of English Jewry. On the eve of the Day of Atonement prayers were offered in the synagogue on behalf of 'our brethren, who are imprisoned in the dungeons of the Inquisition'. Anglo-Jewish litterateurs introduced references to its activities in their writings, 14 and the bitter feelings which it engendered had local repercussions. 15 For many years London continued to be the headquarters of the campaign against it. David Nieto, formerly of Venice, Haham or Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese community from 1701 to 1728, and the most distinguished scholar to occupy that office, published in 1709 a telling refutation of the sermon delivered by the Archbishop of Crangranor at an auto-da-fè in Lisbon in 1705. This he followed up by Recondite Notices of the Inquisitions of Spain and Portugal, in Spanish and Portuguese, which he edited in 1722. 16 All this contributed towards the discrediting of the Holy Office. As the middle of the century approached its activity gradually diminished, and the tide of emigration that it forced automatically dwindled. Though several members of the Spanish and Portuguese community enjoyed from the beginning a high degree of economic well-being, the problem of the poor was acute, even in this relatively wealthy section. Under George II an attempt was made to cope with it in accordance with the ideas of the day, by the systematic (though, as it finally turned out, fruitless) encouragement of emigration. When in 1732 Colonel Oglethorpe obtained his charter for establishing a settlement in Georgia, as a refuge for paupers and persecuted dissenters and a barrier for the British colonies against Spanish aggression, a few pillars of the Synagogue were among the agents appointed to solicit public subscriptions in aid of the scheme. Instead of handing over to the Commission the sum they collected from their co-religionists, they attempted to utilize it for financing the emigration of destitute Jews. This, however logical, was in excess of their powers, and they were compelled to surrender their commissions. Nevertheless their activity resulted in the despatch to the new colony in 1733 of two small batches of Jewish emigrants, belonging to both sections of the London community. Collaboration with the general scheme having proved impossible, in 1734 the Synagogue set up a special committee to apply for lands for an exclusively Jewish settlement in the new colony. The application was not granted, but three years later a tract was offered for the purpose in Carolina, though under conditions which proved unacceptable. 17 In spite of this initial lack of success the committee continued in existence and in 1745 received an extension of powers and of income. Three years later negotiations were opened to establish a settlement in South Carolina, for which purpose the philanthropic but volatile John Hamilton, a London financier, petitioned the Council for Plantation Affairs for a grant of 200,000 acres. This scheme, too, fell through, though some individual families were sufficiently interested to emigrate to that colony not long after. 18 Meanwhile, in 1749, after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, when the colonization of Nova Scotia was taken seriously in hand, an attempt was made to persuade poor Jews to settle there by the promise of a charitable allowance for three years from the congregation. In conjunction with the plan a Charitable Society was formed in the same year to apprentice boys to useful handicrafts, and to assist them in leaving the country. The prospect was in every sense a cold one, and there was no positive result. 19 There was nevertheless a steady trickle of emigration from both England and the Continent to the American colonies, and by the close of the reign of George II there were, besides the older settlements in the West Indies, half a dozen Jewish communities, largely of Spanish and Portuguese origin though no longer exclusively so in composition, reaching from Georgia to Rhode Island, and enjoying, in the untrammelled atmosphere of a new country, a rather ampler measure of tolerance than was the case nearer home. Yet from the moment of the Resettlement there was probably no country in Europe in which the Jews received better treatment than England. Even in Holland they were excluded from certain towns and provinces, and in Turkey they received only the restricted rights of unbelievers. In Germany and Italy the Ghetto system still prevailed; from Spain, Portugal, and much of France, there was complete and even barbarous exclusion; Polish Jewry was terrorized and almost rightless; Danish Jewry was insignificant. In England, on the other hand, the Jews were under the protection of the law, could settle anywhere they pleased, and enjoyed virtual social equality. Not infrequently, indeed, some zealot published a conversionist pamphlet in which their beliefs were reviled, or a fanatical antiquarian advocated the enforcement of the restrictive legislation which existed on the statute-book. But that was all. Only on one or two isolated occasions was there any mob violence—never, however, receiving governmental sanction or connivance, or resulting in loss of life. In 1732, indeed, a certain Osborne published a paper recounting in lurid detail how the Portuguese Jews in London had murdered a woman lately arrived from abroad and her newborn child, on the ground that the father had been a Christian. Similar conduct, according to the author, was frequent on the part of the culprits (it was indeed a sort of ritual murder accusation in a new setting). In consequence of these allegations some sections of the London populace were thoroughly aroused, and several Jews living near Broad Street, recently arrived from Portugal, were attacked by the mob. A case was brought with typical English coolness before the Court of the King's Bench, which found that the publication was an inflammatory libel upon the Jewish community as such, and ordered it to be withdrawn from circulation. 20 This was the sum total of the more violent manifestations of anti-Semitism in England in the century after the Resettlement. 21 Administrative and even judicial annoyance, on the other hand, was by no means infrequent. Thus, for example, when a London Jew left a sum for the purpose of maintaining an institution for Talmudical study, the court declared his legacy invalid as being devoted to a 'superstitious' purpose, and ordered that the amount should be diverted to what it considered the nearest legal object—viz., the instruction of the children at the Foundling Hospital in the rudiments of Christianity. Later, a legacy even for the support of a synagogue was declared invalid. 22 In 1720 an attempt was made (though ineffectually) to drive the Jew Brokers out of business, a petition being presented to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in which it was attempted to show that their admission, not being authorized by the Act of 1697, was illegal. 23 Though this attempt was without result the fee payable for the transference of a broker's medal, originally quite moderate, was forced to a ridiculously high level; ultimately it rose to as much as £1,500, this constituting one of the most lucrative perquisites of the Lord Mayor's office. 24 The most burdensome disability of all was the prohibition to acquire the Freedom of the City of London, where almost the totality of the Anglo-Jewish community resided, with the consequent impediments in all branches of economic life. One or two individuals managed to avoid the restrictions. But in 1737 the Corporation had an inquiry made into the 'scandal' caused by the granting of the Freedom to Jews, and ordered legislative action to be taken to prevent recurrence. Two years after, the religious test was upheld in the courts of law, and towards the close of the century (1785), with a cynical recognition of the questionable sincerity of conversions, the same bar was extended to baptized Jews. 25 This disability was supplemented by exclusion from various mercantile organizations. When in 1727 Anthony da Costa was successful in an action against the Russia Company, which had barred him from membership on the score of his religion, the Directors obtained from Parliament a modification of their charter which secured the right of refusal 26 In the Russia trade, indeed, Jewish interest was inconsiderable. But the same restriction applied to other branches in which the reverse was the case, such as the trade with the Ottoman Empire. When in 1744 a scheme was proposed in Parliament for the reorganization of the Levant Company, which would have made the admission of Jews possible, so great an outcry was raised that the Bill was rejected: for critics professed to believe that if English Jews were permitted to come into direct contact with their co-religionists in Turkey, who were universally used as brokers and factors, they would between them organize a monopoly of the trade and squeeze out the Christian merchants. The reorganization scheme was ultimately carried through in 1753, but a clause was inserted forbidding Jewish members of the company to employ Jews as factors in the Levant. 27 Yet these disabilities were relatively inconsiderable, and on the whole English Jewry, sure of their position under the House of Hanover, and a little uncertain as to what continental conceptions the Stuarts might have imbibed, had every reason to support the existing order. (It was true that a London Jew of Bordeaux origin named Francis Francia had been tried at the Old Bailey in 1716-17 as an adherent of the Old Pretender, but he was acquitted, and it is probable that this 'Jewish Jacobite' was a government agent.) 28 Hence, at the time of the Young Pretender's bid for London in 1745, the Jewish merchants and brokers rallied wholeheartedly to the side of the government. Samson Gideon the oracle of 'Change Alley, was one of the few men in the city who kept his head: helping the government both with his shrewd advice and his vast credit, and taking a prominent share in raising the loan of £1700,000 for the pressing needs of the moment. He and another Jew were among the dozen merchants who, when public confidence was at its lowest ebb, promoted the association to purchase Bank of England notes at par, if they were offered for sale; and the rest of the Jewish merchants, encouraged by the Synagogue, subscribed to a man to the Association Oath Rolls which thereafter were opened at the Guildhall and elsewhere. Others ostentatiously imported bullion from abroad and took it to the Bank. A quarter of the money raised on the security of the land-tax came from them, and two among their number placed at the disposal of the government several fully equipped vessels which were lying in the Thames. The lower classes enlisted in the civic militia; a service of intercession was held in the synagogues; and, when the emergency was over, a Jew was chosen—rare privilege—as a member of the delegation which went to present the City's humble congratulations to His Majesty. 29 By now there was to be found in England the nucleus of an acclimatized, English-speaking community. The most prominent among them were still of course the financiers and merchants, some of whom had begun to intermingle on friendly terms with English society; men like the charitable Joseph Salvador or Benamin Mendes da Costa both as well known for their liberality outside as inside the Jewish community; Solomon da Costa Athias, who presented to the British Museum in 759 a collection of Hebrew books originally brought together for Charles II; or, in the sister-community, Moses Hart, for many years its lay-leader, and his kinsmen of The Franks family. 30 The most prominent of all was Samson Gideon [Abudiente], mentioned just above, who was consulted by successive prime Ministers and Chancellors of the Exchequer, advised on the consolidation of the National Debt in 1749, raised several government loans during the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War, and set the example of offering bounties to recruits in the critical year 1757. 31 These business magnates were said to be worth between them some £5,000,000 sterling, of which £2,000,000 were invested in government stock (one-tenth of it in the name of a single individual). However, only twenty families among them, it was stated, could be reckoned really opulent. Then followed some forty well-to-do brokers and stock-jobbers (including the twelve authorized Jew Brokers), and a number of export merchants: the development of the new textile industries in silk and cotton, and of trade to the West Indies, owed a good deal to their enterprise and their widespread overseas connexions. 32 In the purlieu of the circle of the brokers and stock-jobbers hovered financial dabblers such as Jacob Henriques, the dealer in lottery-tickets who claimed that his father had projected the Bank of England, whose fantastic suggestions for restoring the national finances by means of a guinea lottery were actually adopted in the Budget of 1757; 33 or Philip Heilbuth, who in 1720 originated the idea of a maritime insurance corporation, which ultimately led to the establishment of what was afterwards Lloyd's. 34 A respected figure in government circles, though only an occasional visitor to England, was the eminent economist Isaac de Pinto of Amsterdami (author of the Traité de la Circulation et du Credit, one of the great documents in the history of political economy) : his services in effecting a favourable arrangement regarding India after the Treaty of Paris were so considerable that he was rewarded by the East India Company with an annuity. 35 Apart from the men of affairs there was a sprinkling of writers and scholars, especially physicians: men like the former Marrano Jacob de Castro Sarmento, a prolific medical writer, or his namesake de Jacob de Castro one of the earliest English advocates of vaccination. The wayward Emmanuel Mendes da Costa at one time clerk and librarian to the Royal Society, was perhaps the most eminent English natural historian of his day, member of many learned societies, and in correspondence with savants all the world over. His younger contemporary, Israel Lyons of Cambridge, mathematician and botanist, accompanied Lord Mulgrave's arctic expedition of 1773 as principal astronomer, and made his name known to the learned world in more than one book. In the sphere of belles-lettres, the lead was set by Moses Mendes (a grandson of that Dr. Fernando Mendes who had come to England in the train of Catherine of Borganza) who, secure in the fortune amassed as stock-jobber, and reinforced by baptism and marriage out of the Jewish faith, turned to literature and wrote several dramatic pieces, which were set to music by Boyce and Burney, and in some cases enjoyed long runs on the stage. Contemporaneously, his kinsman, Solomon Mendes, was a popular figure in the coterie of Richard Savage and James Thomson, while Prado of Twickenham the commissariat contractor, who was intimate with Horace Walpole and his circle. 36 Moses Mendes collaborated on occasion with a bad but prolific poet Ralph Schomberg (a baptized son of the physician to the Great Synagogue) one of whose brothers entered the Royal Navy, supervised the landing of the troops at the capture of Quebec in 1759, was knighted and was father of Admiral Sir Alexander Schomberg, the eminent naval writer. 37 In other aspects of cultural life, too, English Jews were beginning to play some part. From the beginning of the eighteenth century their names figure in the lists of subscribers to new works. 38 During Mozart's first visit to England as an infant prodigy several Jews showed their appreciation of him. With the court they patronized Handel almost as sedulously as the nobility boycotted him, and their support assisted in turning his Judas Maccabaeus from a failure to a success. 39 On the stage and the concert platform they were represented from the day of Hannah Norsa, who in 1732 made the fortunes of the newly opened Theatre Royal in Covent Garden by her astonishing performance as Polly Peachum in the Beggar's Opera, and of Giacomo Basevi Cervetto who first acclimatized the violoncello in England, were he arrived from Verona in 1739. Another Italian Jew, Solomon Rieti, enlivened London life by laying out in 1742 the famous pleasure-gardens at Ranelagh. 40 Persons of this type acquired easily and rapidly at least the appearance of Anglicisation. Quite soon after the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty it was remarked that beards were worn only by the Rabbis and persons newly arrived from abroad. The portraits which have survived from the beginning of the eighteenth century show little to differentiate the Jew from his neighbour. So long as it was in fashion he affected the irksome dignity of a periwig, which Rabbinical regulations expressly permitted him to comb out on the Sabbath. The younger generation habitually went about with swords; but on the day of rest, when they were enjoined to attach a wooden blade to the hilt, the majority preferred to do without. They were familiar figures, too, at the theatre, evoking thus the censure of some over-scrupulous moralists. Wagers (for instance, on the day of the arrival of the Dutch mail) were sufficiently common to require stringent supervision, and clandestine marriages reflected the atmosphere of the English playwrights rather than that of the Talmud. A breach of promise case which attracted much attention in 1734 disclosed an environment almost indistinguishable from that of a family in the same position in non-Jewish life. 41 The English Jew soon yielded to the charms of the English countryside. Very soon after the Resettlement it became the practice of the wealthier to acquire residences in semi-rural retirement in the immediate neighbourhood of London. Defoe, in his Tour of the Whole Island of Great Britain (1727), was impressed by the fact that'Jews have particulary fixt upon Highgate and Hampstead for their country houses'. Others spread westward along the Thames valley, about Isleworth and Richmond. So friendly were their relations with their neighbours that they attended the meetings of the Vestry, and even the local clergyman had no objection to entertaining a coach-load of Jews for a game of cards. 42 Jewish visitors to England; from the beginning of the eighteenth century, noted to their amazement how, already in the early spring, many of the communal magnates betook themselves to their rural residences and were thus unapproachable. That they were not without political interests, in a tentative fashion, is demonstrated by a resolution of the governing body of the senior community condemning interference in Parliamentary or local elections. 43 It was not long before the reputation of English Jewry and the report of the favourable position which it enjoyed became known overseas, in an exaggerated form; and appeals for assistance, pecuniary and political, were constant from as far afield as Persia in the one direction or Rhode Island in the other. Jews established under British rule at Minorca or Jamaica requested intercession on their behalf with the governmental authorities when they were maltreated. The scholars of the Holy Land applied for support as a matter of course, sending special emissaries to London for the purpose. Mediterranean Jewry secured co-operation in the pious duty of redeeming the captives sold into slavery by the Barbary corsairs or knights of Malta. (Indeed, for these charitable objects special functionaries were appointed each year by the London synagogue.) When, for economic reasons, the Swedish government made an attempt to encourage the settlement of wealthy Jews, the invitation was communicated officially to the Spanish and Portuguese community in London, which tactfully indicated that the continued kindness of the British king and Parliament did not permit them to leave the country. The Jews of Venice, now in sore straits, sent a delegation to raise a loan, for the repayment of which (never in fact completed) the Serenissima afterwards made special provision. 44 But the most striking instance of all was in 1744-5, when the Empress Maria Theresa banished the Jews from Bohemia in revenge for offences said to have been committed by their co-religionists in Alsace. The community of Prague was one of the Oldest and most numerous in Europe, and appealed to fellow Jews throughout the world, asking them to use what influence they could to obtain a reprieve. The leading members of the Great Synagogue in Londoner Moses Hart and Aaron Franks, immediately petitioned the King, who received them in audience; and showed every sympathy shaking his head and repeating, with tears in his eyes 'It is not right that the innocent should suffer with the guilty'. Moses Hart, advanced in years though he was, went abroad to see what he could do, in company with three members of Parliament; and Sir Thomas Robinson, the British Ambassador in Vienna, was instructed to associate himself with the Dutch envoy in making representations to the Austrian government. He was warmly sympathetic, and shocked by the empress's display of bigotry and prejudice. Thanks in part to his efforts; the refugees were allowed in the end to return to their homes. This was probably the first instance in modern History of diplomatic intervention by a European Power on behalf of an alien minority on purely humanitarian grounds. 45 We have seen that, notwithstanding their generally favourable condition, there were various disabilities which weighed heavily upon the Jews. Just after the middle of the century an attempt was made to remove one which was found irksome by the upper classes. It resulted in complete failure, but attracted nevertheless a degree of attention out of all proportion to the real importance of the question at issue, with results which narrowly escaped being disastrous. In the matter of naturalization, which secured to aliens the privileges of natural-born Englishmen (e.g. owning land and ships, and trading with the plantations), Jews were at a considerable disadvantage. It could indeed be procured in a qualified sense ('endenization') by letters patent, which, however, had no retrospective action, and did not permit the inheritance of land. This was legalized only when the process was effected in full form by Act of Parliament; but this method was not open to Jews since, long before the Readmission, at the height of the anti-Catholic agitation, it had been made obligatory for those who became British subjects by this means to have received the Sacrament within the past month according to the rites of the Church of England, as well as to take the Protestant oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance. Accordingly, Jews born abroad could avail themselves only of the costly method and more limited privileges of endenization, which from the time of Charles II they had done in large numbers—generally, owing to the great expense involved, in groups. A more liberal attitude had been advocated from time to time by some tolerant publicists such as Sir Josiah Child in his New Discourse of Trade (1693) and John Toland, who, when the question of the naturalization of foreign Protestants began to engage the public attention, issued anonymously his far-reaching Reasons for naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland, on the same footing with all other nations (1714)—one of the earliest pleas for comprehensive toleration for the Jews. But the voice of a Deist agitator was not likely to carry much weight at that period, and the work achieved nothing except to elicit a peculiarly scurrilous retort. 46 For some time past it had been usual for the difficulties in the way of naturalization to be modified in favour of categories of persons who might prove of particular benefit to the state. Thus a statute of Charles II entitled aliens who had been engaged for three years in dressing hemp or flax, making tapestries, &c., to be naturalized after three years, and a statute of George II of 1740 conferred similar advantages on persons who had served for two years in the Royal Navy or on a merchant ship in time of war. In the same year, in an Act for naturalizing foreign Protestants and others settled in the American colonies (13 George II, cap. 7), the Sacramental test was dispensed with in the case of Jews who had lived there for seven years, who were, moreover, relieved of the obligation to repeat the words 'Upon the true faith of a Christian' in the Oath of Abjuration. 47 Within the next fourteen years nearly two hundred West Indian Jews (the majority of whom lived in Jamaica) availed themselves of the opportunity offered by this measure. When in 1745 a similar Bill for naturalizing foreign Protestants in England was under consideration by Parliament, the Jews made representations to the government in the hopes of being included; but the time was inopportune, and in fact before long the measure was itself dropped. 48 This seems to have convinced them that it was better to make a preliminary experiment on a smaller scale. In 1746, accordingly, a Bill 'for naturalizing persons professing the Jewish religion in Ireland' (where the diminutive settlement had become yet smaller in recent years) was introduced to the House of Commons in Dublin, but was thrown out by the Upper House by a single vote. In the following year it passed the Commons unanimously, and was presented to the Lord Lieutenant for transmission to England. However, through the influence of the Primate of Ireland, it was dropped quietly in Council and never received royal assent. 49 The magnates of the Spanish and Portuguese community in London anxiously watched these attempts, and after the second failure a'Committee of Diligence'was appointed to see if anything could be done to forward the matter. There seems to have been an ulterior motive for this eagerness. In spite of a favourable opinion expressed by the Attorney-General in 1718, a certain element of doubt prevailed as to whether the acquisition by Jews of country residences and estates, and even city freeholds, was legally valid. An Act of 1722, which added to Roman Catholic disabilities by enforcing the Oath of Abjuration on all landowners, was followed the next year by a further measure (to George I, cap. 4) exempting Jews from the necessity of including in it the words 'on the true faith of a Christian'; and at the same period several eminent authorities expressed their opinion that there was nothing in English law to prevent a natural-born Jew from owning real estate. 50 But the obvious self-consciousness on this point of the leaders of the Jewish community and their champions reflects the uncertainty that still prevailed. When Samson Gideon wished to acquire his country estate he considered it safest to validate his position by a special Act of Parliament, and there seems to have been a widespread desire that the problem should be finally cleared up, enabling English Jews, both native-born and otherwise, to acquire as well as to inherit estates and freeholds on the same terms as other Englishmen. 51 This point was not stressed; titularly the intention was only to facilitate naturalization. The wealthy and popular Joseph Salvador (alias Joseph Jessurun Rodrigues) entered into touch with the government on behalf of his co-religionists of the Spanish and Portuguese community 52 (the Ashkenazim, poorer for the most part, were not vitally interested). Philip Carteret Webb, secretary of bankrupts in the Court of Chancery, was engaged to advise and supervise. The Newcastle government on its side showed itself warmly sympathetic. It was true, of course, that to English xenophobia the idea of naturalization on a large scale was known to be distasteful, even where elements less unpopular than the Jews were concerned. Three times since the beginning of the century measures had been brought forward for the naturalization of foreign Protestants; but the jealousy of the Church and the City had been aroused, and they had been dropped or repealed—in one instance after three years of legal validity. But notwithstanding these precedents the proposals were pushed on. The Bill drawn up provided simply that Jews who had been resident in Great Britain or Ireland for three years might be naturalized on application to Parliament without taking the Sacrament. The proposals were mild and unprovocative in the extreme—as Joseph Salvador had pointed out from the beginning, the expense of an Act of Parliament would prevent the poorer classes from being touched by them one way or the other. Only the rich were affected, being put on a position of equality with the dependents whom they had sent out to the West Indies; and, like all naturalized persons, they would still be unable to become members of the Privy Council or either House of Parliament, to obtain grants of crown lands, or to hold any office of profit under the Crown. But there was an incidental clause, ostensibly discriminatory, which prohibited Jews (whether native-born or foreign) from purchasing or inheriting advowsons or presenting to any ecclesiastical benefice. The right of presentation went, of course, with estates: and this reservation implicitly confirmed the right of the Jews to hold land. 53 The Bill was introduced into the House of Lords on April 3rd, 1753 by Lord Halifax, the'Father of the Colonies', then President of the Board of Trade. It was read three times in rapid succession, and passed without a division. On April 17th it was read for the first time in the House of Commons, where at the beginning it appeared to have the prospect of a similar easy passage. At the second reading however, on May 7th, opposition began to develop, led by a former Lord Mayor, Sir John Barnard, one of the members for the City of London and a personal rival of Samson Gideon. The House was asked what crime the people of the kingdom had committed, that they should be deprived of their birthright not only as Englishmen but also as Christians. It was asserted that the Bill gave the lie to all the prophecies of the New Testament. One member even suggested that, instead of proceeding with the Bill, the House should appoint a secret committee to inquire by what right the Jews were tolerated in the country at all. Nevertheless the second reading passed by 95 votes to 16. During the following fortnight the furore increased, both in the House and outside it. The Tory and Whig oppositions joined hands, attacking the measure with competitive virulence. Petitions against the Bill poured in, from conscience-stricken stock-jobbers and patriotic merchants who had to meet Jewish competition. The Lord Mayor of London, Sir Crisp Gascoigne, presided over protest meetings of Aldermen and Liverymen, and exhorted the citizens to resist this dangerous concession; while the Common Council denounced the measure as'tending greatly to the dishonour of the Christian religion'. When the Bill was brought up for its third reading on May 22nd, Lord Egmont moved the adjournment. Had the Opposition exerted all their strength it is probable that they would have carried the division; but their political strategists rightly imagined that the question would prove a more effective weapon in the country if the Bill were allowed to pass. The minority increased in numbers, in a sparse House, from 16 to 55, while the government supporters remained virtually stationary at 96. The Bill accordingly received the royal assent and passed into law. Thereafter the struggle was transferred, over a period of nearly six months, from Westminster to the streets. An agitation against the 'Jew Bill' sprang up throughout the country—in part artificially sponsored by the opposition, in part a spontaneous expression of xenophobia—which has few parallels in English history. The walls were plastered with the slogan, incongruously combining two different antipathies:'No Jews, no Wooden Shoes'(the last being considered the characteristic footwear of religious refugees from France). It was freely alleged that Jewish gold and ministerial treachery (the possibility of altruistic action was derided) had combined to corrupt Parliament. The member for Exeter was constrained to distribute papers to prove that he observed his Sabbath with other Englishmen, and therefore could not be seriously suspected of clandestine adherence to Judaism. The spiritual peers who had supported the Bill were roundly accused of delivering the Keys of the Church to those who had murdered their Saviour, and were hooted when they appeared in public: while the Bishop of Norwich was actually attacked by the rabble in more than one part of his diocese when he went to confirm. Grand juries, pocket boroughs, and city merchants competed with one another in the extravagance of the petitions which they presented imploring that the measure should be reversed; and the Corporation of Reading pathetically enjoined its members to protect the British Constitution and the protestant faith from Jewish machinations. Every constituency resounded with anti-Jewish and anti-government slogans, ranging from 'Christianity and Old England for Ever' in the capital to 'No Jews: Christianity and the Constitution' at Newton in Lancashire. Aspirant candidates for the forthcoming general election were considered only in relation to their conduct when the Bill had been before Parliament, a dark complexion becoming an insuperable objection. Ladies' trinkets were made in the shape of crosses; hogs' puddings and pork-banquets unexpectedly became patriotic fare; and 'no mass-house, no conventicle, no synagogue: High Church for ever' was the toast with which the convivialities closed. Prominent Jews, such as Salvador, were booed when they were seen in the theatre, and forced to withdraw. The Archbishop of Canterbury, kindly disposed towards them as he was, feared a general massacre. 54 Above all, the printing-presses were kept busy turning out pamphlets, squibs, ballads, and caricatures; and men like Jonas Hanway, the traveller and philanthropist, and William Romaine, the fashionable London preacher, reinforced the inevitable 'Christian','Britannia', and 'Timothy Tell-Truth' in denouncing the advance on the path of toleration. The opposition indulged in ludicrous exaggeration. All the old anti-Jewish libels were revived, including the hackneyed fable of Ritual Murder. The Spanish laws against heretics were cited with approval, and it was suggested that the inhabitants of those countries where the Inquisition yet flourished would resent any amelioration in the treatment of those whom they burned so conscientiously at home, with disastrous results to the English export trade. It was alleged that the administration had received a bribe of half a million pounds sterling as art inducement to bring in the iniquitous measure. One pamphleteer, anticipating a mania of two centuries later, urged that passages glorifying the Hebrews (such as 'O pray for the peace of Jerusalem') should be omitted from the Psalms. Another paladin of orthodoxy suggested that the Bill might be allowed to stand, with a simple amendment to the effect that baptism should be a prerequisite of naturalization. Other opponents professed to believe that there would be an enormous influx of foreign Jews, who before long would divide England among their tribes as their ancestors had the land of Canaan, purchase all the estates, influence elections, enter Parliament, and aspire to even the highest offices. The constitution of Church and State would be endangered, they said; Judaism would spread; and the country at large would invite the divine retribution which is the penalty of national apostasy. A satirist pictured—not without humour—the probable condition of England a hundred years later, when St. Paul's would be a synagogue, persons with grotesquely biblical names (such as Sir Nadab Issachar and the Right Honourable the Earl of Balaam) fill the highest offices of state, trade be ruined by the introduction of a second Sabbath-day in every week, the importation of pork become a penal offence, and a Bill for naturalizing Christians be rejected with contumely by the Sanhedrin. Scurrilous caricatures were sold in the streets, elaborating such titles as 'The Circumcised Gentiles, or a Journey to Jerusalem' : 'The Jews' Triumph, and England's fears set forth', 'The Jews shaving Parliament, or the Knowing Ones taken in'. And the ballad writers found a superb opportunity: But, Lord, how surpris'd when they heard of the News That we were to be Servants to Circumcis'd Jews, To be Negroes and Slaves instead of True Blues, The opposition was not, of course, allowed to have the wordy battle all its own way. Several pamphleteers entered the lists on behalf of the Jews—above all Josiah Tucker, later dean of Gloucester, the eminent economist and divine, whose work to some extent anticipated Adam Smith's. Some at least of the clergy showed themselves tolerant, and mounted the pulpit in defence of the unpopular measure. Of the newspapers, the General Evening Post and the Public Advertiser opened their columns to the voice of reason, in contrast to the scurrilities with which the Gentleman's Magazine, the Westminster Journal, and the London Evening Post particularly distinguished themselves. The champions of the Bill accentuated the economic importance of the Jews and the benefits which they would necessarily bring to any country in which they could be induced to settle. They referred to their patriotic action at the time of general panic when the Young Pretender was marching on London eight years before, and their whole-hearted support of the Hanoverian dynasty both then and at other times. They quoted figures indicating the magnitude of their fortunes, the scale of their charities, the manner in which they had promoted English exports and the benefits which they had brought to the American plantations. They insisted on their invariable practice of supporting their own poor, who even in the event of an increase in number would be no burden upon the country. They inferred, not entirely without reason, that the opposition to so salutary a reform was due to the envy of a coterie of London merchants, who wished to monopolize foreign trade, to the manifest disadvantage of the country at large. One or two, who approached the question from an entirely different angle, went on to suggest that the naturalization was a necessary prelude to the general conversion of the Jews, and even urged the government, with arguments curiously anticipatory of later Zionism, to link it up with their restoration to Palestine. And a country gentleman, in his flexions upon Naturalization, developed Bacon's argument, that in order to achieve greatness an empire must show itself willing to absorb other stocks. But these tolerant voices were overwhelmed by the number and insistency of those which were raised on the other side. To champion the Bill, moreover, was not without its dangers, as Dr. Tucker found when he was attacked in the streets of Bristol by an angry crowd which, disappointed at seeing him escape, comforted themselves by burning him in effigy. 55 So universal an agitation, on the eve of a general election, could not be overlooked. The Duke of Newcastle, whose agents kept him closely informed of the state of public opinion in the constituencies, feared that the results might be really serious; and the government determined very reluctantly to bow to the storm which it had aroused. On the opening day of the new session (November 5th), the duke brought forward a fresh Bill in the House of Lords to repeal the unpopular measure, in a speech described by a contemporary as being 'rather worse than usual'. He maintained that the original proposals were wise and beneficial, but that the government had no choice but to yield to the clamour raised by secret enemies of the dynasty and of the Protestant Establishment. The Bishops of Oxford and St. Asaph supported him, admitting shamefacedly the necessity to bow to 'weak and misguided consciences'. Only Lord Temple raised his voice in violent protest against this surrender, under the influence of the public news-sheets, to 'an unchristian high church spirit'. Originally it was intended that the repealing measure should cover only that part of the original which facilitated naturalization, leaving unaffected the new statutory prohibition of presenting to advowsons. But this would have implied that this right was possessed under common law, and in consequence the repealing Bill was revised in Committee so as to make this provision share the fate of the other clauses. It was read in the Lords for the third time on November 22nd, Temple alone exercising his peer's right of recording his dissent. In the Commons, the question had been brought up by the opposition without waiting for government action, Sir James Dashwood moving the consideration of repeal immediately the Reply to the Royal Address had been approved. His motion was seconded from the government benches by Lord Parker; but by this time the new Bill had reached the Lower House. A fierce debate followed, the discussion centring about the preamble, which suggested that the repeal was due to factious endeavours to arouse discontent in the country. Sir Roger Newdigate proposed a less objectionable alternative; but after a debate in which William Pitt condemned the persecuting spirit, and Admiral Vernon praised the zeal of the country curates who had saved the country from being betrayed by the bishops, the amendment was defeated by 113 votes to 13. The repealing Bill was then passed unanimously through the House, receiving the royal assent on December 10th, 1753. Flushed by this success the opposition determined to carry its advantage further, in a frankly anti-Semitic spirit. Immediately the Bill had passed through the Commons, an attempt was made to effect also the repeal of the Act of 1740, which facilitated the naturalization of Jews in the plantations. But by this time popular interest had waned, and Parliament showed its determination not to embark on a programme of persecution by rejecting the proposals, in a House nearly twice as numerous as had divided on any previous occasion during the controversy, by 208 votes to 88. 56 The altercation was over, and with it one of the strangest episodes of English history of the eighteenth century, which, like the Sacheverell Case or the Gordon Riots, showed how near the surface the old religious excitements still surged. For nearly three-quarters of a century the difficulties in the way of naturalization of foreign-born Jews remained, and those who wished to become British subjects had to choose the clumsy method of endenization. But save for this it is curious how little enduring was the outcome. One of the most remarkable, most universal, and most famous of all popular agitations of the day died down as suddenly and as completely as it had begun. It had left behind it no rancour; indeed, one of the strangest features about the entire episode is that, notwithstanding the manner in which feeling was excited, there was hardly any physical violence—a fact which demonstrates its artificial nature. And, though the results may have dashed the hopes of some of the upper class for any substantial relief from the disabilities from which they suffered (it was seventy years before the Jews again received specific mention in any Act of Parliament), the lasting effects were insignificant. 57 FootnotesChapter 9
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