THE restoration of peace in Europe in 1815 found in England Jewish community of some 20,000 to 30,000 souls of Whom not less than two-thirds lived in London. 1 outside the Capital there were communities—in no case exceeding one thousand souls and in several not exceeding one hundred—in about twenty-five provincial centres of which Portsmouth, Plymouth, Birmingham and Liverpool were the most important. The long sequence of disturbances abroad had thrown the community to an increasing extent on its own resources. In all sections there was by now a considerable native-born element, fully anglicized; among those of Spanish and Portuguese extraction, indeed, they were predominant. With Francis Cohen (Palgrave), Isaac d'Israeli, John Adolphus and Lewis Goldsmith—all more considered in that day than in ours they had begun to play a respectable part in English letters, while David Ricardo (baptized in early manhood) had founded a new school of political economy and Benjamin Gompertz was among the outstanding contemporary mathematicians. 2 The requirements of the community were by now served by an increasing supply of literature in the vernacular. English sermons, though not yet the rule, were no longer unknown to the synagogue. 3 Though Hebrew scholarship was at a low ebb (the only noteworthy figure of English birth was Jacob Hart who, under the name Eliakim ben Abraham, published a series of scientific brochures of high interest), the community had produced at last in men like David Levi, the erudite hatmaker of Whitechapel, scholars who were qualified to answer Christian polemists on their own level and in their own language. Whereas a century before the Jews had been an alien element, there was among them now at least a nucleus who were unmistakably Englishmen, though of distinctive origin and religious persuasion. Economically, too, English Jewry had changed during the course of the quarter-century of war. The old-clothes men and pedlars had in many cases managed to establish themselves in more respectable walks of life as exporters, manufacturers, tailors, jewellers, or shopkeepers; and though the former callings were still largely followed by Jews, the age when the ascriptions were synonymous had passed. Moreover, the long period of intense activity which resulted from the naval operations had brought prosperity to the communities of the sea-ports: while the Industrial Revolution and the development of the Midlands and the north had established flourishing settlements in such new seats of activity as Birmingham and Manchester, where precedent carried less weight than in the ancient centres of British tradition. Whereas at the outset of the reign of George III the Jewish community had been restricted to a very few wealthy merchants and brokers in London, with dependants in lowly occupations distributed over a wider area, after Waterloo a large proportion were indistinguishable economically from any other section of the new middle class thrown up by recent developments. 4 At the summit of the social pyramid was a small group who had entered into English society in a sense in which few City magnates were privileged to do. Almost from the moment of the Resettlement there had been wealthy Jews who had mixed in Court and government circles like the Hofjuden of contemporary Germany—Sir Augustine Coronel, Sir Solomon de Medina, or Samson Gideon. But it had been during the Napoleonic wars that this series reached its culminating point in the brothers Goldsmid, who were on terms of some intimacy with the sons of the reigning monarch, whom they not only entertained on many occasions in their houses, but even took with them to synagogue one Friday evening in 1809. Such intercourse inevitably opened many doors which would otherwise have remained closed; and Nelson's sister was happy that his home passed on his death into the hands of a Goldsmid rather than those of a stranger. More prominent still, though less urbane, was Nathan Meyer Rothschild, whose activities during the closing stages of the war brought him into extremely close relations with the government, and whose family's legendary wealth caused him to be courted like an independent potentate. Apart from (though largely because of) their intimacy with the Goldsmid brothers, the royal dukes—who, with all their shortcomings, were, after all, the leaders of English society—showed the best side of their characters in the manner in which they rid themselves of anti-Jewish prejudices. There were Jewish musicians in their households and Jewish bon-vivants in their entourages: they gave their patronage to Jewish charities, and presided at Jewish public dinners. Above all, the Duke of Sussex was not only on friendly terms with many Jews, but also studied the Holy Tongue and built up a superb Hebrew library. However much the cynics might deride, all this could not fail to have a profound influence in completing the social emancipation which was the necessary prelude to the removal of political disabilities. Jews were now increasingly prominent in many callings besides that of financier which brought them into the public eye. Since the days of Hannah Norsa and Giacomo Basevi Cervetto, they had figured more and more frequently on the stage. The sisters Abrams, long the delight of the concert-rooms; Myer Leom, because of whose religious scruples the performances of Sheridan'sDuennawere suspended on Friday evenings; John Braham, his protégé, the prodigious tenor, composer ofThe Death of Nelson, and formerly a choir-boy in the Great Synagogue; Jacob de Castro, author of one of the earliest theatrical autobiographies and the best known of the group of performers who went by the name of 'Astley's Jews' ; Philip Breslaw, theoretician as well as practitioner of legerdemain; and very many others entered into English life on the stage and could hardly be excluded from it as individuals. Another profession with which Jews were by now closely associated was that of pugilism. From the penultimate decade of the eighteenth century Daniel Mandoza, Samuel Elias Isaac Bitton, and Abraham Belasco familiarised countless persons throughout the country with the actuality of the Jew, and convinced them that he could excel in other capacities than as a pedlar and old-clothes man. 5 With the close of the eighteenth century, moreover, a new spirit with regard to the Jews had come to manifest itself in English literature. Whereas the stage had previously offered its public for the most part resuscitations of Shakespeare's Shylock or figures of fun such as 'Beau Mordecai' in Macklin's Love a la Mode(1759), the publication of the first translation of Lessing's Nathan the Wise in 1781 (followed by a new version ten years later, similarly with apologetic intentions) marked the beginning of a change in attitude. Richard Cumberland's The Jew, first performed in 1794 and repeatedly published, anaemic production though it was, marked an epoch in English literature in taking a Jew as its hero. He was followed by the playwright Thomas Dibdin (The Jew and the Doctor, 1789; The School for Prejudice, 1801) and the novelists George Walker (Theodore Cyphon, 1796, 1823) and Maria Edgeworth (Harrington, 1816—the first work to present the Jew not only in a favourable light, but as a gentleman). The new tendency was by no means universal; but it was significant, and not without a lasting effect. 6 Another powerful influence was that of the Evangelical movement. This had resulted in the establishment in 1795 of the London Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews, which at the beginning of the following century was given fresh vitality by the enthusiasm of the philanthropist Lewis Way. In its immediate objects the society could not boast of much success. It was estimated that every convert cost the public between £500 and £600; and Jewish writers, no longer intimidated, replied to its polemics with a vigour which would have been impossible a generation earlier. 7 But there was now a new approach to the problem on the Christian side. Scholastic and benevolent institutions were established, which ultimately proved an example as well as incentive to the Jewish community. No longer were the unbelievers considered an object for insult and reviling; they were approached in a spirit not only of friendship but almost of veneration, as the ancient people of God. Reasonable arguments were put forward in moderate language; it was freely admitted that Christendom owed a profound debt of shame in respect of the past centuries of persecution and maltreatment; some persons even maintained that the voice of reason could not make itself heard until the last relics of discrimination had been removed. Hence in Evangelical circles the movement resulted in the development of a spirit of friendliness, which insisted on the recognition of the Jews as members of English society. Meanwhile the cataclysm of the French Revolution had given a great impetus to millenarian theorists, who believed that the second coming of the Lord, accompanied by the restoration of the Jews to their own land, was at hand. A number of writers foretold the approaching renewal of a Jewish state, and even urged the British government to take steps to further it; some (inspired by a naval pseudo-Messiah Richard Brothers, who styled himself ‘Nephew of the Almighty’) went so far as to identify the English with the Lost Ten Tribes, and to associate them with the Palestinian revival. 8 Hence there slowly developed an unmistakable current of opinion in favour of the removal of religious disabilities. In 1790 a pamphleteer who signed himself 'A Christian Politician' associated Jews, Catholics, and Dissenters together in a Collection of Testimonies in Favour of Religious Liberty. The Abbe Gregoire's epoch-making Essay on the Physical, Moral, and Political Reformation of the Jews, which had such influence on the Continent, was published in an English translation about 1791. In 1812 there appeared An Appeal to the Humanity of the English People on behalf of the Jews. By 1827 a secular pro-Jewish society, without any ostensible conversionist object, existed in London; and in the same year the Quarterly Review departed from its normal conservatism in an article which ascribed the degradation of the Jews to their age-long persecution, and appealed for a removal of restrictions so as to bring them up to the level of other human beings. 9 By this time the question was no longer on a purely theoretical plane. Contemporary developments abroad presented it as a practical question. In the newly created United States of America (where many Jews had fought steadfastly on the patriotic side in the Revolutionary War, though some had supported the mother country with equal zeal) the constitution adopted in 1790 stipulated that no religious test should be required as qualification for any public office or post of trust. In the following year Latin logic forced upon the National Assembly of France, somewhat reluctantly, the conclusion that even Jews must enjoy benefit of the Rights of Man; and during the next decade the armies of the Revolution carried the same doctrine into Germany, Italy, and above all Holland, where Jews had not only proved useful citizens, but had distinguished themselves in offices of trust during these years. The grandiose Napoleonic 'Sanhedrin' which met in Paris in 1807, while of little practical importance, had been followed with the keenest interest by English observers 10 and seemed to demonstrate the rehabilitation of the Jews in the eyes of the world. The European settlement at Vienna left the Jews in full possession of their new-won rights in the Low Countries (they were internationally guaranteed in Belgium after she secured her independence in 1830) and, with a trivial reservation, in France. In Germany and Italy reaction was triumphant for the moment; yet even English diplomats exerted themselves (though, as events proved, in vain) to perpetuate in Frankfort and the Hanseatic Towns the rights secured during the past few years, and nominally guaranteed by the Vienna Treaties. 11 Fifteen years before it became a question of practical politics in England, and half a century before it reached its culmination, Emancipation had passed elsewhere beyond the experimental stage. The position of the Jews in England had in fact been ameliorated insensibly during the previous generation, notwithstanding the absence of any legislative action. In 1770, for the first time, one had been admitted as solicitor (there had been Notaries Public even before that date). 12 A little while after, in 1780, the annual gift to the Lord Mayor was summarily discontinued, a special grant being voted by the aldermen to compensate the Chief Magistrate for his loss. Though the maximum recorded price for the succession to a Jew Broker's medal was reached in 1826, two years later the limitation on their number was abandoned. In the same year the Court of Aldermen reluctantly admitted certain baptized Jews to the Freedom of London, from which persons in this category had been excluded since 1785. In 1805 Aaron Cardozo (a Gibraltar Jew whose probity was deeply appreciated by Nelson) was sent on an official mission to the Bey of Oran, with whom he concluded a treaty—a natural corollary of the procession of Jewish envoys in the reverse direction. During the recent West Indian campaigns, a certain Joshua Montefiore, a professing Jew, had received the king's commission; 13 and in 1826 Parliament passed a statute (6 George IV, cap. 67) abolishing in all cases the necessity for receiving the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England before naturalization, thereby achieving incidentally—without so much as mentioning the Jews, and without attracting the slightest public attention—the object of the ill-fated 'Jew Bill' of seventy-three years before. Apart from this gradual and spontaneous amelioration in practice, English law as interpreted in the courts of justice had begun to reflect the changed position of the Jew in society. In 1772, when the City authorities endeavoured to compel the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue to support an incorrigible member (an annoyance which had not been uncommon a century before, even when persons who had abandoned Judaism were concerned), forensic opinion decided that no legal obligation existed. Five years after, an attempt to enforce the payment of Church rates by the same place of worship was successfully resisted. In 1788 the courts recognized the competence of a Rabbinical tribunal to regulate ritual (kosher) food, and in 1793 to decide the validity of Jewish marriages (put on a legal basis by Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1753, which had treated Jews and Quakers more generously than other non-Anglicans). In 1818 a synagogue was recognized as a legal establishment, able to sue for withheld dues. Taken individually these isolated advances did not mean much; together they signified a good deal, implying that Jews enjoyed liberty in all things except where the law expressly prescribed the contrary. 14 Hence the positive disabilities from which English Jews suffered were not considerable, as compared with those of their co-religionists in most parts of the continent of Europe. They could settle where they pleased throughout the kingdom, and in any part of the place of their choice. There was no legal bar to their employing non-Jewish labour, whether in their homes or businesses, to dealing in any commodity, to engaging in any business occupation or in any branch of manufacture. Though there was some doubt as to their legal ability to own freeholds, there was admittedly no obstacle to their acquiring land on lease on peppercorn rent for an indefinitely long period, which amounted to the same thing. In practice they were even allowed to vote in parliamentary elections (though the returning officer had the power, seldom exercised, to demand from voters the Oath of Abjuration, which was phrased in a form repugnant to the Jewish conscience). In London, indeed, they still suffered from a serious economic disability owing to their exclusion from the Freedom; but the force of this had been mitigated by the expansion of the Metropolis in every direction, with the result that the bar was operative in only a relatively small area of the entirety, where, moreover, the difficulty was sometimes evaded by selling retail from warehouses ostensibly wholesale. 15 Theoretically, however, the position was very different. The entire body of medieval legislation which reduced the Jew to the position of a yellow-badged pariah, without rights and without security other than by the goodwill of the sovereign, remained on the statute book, though remembered only by antiquarians. As late as 1818 it was possible to maintain in the courts Lord Coke’s doctrine that the Jews were in law perpetual enemies, 'for between them, as with the devils, whose subjects they are, and the Christian there can be no peace': Public life was, in law, entirely barrel. Jews were excluded from any office under the Crown, any part in civic government, or any employment however modest in connexion with the administration of justice or even education, by the Test and Corporation Acts passed at a period when the participation of Jews in such activities was inconceivable. These made it obligatory on all persons seeking such appointment to take the Sacrament in accordance with the rites of the Church of England, in addition to the statutory oaths of Supremacy (of the Crown over the Church of England), of Allegiance (to the sovereign, coupled with abhorrence of Papal pretensions), and of Abjuration (of the claims of the former Royal House of Stuart)—the last, 'on the true faith of a Christian'. Naturally these disqualifications included the right to membership of Parliament, for which the statutory oaths in the statutory form were a necessary preliminary. For the same reason the universities were closed, and, as a consequence of this, various professions. 16 But these political disabilities were shared with a large proportion of native-born British subjects of older lineage—Roman Catholics and to a considerable extent (nominally at least) even Dissenters. Till the complaints of the latter had been satisfied it was out of the question to expect any appreciable alleviation of those of the Jews. Indeed, Jewish emancipation in its fullest sense had first been ventilated in various eighteenth century pamphlets, re-adapted in some cases at the beginning of the nineteenth, as areductio ad absurdumof the idea of emancipating Christian Nonconformists. 17 Almost as soon as the removal of the disabilities of Dissenters was mooted in Parliament, representative Jews are said to have offered their services and support on the understanding that they would be included in the scope of the proposed measure. The offer was refused by the Nonconformist leaders on the grounds that those on whose behalf relief was requested were on a very different footing, not being subject to Grace. A little later on, the revival of Jew-baiting in Germany aroused some sympathy in England; and on July 14th, 1820, the young Whig champion John Cam Hobhouse (later Lord Broughton de Gyffard) gave notice in the House of Commons of his intention to move a resolution that the condition of the Jews and the disabilities under which they laboured ('which would be hardly believed to exist in such an age as this') should be taken into immediate consideration. 18 For the moment this was little more than an academic demonstration. But, within ten years, intolerance had narrowed down so far that the reform came within the sphere of practical politics. The Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, as originally contemplated, would automatically have removed the political disabilities of the Jews; but, on the motion of the Bishop of Llandaff, the House of Lords insisted upon the insertion of the words 'on the true faith of a Christian' in the Declaration henceforth required on taking up a public office. (An amendment of Lord Holland's, that Jews should be permitted to omit the newly introduced phrase, was negatived.) In the Lower House, after the amended Bill had been read for the third time, Brougham made a spirited protest against the change, explaining that he had not expressed his disapprobation earlier for fear of endangering the measure. Thus the incidental disqualification of former years was replaced by one directed in fact against the Jews alone. 19 For the moment Roman Catholics continued to be discriminated against, for reasons as much political as religious. Their emancipation in April 1829 left the Jews the only section of the English population which was excluded from political rights ostensibly because of their faith. It was no longer a mere disability: it was felt by some of their leaders, confident of their talents and proud of their English birthright, to be a slight. 20 Particularly was this the case with Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, nephew of the famous financiers and well known in financial and philanthropic circles. In March 1829, while the Catholic Emancipation Bill was under discussion, the Board of Deputies of British Jews (by now a force in the community) was informed of the steps he had taken in the matter, and expressed itself in favour of action to secure the relief of the Jews from their political disabilities. The interest of Nathan Meyer Rothschild was enlisted (though being foreign-born he preferred to be represented on formal occasions by his son Lionel). After consultation as to procedure with the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister, the first practical steps were taken—the presentation of a Petition to Parliament praying for the removal of Jewish disabilities, and the preparation of a Bill for achieving that object. The government, though not unfriendly, considered that the turmoil created by the Catholic Emancipation Bill was so great that it was unwise to introduce another of a similar nature in the same session, and the formal opening of the campaign was accordinglydeferred to the following year. 21 On April 5th, 1830, the Whig stalwart, Sir Robert Grant, introduced into the Commons a Bill 'to repeal the civil disabilities affecting British-born subjects professing the Jewish religion'whereby all'civil rights, franchises and privileges - offices, places, employments, trusts and confidences' that had been made available to Catholics in the previous year should now be thrown open to them also. Leave to bring in the Bill was granted by a majority of 18. The opposition proved stronger than had been anticipated, and appreciably hardened while the Bill was before Parliament—according to report, through the influence on the king of his cousin, the Duke of Gloucester, and his sister, the duchess. The second reading was therefore defeated by 228 votes to 165. In the same session Lord Bexley (who had worked with Rothschild when Chancellor of the Exchequer, as Nicholas Vansittart, at the time of Waterloo) made a similarly unsuccessful attempt in the Lords. The fall of Wellington's administration shortly after, and the concentration of the national energies on the Reform Bill controversy, prevented anything more from being done at the moment, though numerously-signed petitions from London and the provinces showed that the general public was by no means indifferent. The Reformed Parliament met early in 1833 imbued with a passionate desire to sweep away old abuses. On April 17th Grant moved that the House should resolve itself into a committee to consider the disabilities affecting Jewish subjects. Despite a protest from Sir Robert Inglis, the reactionary member for the University of Oxford, who was to maintain his uncompromising opposition for an entire generation, the motion was adopted without a division. In committee Grant moved 'that it is expedient to remove all civil disabilities at present existing affecting His Majesty's subjects of the Jewish religion, with the like exceptions as are provided with reference to His Majesty's subjects professing the Roman Catholic religion'. The debate that followed reached a high level, Hume, O'Connell, and Macaulay speaking strongly in favour of the motion (the speech of the last-named was to be a classic of English apologetics). 22 The minority did not challenge a division, and the resolution was adopted. The second and third readings of the Bill were carried by ample margins against an intractable minority of 52. On being sent to the Lords, however, it was thrown out on the second reading by 104 votes to 54, the Archbishop of Canterbury leading the opposition. The Duke of Sussex was characteristically vehement in his support, but his influence was counterbalanced by that of his brother, William IV, who got it into his head that it was his duty to oppose this innovation. 'My Lord', he said anxiously to a newly appointed bishop when he did homage, 'I do not mean to interfere in any way with your vote in Parliament except on one subject, The Jews, and I trust I may depend on your always voting against them.' In the following year (April 24th, 1834) Grant reintroduced his Bill, which was easily carried, but rejected by the Lords by an increased majority. After Melbourne's Whig administration was reinstated the measure was taken under government auspices. But both support and opposition were by now lukewarm. The Commons mustered only 56 votes all told to pass the second reading (August 3rd, 1836); and in the Lords, owing to the lateness of the session and the general apathy, the second reading was never moved. For the next eleven years, the question was permitted to lapse. 23 The parliamentary debates of 1830 to 1836 made it patent that the now dominant middle class was antagonistic to the continuance of religious disabilities—a remarkable contrast to conditions at the time of the 'Jew Bill' of 1753, when this same element had been foremost in agitating against the derisory concessions then contemplated. Hence, during the ensuing period of delay, before political emancipation was achieved, it was relatively easy to secure the removal, little by little, of minor Jewish disabilities affecting civic life. The new tactics were in fact more in accordance with the English genius of building up a doctrine from practical details, as opposed to the continental fashion of imposing a general principle without working out its implications, which the advocates of emancipation had at first favoured. Moreover the opposition, with its indignant repudiation of medieval prejudice and its concentration on the doctrine that, in a Christian country, non-Christians should have no share in the government, implicitly admitted that Jewish disabilities short of exclusion from Parliament were an anachronism. Thus in these years the various disabilities were swept away one by one, until in the end parliamentary emancipation only remained to be effected. 24 The main campaign took place in the City of London. At the close of 1830, in accordance with the recommendations of a committee set up in the previous year, the Common Council enacted that henceforth any person who took up the freedom could make the necessary Oath in a form agreeable to his religious convictions. This implied not only that Jews could now become freemen, but also that they could carry on trade in the City and be members of Livery Companies. David Salomons, a well-known City figure and one of the founders of the Westminster Bank, whose family had for three generations played their part in the affairs of the Anglo-Jewish community, had ambitions in public life. As soon as it became possible, he applied for membership of the Coopers' Company, and proceeded rapidly from one civic dignity to another. In 1835, in the teeth of some opposition on religious grounds, he was elected sheriff. The statutory declaration 'on the true faith of a Christian' (incumbent since the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts) made it impossible for him to enter upon his functions. To solve the difficulty Parliament promptly passed the Sheriff's Declaration Act (5 & 6 William IV, cap. 28) making special provision for persons elected to this office. The measure applied, however, to no other dignity, and when in the following December Salomons was returned as alderman, he was refused admission by the Court of Aldermen and a new election was ordered. 25 In 1837 the Municipal Corporations Declarations Act gave relief to Quakers and Moravians, but Grote's amendment to extend it to all classes of Her Majesty's subjects was negatived, the government feeling that this would jeopardize the measure as a whole. But that same year Moses Montefiore, who had already made himself known as a philanthropist, became sheriff of London, and was knighted by Queen Victoria on the occasion of her state visit to the City after the coronation, being the first Jew since Sir Solomon de Medina to receive that distinction. For some time to come the movement for the removal of civic as of parliamentary disabilities remained in a state of imperfectly suspended animation. But in other spheres there was gradual amelioration. In 1833 Francis Goldsmid, the son of Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, was called to the Bar, the first Jewish barrister. In 1835 an Act which incidentally relieved voters from the necessity of taking any oaths threw the franchise open de jure as well as de facto to professing Jews. On November 17th of the same year the earliest recorded Jewish juryman was sworn on the Pentateuch as a member of the Grand Jury at the Kirkdale Quarter Sessions. In 1836 the Board of Deputies (which had by now begun to extend representation to synagogues outside London) received statutory recognition in the Marriage Registration Act as a competent authority to certify Jewish places of worship. In 1837 the non-sectarian university of London, in the foundation of which Isaac Lyon Goldsmid had been one of the most active and most generous workers, was incorporated, enabling Jews to proceed to the degrees from which they were excluded by the older universities. 26 In 1841 Goldsmid was rewarded for his outstanding philanthropic services by being created baronet, being the first Jew to receive an hereditary English title. The same year (1841), largely owing to Salomons's unflagging efforts, the government carried through the House of Commons a measure 'for the relief of persons of the Jewish religion elected to municipal office', but it was defeated on the second reading in the Lords. The struggle was then transferred from the Senate to the City. In 1844 Salomons was once more elected to the Court of Aldermen, and once more refused admission. His pertinacity had brought the problem to public attention, and it was considered preposterous for the wishes of the Liverymen to be persistently overridden in this fashion. In 1845 accordingly a Jewish Disabilities Removal Act, introduced by Lord Lyndhurst, enabled any member of the Jewish faith on admission to municipal office to substitute for the declaration laid down by law one in a form acceptable to his conscience (8 & 9 Victoria, cap. 52). Thus municipal offices of every description—including that of Recorder, with its judicial functions—were thrown open to Jews. Two years after, Salomons was at last admitted as alderman, and no further obstacle was put in his way when, in the normal course of succession, he was elected Lord Mayor of London in 1855, thereby setting the seal on the municipal emancipation of English Jews. 27 Meanwhile, in the course of the general reforming movement which was sweeping away old abuses, an Act of 1846 'to relieve Her Majesty's subjects from certain penalties and disabilities in regard to religious opinions' (9 & 10 Victoria, cap. 59) formally repealed, among other legislation, the intolerantstatutum de judeismoof 1271 (still on the statute book) - and the act of 1702 compelling Jews to maintain their Protestant children, and placed English Jews in the same position as Protestant dissenters with respect to their schools, places of worship, and charitable foundations. One disability only was now left—that they could not take part in political life. A remote ideal twenty years before, it became a commonplace in Europe with the emancipation of the Jews in ever-widening areas of the Continent in the middle decades of the century. That full emancipation should have been so long delayed in England, where the Jews were so mildly treated, is perhaps not so remarkable as would appear. In those countries where important vestiges of the Ghetto system remained until the nineteenth century, the granting of full legal equality to the Jew had become a cardinal principle of constitutionalist doctrine. In England, for the very reason that the disabilities from which he suffered were comparatively slight, it was possible to withhold the final step so long. In the interval of waiting, before they could achieve complete integration in the English body politic, the Jews were setting their own house in order. There was a section in the community which imagined that the withholding of full emancipation was due to the fact that the traditional forms of Judaism were, if not foreign, at least non-English, and that an approximation in externals between the Hebrew and Christian forms of worship would convince the outside world at last that their Jewish neighbours were differentiated from them only in adherence to a creed which was, at root, not so remote from that which they themselves professed. This reasoning had been the basis of the Reform Movement in Germany, which had come to a head with the opening of a reformed 'Temple' in Hamburg in 1818. In England rumblings of discontent with the established ecclesiastical order had made themselves heard from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The few minor reforms which were introduced did little to meet the criticisms, which in London were aggravated by the attempt of the existing synagogues to retain their dominance by allowing no Jewish place of worship to be opened outside the City area. The agitation grew; and in 1836 a number of members of the Spanish and Portuguese community presented a petition requesting the introduction into the service of 'such alterations and modifications as were in the line of the changes introduced in the reform synagogue of Hamburg and other places'. Counter-petitions and prolonged debates encouraged the governing body not to compromise; and in the spring of 1840 eighteen prominent and wealthy members of the community, in association with six members of other synagogues, resolved to establish a place of worship in West London which would be neither 'Ashkenazi' nor 'Sephardi', but 'British'. Thus, notwithstanding strenuous efforts on the part of the older bodies, culminating in an ecclesiastical ban, the first English Reformed Synagogue, the West London Synagogue of British Jews, was opened in 1842. 28 To the credit of both factions the dissidents did not become a sect—not even in the following century, when the movement took a radical turn—the difference being one rather of presentation than of dogma. Nor, indeed, did the new movement, alien to the formal conservatism of the Englishman, achieve by any means so sweeping a success, or so far-reaching results, as was anticipated. Outside London it established a foothold in the course of the next generation only in Manchester and Bradford. But its influence on the conservative majority, though unacknowledged, was nevertheless considerable. Synagogue decorum improved, organized choirs were introduced, the vernacular sermon became the rule, education was reorganized, and ministers of religion began to replace the old type of synagogal factotum: while, in London, geographical decentralization was no longer discouraged. In 1845, after an election in which for the first time some twenty communities throughout the country participated, the Chief Rabbinate was filled by a pastor, in the person of the Hanoverian Nathan Marcus Adler, who combined with his Talmudical training and orthodox principles a sound western education. Under his auspices a Jewish theological seminary on modern lines was established in London (1855), and the first steps were taken towards the unification of the London community, to culminate in the establishment of the United Synagogue in 1870. At the same time the organization of Jewish Boards of Guardians and similar institutions helped to cope with the problem of the indigent who, at the beginning of the century, had presented so serious a difficulty. 29 In the historical evolution of the Anglo-Jewish community the year 1840 was of crucial importance. A charge of ritual murder which was brought up against the Jews of Damascus, accompanied by a particularly brutal persecution, stirred the English conscience to its depth. A protest meeting was held at the Mansion House; and when Sir Moses Montefiore proceeded to the East to champion the cause onus co-religionists, he enjoyed not only the sympathy of the English people, but the diplomatic support of the English government as well. (In this, his position was very different from that of his French colleague, Adolphe Cremieux, who had to contend with the prejudices and opposition of his compatriots.) When Montefiore came back in triumph from his mission, after securing the release and unconditional acquittal of the prisoners, he was received in audience by the queen and accorded supporters to his coat of arms—a recognition of the fact that this intervention on behalf of persecuted Jews was at the same time a service to the humanity of his fellow countrymen. 30 This episode marked the meridian of the benevolent work of Montefiore, who, almost to the end of his long life, was engaged in journeys of intercession—to Russia, to Morocco, to Italy—on behalf of his persecuted co-religionists. This protracted activity, on the part of a personality of exceptional distinction and moral force, gave English Jewry a position of pre-eminence in political activities on behalf of the communities of backward states; while its representative institutions, hitherto concerned only with domestic matters, had their purview widened and began to think in international terms. The British government, too, maintained the benevolent attitude which it had taken up at the period of the Damascus Affair. From that time onwards, except when urgent political considerations made action inadvisable, it could generally be relied upon for diplomatic support if conditions for Jews abroad became intolerable. 31 The tendency culminated shortly after the Damascus Affair when Palmerston (anxious to obtain a locus standi in the Holy Land, equivalent to that enjoyed by Russia on behalf of the Orthodox Church, and by France on behalf of the Roman Catholics), attempted to take Palestinian Jewry in its entirety under British protection in a formal sense. This did not indeed materialize, but for some while England exercised the right on behalf of expatriated Russian Jews. 32 Such philosemitism abroad could hardly fail to influence events at home. When at the outset of the movement for Jewish emancipation Isaac Lyon Goldsmid had been in touch with Daniel O'Connell, the latter warmly advised him to force the claims of the Jews on Parliament, as he himself had the claims of the Catholics. Such methods accorded admirably with David Salomons's pugnacious temperament. Accordingly in 1837, 1841, and again 1847 he offered himself as a parliamentary candidate, but in each case unsuccessfully. In the last year however, Baron Lionel de Rothschild, head of the famous banking-house, was nominated for the City of London, in conjunction with Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister. Success for one who fought here in the Liberal interest was almost a foregone conclusion, and he was elected by an adequate majority. There was no statute that forbade a Jew to sit in Parliament; but (as has been indicated above) it was rendered impossible by reason of the form of the statutory oaths. It was not only that they were normally administered on the New Testament—this was a matter of usage only. The real obstacle was that, in addition to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, the conservatism of English institutions preserved also a third abjuring the right to the throne of the descendants of the Old Pretender, which concluded with the words 'on the true faith of a Christian'. The oath now had little significance in practice; but, its form having been laid down by Parliament, another Act of Parliament was necessary to modify it. 32 When Parliament assembled in December 1847 Rothschild presented himself at the Table of the House and intimated his inability to take the oaths by reason of his religious beliefs. He was directed to withdraw, and as soon as possible the Prime Minister moved that the House should resolve itself into a Committee on the removal of the civil and religious disabilities affecting Her Majesty's Jewish subjects. 33 The resolution was agreed to by 257 votes to 186. The consequent Jewish Disabilities Bill, introduced early in the following year, which placed the Jews on the same footing as the Roman Catholics, was unlike those of the series introduced between 1830 and 1836 in that it involved in fact little more than admission to Parliament. For this very reason it provoked a greater measure of opposition. The debates were remarkable in the annals of parliamentary eloquence. Russell based his argument on the theory that every Englishman is entitled to all the honours and advantages of the British Constitution. The opposition was led by Sir Robert Inglis, who insisted on the vital necessity of preserving the Christian character of every person holding any share in the government, and Lord Ashley, the later Lord Shaftesbury, who elaborated Dr. Arnold's view (which carried considerable weight in Liberal circles) that the Jews were voluntary strangers who could have no claim to citizenship unless they conformed to the law of the Gospel. Peel and Gladstone, former opponents of Jewish emancipation, demonstrated their political progress by speaking and voting in favour of the measure—the latter in opposition to what he knew to be the views of his new constituents at the university of Oxford. Benjamin Disraeli (who, for all his ostentatiously Jewish name, appearance, and sympathies, had become a leading figure in the House since Jewish emancipation was last debated) showed courage as well as eloquence in his support of the measure, and carried with him his associate, Lord George Bentinck, the head of the Protectionist fraction. Their followers, however, voted against them to a man: Bentinck withdrew from his leadership: and the episode had the ultimate result of making a man who was a Jew by birth parliamentary leader of the party of the landed gentry, without admitting to his seat one who was a Jew by faith. For, though the Commons carried the second reading by 277 votes to 204, the peers were so aroused by the clerical agitation, to the effect that the measure would dechristianize the legislature and imperil the country's religion, that they rejected the Bill in an exceptionally full House by 163 votes to 125. 34 In the following session (1849) a modified measure, the Parliamentary Oaths Bill, was steered successfully through the Commons, but again rejected almost mechanically though with a narrower margin by the Lords. Rothschild thereupon applied for the Chiltern Hundreds and vacated his seat, but offered himself for re-election and was once again returned. But the City electors were not disposed to submit to virtual disenfranchisement without protest, and instructed their nominee to demand the rights which the action of the Lords withheld. On July 26th, 185o, accordingly, he again presented himself at Westminster and requested to be sworn on the Old Testament. After an adjournment and three divisions the House decided to allow the applicant to take the oaths in a form binding upon his conscience, but when he came to the Oath of Abjuration he refused to pronounce the final words 'on the true faith of a Christian' as stipulated. A motion that his seat should be declared vacant was then proposed and rejected; others were, however, carried declaring first that he was not entitled to vote or sit in the House until he took the oath in the form appointed by law, and secondly, that the form of the Oath of Abjuration should be taken into consideration in the next session, with a view to the relief of persons professing Judaism. In accordance with this, in 1851 the government introduced its Oath of Abjuration Bill, which passed the second reading by 202 to 177—a margin narrow enough to encourage the Lords to persist in their usual line of conduct and reject it (July 17th, 1851). While the Bill was under consideration, David Salomons had been elected, at his fourth attempt, at a by-election for Greenwich. The action of the Lords convinced him that the constitutional method hitherto followed could lead to no useful result, and that a different policy was required to force the problem on public attention. Accordingly, the day after the rejection of the Bill, he attended at the Table of the House of Commons and asked to be sworn. Instead of giving up the battle when he arrived at the Oath of Abjuration, as Rothschild had done, he recited it without the words to which he objected, and then took his seat on one of the ministerial benches, ignoring an order to withdraw. The Speaker appealed to the House for support. In the ensuing proceedings, Salomons not only recorded his vote three times, but even took part in the debate to explain his position. The motion was, of course, carried, and the trespasser was removed from his place by the sergeant-at-arms. By recording his vote without taking the prescribed oath he had rendered himself liable to a statutory fine of £500 for each occasion, besides various civil penalties. Since the government had announced that it would not initiate proceedings, a common informer applied for a writ. The case was tried before the Court of the Exchequer, where judgement was given for the plaintiff by three voices out of four, the chief baron expressing his regret that as an expounder of the law he was forced to come to this conclusion. Salomons thereupon appealed to the Exchequer Chamber, which unanimously confirmed the decision as well as the sentiments of the lower court. An appeal to the House of Lords was in preparation when a general election took place, and (though the City of London was faithful to its previous choice) Salomons lost his seat, making further legal proceedings pointless. 35 After this spirited interlude there was a return to the slower, and now almost mechanical, method that had previously been followed. In 1853 Lord John Russell, now Foreign Secretary in Lord Aberdeen's Coalition government, carried a new Jewish Disabilities Bill through the Commons; but notwithstanding the fact that in the Lords it was in charge of the Prime Minister himself, a former opponent, it was automatically rejected. The following year Russell changed his tactics, attempting to secure his object in his Parliamentary Oaths Bill, which substituted a new single oath for the three formerly requisite. The measure did not mention the Jews, but as the words 'on the true faith of a Christian' did not figure in the proposed formula, the barrier which kept them out of Parliament would incidentally have been removed. But the Bill also abolished the special Roman Catholic oath which had been laid down by the Catholic Emancipation Act, and the opposition which this drew from the Conservative benches resulted in the rejection of the Bill in the Commons by a narrow margin. The attempt, in one form or the other, was by now all but annual, the monotony being relieved only by slight variations in the procedure. In 1856 a private member, Milner Gibson, the free trade champion, tried to achieve the object by a Bill to abolish the Oath of Abjuration itself. It received the support of Palmerston's government and passed the Commons, but was rejected as a matter of course in the Lords. After the general election of the following year, when Baron de Rothschild was returned for the fourth time by the City of London, Palmerston introduced a new Oaths Bill similar to that of 1855, except that it did not affect the oath to be taken by Catholics. In the Report stage clauses were inserted excluding Jews from those dignities closed to Roman Catholics 36 and from the exercise of ecclesiastical patronage attached to any government offices to which they might be appointed. Thus amended the Bill passed by a rather more ample majority than usual. In the Lords the second reading was automatically refused. Lord John Russell (now out of office) immediately introduced a fresh Bill empowering members of Parliament to take an oath in the form binding on their own conscience; but the government was unable to grant facilities to forward the measure and it was abandoned. Meanwhile, Rothschild had once more applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, but was re-elected by his London constituents, who deliberately perpetuated a partial disenfranchisement which had lasted for ten years. Thus encouraged, Russell renewed his efforts, and secured the appointment of a select committee to consider whether a statutory declaration could legally be substituted for the Parliamentary oath, under the terms of an act of 1835 which permitted it for corporate bodies. When the question was decided in the negative he brought in a new Oaths Bill which met some of the objections to previous drafts by adding 'on the true faith of a Christian' to the stipulated form (thereby preserving its basic religious nature), but providing that a Jew might omit the final words. By the time it reached the House of Lords Palmerston's government had fallen, and the opposition was led by the new Conservative Lord Chancellor, Lord Chelmsford, who as Sir Frederic Thesiger had for many years taken a prominent part in the debates in the Commons. On his motion the clause affecting the Jews, which was the essence of the Bill, was omitted. In the Commons Russell moved that the House should disagree with the Lords' amendments, and a committee was appointed to draw up the reasons. In this, by a supreme stroke of political strategy, Baron de Rothschild was included; for no law prevented any person duly elected by a constituency from exercising the rights of a Member of Parliament other than voting or sitting in the House during a debate. A conference of both Houses which followed was unable to come to an agreement. Both sides were by now weary of the contest. Even the Conservative Prime Minister, Lord Derby, an old opponent of Jewish emancipation, realized the harm this intransigence was doing to his party, and was ready to accept any solution which might bring the struggle to an end without giving the appearance of complete surrender. When therefore the report of the conference came up before the Lords for consideration, Lord Lucan, who had consistently voted against the successive measures, suggested as a compromise that each House of Parliament should be allowed to determine by resolution the form of oath administered to a Jew. The proposal was received with obvious relief, and a Bill to give it effect was introduced in the following week. 37 Despite the understanding that had been reached, it was stubbornly contested, the second reading being carried by only 143 votes against 97. In the committee stage two additional clauses debarred Jews from holding those high offices of state from which Roman Catholics had been excluded by the Catholic Emancipation Act, 38 and conferred on the Archbishop of Canterbury the right of presentation to ecclesiastical benefices which normally belonged to any office of state during its occupancy by a Jew. Thus amended, the Bill (21 & 22 Victoria, cap. 29)—the fourteenth of that wearisome series that had occupied the attention of Parliament for more than a quarter of a century—passed through both Houses: the Lords on the third reading by 33 votes to 12 (eight peers, stubborn to the last, recording their solemn protest) and the Commons by 129 votes to 55. 39 On Monday, July 26th, 1858, Baron de Rothschild at last took his seat in the House. Two hundred years after Cromwell's death, the work that he had begun reached its culmination, and an English Jew was for the first time recognized as an equal citizen of his native land. FootnotesChapter 11
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