M. de Fellenberg, at Hofwyl, is the mode!, to a WILLIAM THE NORMAN; OR, THE TY

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No. 161.]

Reasoner.

EDITED BY G. J. HOLYOAKE.

[PRICE 2d.

TWO SIDES OF THE JEWISH CHARACTER. 'NEAR the eastern margin of the gigantic empire of Rome, lay a small strip of coast which had been added to its dominion by Pompey the Great. The accession had excited little notice, eclipsed and forgotten amid the crowd of greater acquisitions, and in itself too insignificant to excite even the ready vanity of conquest. The district had nothing in it to draw towards it the attention of a people dazzled by the magnitude and splendour of their own power. Remote from the existing centres of opulent and cultivated society, with a language unknown to educated men, destitute of any literature to excite curiosity, or any specimens of art to awaken wonder, it would have laiu in exile from the great human community, had not the circulation of commerce embraced it, and self-interest secured for it a surly and contemptuous regard. It lay between the fallen kingdoms of Egypt and Assyria, but derived no distinction from its position; it seemed covered with the dust, without sharing the glories of their ruined magnificence. Its inhabitants were the most unpopular of nations- a people out of date, relics of a ruder period of the world-having the prejudices of age without its wisdom, and the superstitions of the East without its loftiness:-they had long been deserted by the tide of civilisation, now flowing on other shores, and were left without the refreshment of a sympathy. And as hatred stimulates ferocity, and contempt invites men to be mean, they retreated into the seclusion of all unsocial passions. They detested: they despised: they suspected: they writhed under authority: they professed submission only to obtain revenge: they had no heritage in the present; content with nothing which it brought, they had no gratitude to express: their affections were for the past and the future; their worship was one of memory and of hope, not of love. Fair and fertile as were the fields of Palestine, it was held to be the blot of the nations, the scowl of the world.'

This is the eloquent picture which James Martineau draws of the Jewish character, as set forth in the Old Testament. And the impression of the Jewish race, so vividly portrayed here, is the one which has been impressed on the intelligent readers of the old Jewish records. As a portraiture of that people, in the infancy of civilisation, it has historical value, but how few of us distinguish that this is but the picture of what they were. The Bible being continually before our countrymen, this is the sole, undivided impression which they receive. It is altogether overlooked that nineteen centuries of education and communication the Jews have had in the world, constituting an experience diversified and wonderful above all that has fallen to any other men, must have changed their nature and exalted their character. That persecution which, by its unparalleled, inexcusable, flagrant, and universal intensity, has kept them an isolated, intermarrying people, has been calculated to preserve unchanged their physical peculiarities, while it has been calculated to change them in all other respects.

To appreciate the other side of the Jewish character, take an extract from a source not like that of Disraeli, of partisan suspicion, but from a man of large experience of the world, and an opponent of their tenets: I allude to 'John P. Y., * Rationale of Religious Enquiry,' pp. 1-2.

[No. 26, Vol. VI.]

M.D.,' who conceals under this nom de gerre a name of high scientific reputation, The earnestness of the passage I can vouch for, having frequently heard him in conversation express himself with the same fervour. Having quoted the destruction of Cheapside Cross from the Parliamentary Register' of 1643, he proceeds to say:

'One would suppose that nothing could still the fierceness of these disputants. Yes, I know a charm that will work that wonder; throw into the midst of them a Jew, and all their fangs will be fixed in him—the unfortunate, the despised, the insulted, the persecuted Jew, who has been now nineteen centuries under the hand of affliction, robbed, tortured, and murdered in almost every country under heaven, and deprived of his civil rights throughout almost all the world. Alas! with what heartfelt pleasure is it that I stop for one short minute to pour oil into his wounds. In Protestant Germany they are only allowed to live in certain numbers in certain towns; in Protestant Sweden not at all. In other parts they can only be married in certain numbers every year, and cannot be apprenticed to any trade. A Jew seems to live only to be persecuted. It is such a thoroughly cowardly thing, too, striking a man when he is down-and for what? For doing that which ought to command our respect and esteem-for adhering through fire, or through water, through plunder, and bloodshed, and death, to the religion which his fathers have followed for more than 3000 years. He is ever the same. His existence is almost a miracle-yet there he stands with his phylacteries as he was before the Tabernacle. With his amiable and deeply religious prayer book, most of it as old as the days of Ezra, and his one God, he looks like some emblem of eternity in the midst of time. To be esteemed and respected a Jew only requires to be known, and I may say the same of his literature: but what do we know of him? If he is well dressed, we think of money bags, and bonds, and securities, and usury; if he is ill dressed, we remember black lead pencils, oranges, and old clothes. This is the end of our knowledge. I, who in all parts of the earth have shared with him my hospitality and partaken of his-I, to whom the face of a Jew always appears the face of a friend—can conscientiously assert that, in all the exalted feelings of the human race, I never found the Jew below his fellow mortals. I once owed my life to a Jew. I believe there are very few to be discovered who have not more than an average warmth of heart. In their religious duties they would shame many Christians, and of their patience and resignation under their manifold sufferings, mental and bodily, all can speak. Truly it needs much resignation, for even the immortal Shakspere has, among others, lifted his hand against the Jew-I hope unknowingly. In his Merchant of Venice he has dramatised a fact; but, tell it not in Gath, it was the Christian who demanded so bitterly his pound of flesh, and that pound of flesh was to be cut from the body of a helpless Jew.'*

We believe that it is overlooking this essential and important improvement in Jewish character that induces many of the Lords to oppose their enfranchisement. They look upon the Jews as the same people who are said to have crowded Pilate's Hall, and shouted for the crucifixion of the Nazarene. It is a great mistake.

Apart from religious grounds, on grounds purely moral, we consider that the Jews behaved as well under the circumstances (received as authentic amongst us) of the death of Christ, as any of their assailants would behave now, if they were in the same situation.

For an account of Dr. John P. Y.'s elaborate work, in three volumes, from which this extract is taken, see No. 9 of the Movement, of February 10, 1844.

The Messiah promised to the Jews was to deliver them, not in an evasively spiritual sense, but in a tangible and substantial sense, and all the world knows they needed delivering. Well, they have not been delivered, neither in one sense nor the other, and no wonder that they are of opinion that their Messiah is not come-whoever else may be more fortunate to have received one.

Nor under the circumstances, I maintain, did the Jews behave unusually bad to Christ. Let any man come among us now, and set aside with a rude hand the approved religion of our dominant Church, and set up an authority which Christians neither understand nor receive-let such an innovator use abusive language, and go out into the fields and lanes and appeal to the mob against the learning, pride, and respectability of the accredited priests, and half the sects among us would call that man imposter: and he would be a sharp fellow if he did not get crucified in one way or other half-a-dozen times over. There is not an enemy of the Jews among us who would not do as the Jews did.

A correspondent, to whose criticisms we are indebted, writes—'I am of opinion that such an article as the "Guessing Jew," though admirable in itself, was not in proper place in the Reasoner It had no bearing on theology, morals, politics, or science.' The opinion of this correspondent, all our readers would agree, was of weight on a point like this. We therefore offer him the explanation which he has missed. The reasons which dictated the insertion of the article were these: at a time when the question of the political enfranchisement of the Jews was pending, we were anxious to contribute in some way to propitiate men in their favour. Our direct advocacy has been withheld for reasons more than once stated. It has been urged in Parliament that if they admit the Jews they should next have to admit infidels. We wished to serve the Jews, and we served them by our silence when we could not by our speech; and we have done more, we have withheld our own claims-this we have before explained. But in this case it appeared that we could serve them by quoting this pleasant story, which could not fail to raise the estimate of Jewish wit. That poor Jew, in Hebel's page, displayed more ingenuity than many members of Parliament-though genuine Agnews, or Spooners. I have heard Mr. Grattan, the tragedian, say, as I think I have somewhere remarked, that the purpose of Mr. Rice, the well-known comedian, in bringing out 'Jim Crow,' the once popular nigger song, was to familiarise the American public with the phenomena of a coloured man upon the stage-which those very consistent, democratic, and equality-loving people would not tolerate-and before Rice's ingenious expedient did not tolerate on the stage. And I can relieve the anxiety of our friend Dr. P. Y., by telling him I have heard an eminent critic state publicly, that this was the design of our own glorious Shakspere in drawing the character of Shylock. That before Shakspere's time, a Jew was not permitted to appear in any public representation, and that but for this prejudice Shylock would have been drawn more favourably. As it is, Shylock's character is precisely of that tone one would expect to be imparted to a Jew; by a friend of the race-for Shylock speaks like a man who felt that he had sixteen centuries of wrong to revenge-wrongs endured at the hands of Christians. There is no parallel save the remotest and the humblest between these acts and that which I performed, and scarcely any but the most imaginary correspondence in benefit conferred; but these instances were present in my recollection, and suggested the selection of the translation from Hebel-which I named the 'Guessing Jew.' It is always one of the accredited objects of the Reasoner to do anything, however trifling, if nothing higher is possible to us, which shall aid in the emancipation of an enslaved sect -enslaved on account of religious opinions. And in this view of the matter the