BOOK XXVIII.

MODERN JUDAISM.

Change in the relative State of the Jews to the Rest of Mankind-Jews in Poland-In Germany-Frederick the Great-Naturalization Bill in England-Toleration Edict of Joseph II.-Jews of France-Petition to Louis XVI.-Revolution-Buonaparte-More recent Acts for the Amelioration of the civil State of the Jews-General Estimate of the Number of Jews in Africa, Asia, Europe, AmericaConclusion.

We have followed the sect of Sabbathai and his followers to the close of the eighteenth century; we must retrace our steps, and terminate our labours by a rapid sketch of the more important events which influenced the condition of the Jews in the different countries of the world, during that period, down to our own days. The lapse of centuries, and the slow improvement in almost the whole state of society, had made a material alteration in the relative position of the Jews towards the rest of mankind. They were still, many of them, wealthy; but their wealth no longer bore so invidious and dangerous a proportion to that of the community at large, as to tempt unprincipled kings, or a burthened people, to fill their exchequer, or revenge themselves for a long arrear of usurious exaction, by the spoliation of this unprotected race. A milder spirit of Christian forbearance with some, of religious indifference with others, allayed the fierce spirit of animosity, which now, instead of bursting forth at every opportunity, was slowly and with difficulty excited and forced to a violent explosion. Still, in the midst of society, the Jews dwelt apart, excluded by ancient laws from most of the civil offices, by general prejudice and by their own tacit consent from the common intercourse of life; they were

endured because mankind had become habituated to their presence, rather than tolerated on any liberal principles, still less courted by any overtures for mutual amity. The Jew was contented with this cessation of hostilities; he had obtained a truce, he sought not for a treaty of alliance. Where commercial restrictions were removed, he either did not feel, or disdained, civil disqualifications. So long as he retained, unmolested, the independent government of his own little world, he left to the Gentiles to administer the politics of the kingdoms of the earth. If he might be permitted to live as a peaceful merchant, he aspired not to become statesman, magistrate, or soldier. So that the equal law protected him in the acquisition and possession of personal property, he had no great desire to invest his wealth in land, or to exchange the unsettled and enterprising habits of trade for the more slow returns and laborious profits of agriculture. He demanded no more than to be secured from the active enmity of mankind; his pride set him above their contempt. Like the haughty Roman, banished from the world, the Israelite threw back the sentence of banishment, and still retreated to the lofty conviction that his race was not excluded as an unworthy, but kept apart as a sacred, people; humiliated indeed, but still hallowed, and reserved for the sure, though tardy, fulfilment of the divine promises. The lofty feeling of having endured and triumphed over centuries of intolerable wrong, mingled with the splendid recollections of the past, and the hopes of the future, which were sedulously inculcated by their Rabbinical instructers; and thus their exclusion from the communities of the world, from the honours and privileges of social life, was felt by those who were high-minded enough to feel at all, rather as a distinction than a disgrace. This at once compelled that voluntary unsocialness which was still the universal national characteristic of the

Jews: yet in process of time they became in some degree assimilated to the nations among whom they lived; their relative state of civilization materially depended on the manners of the surrounding people, and there was nearly as great a difference between the depressed and ignorant Jew of Persia, the fierce fanatic of Barbary or Constantinople, and his opulent and enlightened brethren of Hamburgh or Amsterdam, as between the Mussulman and Christian population of the different countries. The dominion of the Rabbins was universally recognised, except among the Karaites, whose orderly and simple congregations were frequent in the East, in the Crimea, in Poland, even in Africa. Rabbinism was still the strong hold, and the source of the general stubborn fanaticism; yet even this stern priestcraft, which ruled with its ancient despotism in more barbarous Poland, either lost its weight, or was constrained to accommodate itself to the spirit of the age, in the west of Europe.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Poland and the adjacent provinces had for some time been the head-quarters of the Jews. As early as the fourteenth century, their privileges had been secured by Casimir the Great, who was deeply enamoured of a Jewish mistress. In that kingdom they formed the only middle order between the nobles and the serfs. Almost every branch of traffic was in their hands. They were the corn merchants, shopkeepers, inn-keepers; in some towns they formed the greater part of the population, in some villages almost the whole. Poland was likewise the seat of the Rabbinical papacy. The Talmud ruled supreme in the public mind; the synagogues obeyed with implicit deference the mandates of their spiritual superiors, and the whole system of education was rigidly conducted, so as to perpetuate the authority of tradition.* In the west of Europe, in the mean

* A mystic sect, the Zaddikin or Chassidin, have made rapid progress, since the year 1740, among the Jews in Russian Poland.

time, those great changes were slowly preparing, which before the close of the century were to disorganize the whole framework of society. The new opinions not merely altered the political condition of the Jews, as well as that of almost all orders of men; but they penetrated into the very sanctuary of Judaism, and threatened to shake the dominion of the Rabbins, as they had that of the Christian priesthood, to its basis. It is singular, however, that the first of these daring innovators, who declared war alike against ancient prejudices and the most sacred principles, excluded the Jews from the wide pale of their philanthropy. The old, bitter, and contemptuous antipathy against the Jews lurks in the writings of many of the philosophic school, especially those of Gibbon and Voltaire. It was partly the leaven of hereditary aversion, partly, perhaps, the fastidiousness of Parisian taste, which dreaded all contamination from a filthy and sordid, as well as a superstitious, race; but, most of all, from the intimate relation of the Mosaic with the Christian religion. The Jews were hated as the religious ancestors of the Christians, and, in Paley's phrase, it became the accustomed mode of warfare "to wound Christianity through the sides of Judaism." Strange fate of the Jews, after having suf. fered centuries of persecution for their opposition to Christianity, now to be held up to public scorn and detestation for their alliance with it! The legislation of Frederick the Great almost, as it were, throws us back into the middle ages. In 1750 appeared an edict for the general regulation of the Jews in the Prussian dominions. It limited the number of the Jews in the kingdom, divided them into those who held an ordinary or an extraordinary protection from the crown. The ordinary protection descended to one child, the extraordinary was limited to the life of the bearer. Foreign Jews were prohibited from settling in Prussia; exceptions

A. c. 1753.]

JEWS IN ENGLAND.

323

were obtained only at an exorbitant price. Widows who married foreign Jews must leave the kingdom. The protected Jews were liable to enormous and special burthens. They paid, besides the common taxes of the kingdom, for their patent of protection, for every election of an elder in their communities, and every marriage. By a strange enactment, in which the king and the merchant were somewhat unroyally combined, every Jew on the marriage of a son was obliged to purchase porcelain to the amount of 300 rix-dollars, from the king's manufactory, for foreign exportation. Thus heavily burthened, the Jews were excluded from all civil functions, and from many of the most profitable branches of trade, from agriculture, from breweries and distilleries, from manufactures, from inn-keeping, from victualling, from physic and surgery.

Nor in more enlightened countries was the public mind prepared for any innovations in the relative condition of the Jews. In England, since the time of Charles II., they had lived in peace in their two communities of Portuguese and German origin. They had obtained relief under James II. from an alien duty, which restricted their traffic; the indulgence was revoked under William III. Under queen Anne a regulation was made to facilitate conversions from the Jews; the chancellor was empowered to enforce from the father of a convert to Christianity a fair and sufficient maintenance. The baptism of a rich and influential person of the sect, named Moses Marcus, excited a considerable sensation at the time. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the cause of the Jews was brought forward under the unpopular auspices of Toland the Freethinker. In 1753 a more important measure was attempted. A bill was introduced into parliament for the naturalization of all Jews who had resided three years in the kingdom, without being absent more than three months at a time. It