Since It is If the English Jews really felt a deadly hatred to England, if the weekly prayer of their synagogues were that all the curses denounced by Ezekiel on Tyre and Egypt might fall on London, if, in their solemn feasts, they called down blessings on those who should ciations cannot acquire that strength and to censure the other sections of the which they have in a better state of state for their want of patriotic spirit. things. Men are compelled to seek If the Jews have not felt towards Engfrom their party that protection which land like children, it is because she has they ought to receive from their treated them like a step-mother. There country, and they, by a natural conse- is no feeling which more certainly dequence, transfer to their party that af- velopes itself in the minds of men livfection which they would otherwise ing under tolerably good government have felt for their country. The Hu- than the feeling of patriotism. guenots of France called in the help of the beginning of the world, there never England against their Catholic kings. was any nation, or any large portion The Catholics of France called in the of any nation, not cruelly oppressed, help of Spain against a Huguenot king. which was wholly destitute of that feelWould it be fair to infer, that at pre-ing. To make it therefore ground of sent the French Protestants would accusation against a class of men, that wish to see their religion made domi- they are not patriotic, is the most vulnant by the help of a Prussian or En-gar legerdemain of sophistry. glish army? Surely not, and why is the logic which the wolf employs it that they are not willing, as they against the lamb. It is to accuse the formerly were willing, to sacrifice the mouth of the stream of poisoning the interests of their country to the inter- source. ests of their religious persuasion? The reason is obvious: they were persecuted then, and are not persecuted now. The English Puritans under Charles the First, prevailed on the Scotch to invade England. Do the Protestant Dissenters of our time wish to see the Church put down by an in-dash their children to pieces on the vasion of foreign Calvinists? If not, stones, still, we say, their hatred to their to what cause are we to attribute the countrymen would not be more intense change? Surely to this, that the Pro- than that which sects of Christians have testant Dissenters are far better treated often borne to each other. But in fact now than in the seventeenth century. the feeling of the Jews is not such. It Some of the most illustrious public is precisely what, in the situation in men that England ever produced were which they are placed, we should exinclined to take refuge from the ty-pect it to be. They are treated far ranny of Laud in North America. Was this because Presbyterians and Independents are incapable of loving their country? But it is idle to multiply instances. Nothing is so offensive to a man who knows any thing of history or of human nature as to hear those who exercise the powers of government accuse any sect of foreign attachments. If there be any proposition universally true in politics it is this, that foreign attachments are the fruit of domestic misrule. It has always been the trick of bigots to make their subjects miserable at home, and then to complain that they look for relief abroad; to divide society, and to wonder that it is not united; to govern as if a section of the state were the whole, better than the French Protestants were treated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or than our Puritans were treated in the time of Laud. They, therefore, have no rancour against the government or against their countrymen. It will not be denied that they are far better affected to the state than the followers of Coligni or Vane. But they are not so well treated as the dissenting sects of Christians are now treated in England; and on this account, and, we firmly believe, on this account alone, they have a more exclusive spirit. Till we have carried the experiment farther, we are not entitled to conclude that they cannot be made Englishmen altogether. The statesman who treats them as aliens, and then abuses them for not entertain- | ask for leave to exercise power over a ing all the feelings of natives, is as un-community of which they are only half reasonable as the tyrant who punished members, a community the constitution their fathers for not making bricks without straw. of which is essentially dark-haired, let us answer them in the words of our wise ancestors, Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari." Rulers must not be suffered thus to absolve themselves of their solemn responsibility. It does not lie in their But, it is said, the Scriptures declare mouths to say that a sect is not patri- that the Jews are to be restored to their otic. It is their business to make it own country; and the whole nation patriotic. History and reason clearly looks forward to that restoration. They indicate the means. The English Jews are, therefore, not so deeply interested are, as far as we can see, precisely what as others in the prosperity of England. our government has made them. They | It is not their home, but merely the are precisely what any sect, what any place of their sojourn, the house of class of men, treated as they have been their bondage. This argument, which treated, would have been. If all the first appeared in the Times newspaper, red-haired people in Europe had, and which has attracted a degree of during centuries, been outraged and attention proportioned not so much to oppressed, banished from this place, its own intrinsic force as to the general imprisoned in that, deprived of their talent with which that journal is conmoney, deprived of their teeth, con- ducted, belongs to a class of sophisms victed of the most improbable crimes by which the most hateful persecutions on the feeblest evidence, dragged at may easily be justified. To charge horses' tails, hanged, tortured, burned men with practical consequences which alive, if, when manners became milder, they themselves deny is disingenuous they had still been subject to debasing in controversy; it is atrocious in gorestrictions and exposed to vulgar in-vernment. The doctrine of predestisults, locked up in particular streets in nation, in the opinion of many people, some countries, pelted and ducked by tends to make those who hold it utterly the rabble in others, excluded every immoral. And certainly it would seem where from magistracies and honours, that a man who believes his eternal what would be the patriotism of gentle-destiny to be already irrevocably fixed men with red hair? And if, under is likely to indulge his passions without such circumstances, a proposition were restraint and to neglect his religious made for admitting red-haired men to duties. If he is an heir of wrath, his office, how striking a speech might an exertions must be unavailing. If he is eloquent admirer of our old institutions preordained to life, they must be superdeliver against so revolutionary a mea-fluous. But would it be wise to punish sure! "These men," he might say, "scarcely consider themselves as Englishmen. They think a red-haired Frenchman or a red-haired German more closely connected with them than a man with brown hair born in their own parish. If a foreign sovereign -patronises red hair, they love him better than their own native king. They are not Englishmen they cannot be Eng- It is altogether impossible to reason lishmen nature has forbidden it: ex- from the opinions which a man properience proves it to be impossible. fesses to his feelings and his actions; Right to political power they have and in fact no person is ever such a none; for no man has a right to politi-fool as to reason thus, except when he cal power. Let them enjoy personal wants a pretext for persecuting his security; let their property be under neighbours. A Christian is comthe protection of the law. But if they manded, under the strongest sanctions, every man who holds the higher doctrines of Calvinism, as if he had actually committed all those crimes which we know some Antinomians to have committed? Assuredly not. The fact notoriously is that there are many Calvinists as moral in their conduct as any Arminian, and many Arminians as loose as any Calvinist. to be just in all his dealings. Yet to opposed to their passions and interests, how many of the twenty-four millions may not loyalty, may not humanity, of professing Christians in these islands may not the love of ease, may not the would any man in his senses lend a fear of death, be sufficient to prevent thousand pounds without security? them from executing those wicked A man who should act, for one day, on orders which the Church of Rome has the supposition that all the people issued against the sovereign of Engabout him were influenced by the re-land? When we know that many of ligion which they professed, would these people do not care enough for find himself ruined before night; and their religion to go without beef on no man ever does act on that supposi-a Friday for it, why should we think tion in any of the ordinary concerns of that they will run the risk of being life, in borrowing, in lending, in buy-racked and hanged for it? ing, or in selling. But when any of People are now reasoning about the our fellow-creatures are to be op- Jews as our fathers reasoned about the pressed, the case is different. Then Papists. The law which is inscribed we represent those motives which we on the walls of the synagogues prohibits know to be so feeble for good as omni- covetousness. But if we were to say potent for evil. Then we lay to the that a Jew mortgagee would not forecharge of our victims all the vices and close because God had commanded follies to which their doctrines, how-him not to covet his neighbour's house, ever remotely, seem to tend. We every body would think us out of our forget that the same weakness, the wits. Yet it passes for an argument same laxity, the same disposition to to say that a Jew will take no interest prefer the present to the future, which in the prosperity of the country in make men worse than a good religion, which he lives, that he will not care make them better than a bad one. how bad its laws and police may be, how heavily it may be taxed, how often it may be conquered and given up to spoil, because God has promised that, by some unknown means, and at some undetermined time, perhaps ten thousand years hence, the Jews shall migrate to Palestine. Is not this the most profound ignorance of human nature? Do we not know that what is remote and indefinite affects men far less than what is near and certain ? The argument too applies to Christians as strongly as to Jews. The Christian believes as well as the Jew, that at some future period the present order of things will come to an end. Nay, many Christians believe that the Messiah will shortly establish a kingdom on the earth, and reign visibly over all its inhabitants. Whether this doctrine be orthodox or not we shall not here inquire. The number of people who hold it is very much greater than the number of Jews residing in England. Many of those who hold it are distinguished by rank, wealth, and ability. It is preached from pulpits, both of the Scottish and of the English church. Noblemen and members of Parliament L It was in this way that our ancestors reasoned, and that some people in our time still reason, about the Catholics. A Papist believes himself bound to obey the pope. The pope has issued a bull deposing Queen Elizabeth. Therefore every Papist will treat her grace as an usurper. Therefore every Papist is a traitor. Therefore every Papist ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. To this logic we owe some of the most hateful laws that ever disgraced our history. Surely the answer lies on the surface. The Church of Rome may have commanded these men to treat the queen as an usurper. But she has commanded them to do many other things which they have never done. She enjoins her priests to observe strict purity. You are always taunting them with their licentiousness. She commands all her followers to fast often, to be charitable to the poor, to take no interest for money, to fight no duels, to see no plays. Do they obey these injunctions? If it be the fact that very few of them strictly observe her precepts, when her precepts are VOL. I. have written in defence of it. Now In fact it is already clear that the wherein does this doctrine differ, as prophecies do not bear the meaning far as its political tendency is con- put upon them by the respectable cerned, from the doctrine of the Jews? persons whom we are now answering. If a Jew is unfit to legislate for us In France and in the United States because he believes that he or his re- the Jews are already admitted to all mote descendants will be removed to the rights of citizens. A prophecy, Palestine, can we safely open the therefore, which should mean that the House of Commons to a fifth-mo- Jews would never, during the course narchy man, who expects that before of their wanderings, be admitted to all this generation shall pass away, all the rights of citizens in the places of the kingdoms of the earth will be their sojourn, would be a false proswallowed up in one divine empire? phecy. This, therefore, is not the meaning of the prophecies of Scripture. Does a Jew engage less eagerly than a Christian in any competition But we protest altogether against which the law leaves open to him? the practice of confounding prophecy Is he less active and regular in his with precept, of setting up predictions business than his neighbours? Does which are often obscure against a mohe furnish his house meanly, because rality which is always clear. If actions he is a pilgrim and sojourner in the are to be considered as just and good land? Does the expectation of being merely because they have been prerestored to the country of his fathers dicted, what action was ever more make him insensible to the fluctuations laudable than that crime which our of the stock-exchange? Does he, in bigots are now, at the end of eighteen arranging his private affairs, ever take centuries, urging us to avenge on the into the account the chance of his Jews, that crime which made the earth migrating to Palestine? If not, why shake and blotted out the sun from are we to suppose that feelings which heaven? The same reasoning which never influence his dealings as a mer- is now employed to vindicate the dischant, or his dispositions as a testator, abilities imposed on our Hebrew counwill acquire a boundless influence over trymen will equally vindicate the kiss him as soon as he becomes a magistrate of Judas and the judgment of Pilate. or a legislator ? There is another "The Son of man goeth, as it is written argument which we would not wil- of him; but woe to that man by whom lingly treat with levity, and which yet the Son of man is betrayed." And we scarcely know how to treat seriously. woe to those who, in any age or in Scripture, it is said, is full of terrible any country, disobey his benevolent denunciations against the Jews. It commands under pretence of accomis foretold that they are to be wan-plishing his predictions. If this arguderers. Is it then right to give them ment justifies the laws now existing a home? It is foretold that they are against the Jews, it justifies equally to be oppressed. Can we with pro- all the cruelties which have ever been priety suffer them to be rulers? To committed against them, the sweeping admit them to the rights of citizens is edicts of banishment and confiscation, manifestly to insult the Divine oracles. the dungeon, the rack, and the slow We allow that to falsify a prophecy fire. How can we excuse ourselves inspired by Divine Wisdom would be for leaving property to people who are a most atrocious crime. It is, there- to "serve their enemies in hunger, and fore, a happy circumstance for our in thirst, and in nakedness, and in frail species, that it is a crime which want of all things;" for giving prono man can possibly commit. If we tection to the persons of those who are admit the Jews to seats in Parliament, to "fear day and night, and to have we shall, by so doing, prove that the none assurance of their life;" for not prophecies in question, whatever they seizing on the children of a race whose may mean, do not mean that the Jews" sons and daughters are to be given shall be excluded from Parliament. unto another people?" We have not so learned the doctrines | evidently been written, not for the purof Him who commanded us to love our pose of showing, what, however, it neighbour as ourselves, and who, when often shows, how well its author can He was called upon to explain what He write, but for the purpose of vindimeant by a neighbour, selected as an cating, as far as truth will permit, the example a heretic and an alien. Last memory of a celebrated man who can year, we remember, it was represented no longer vindicate himself. Mr. Moore by a pious writer in the John Bull never thrusts himself between Lord newspaper, and by some other equally Byron and the public. With the strongfervid Christians, as a monstrous inde- est temptations to egotism, he has said cency, that the measure for the relief no more about himself than the subject of the Jews should be brought forward absolutely required. in Passion week. One of these humourists ironically recommended that it should be read a second time on Good Friday. We should have had no objection; nor do we believe that the day could be commemorated in a more worthy manner. We know of no day fitter for terminating long hostilities, and repairing cruel wrongs, than the day on which the religion of mercy was founded. We know of no day fitter for blotting out from the statutebook the last traces of intolerance than the day on which the spirit of intolerance produced the foulest of all judicial murders, the day on which the list of the victims of intolerance, that noble list wherein Socrates and More are enrolled, was glorified by a yet greater and holier name. A great part, indeed the greater part, of these volumes, consists of extracts from the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron; and it is difficult to speak too highly of the skill which has been shown in the selection and arrangement. We will not say that we have not occasionally remarked in these two large quartos an anecdote which should have been omitted, a letter which should have been suppressed, a name which should have been concealed by asterisks, or asterisks which do not answer the purpose of concealing the name. But it is impossible, on a general survey, to deny that the task has been executed with great judgment and great humanity. When we consider the life which Lord Byron had led, his petulance, his irritability, and his communicativeness, we cannot but admire the dexterity with which Mr. Moore has contrived to exhibit so much of the MOORE'S LIFE OF LORD BYRON. character and opinions of his friend, (JUNE, 1831.) Letters and Journals of Lord Byron; with We have read this book with the great- with so little pain to the feelings of the living. The extracts from the journals and correspondence of Lord Byron are in the highest degree valuable, not merely on account of the information which they contain respecting the distinguished man by whom they were written, but on account also of their rare merit as compositions. The letters, at least those which were sent from Italy, are among the best in our language. They are less affected than those of Pope and Walpole; they have more matter in them than those of Cowper. Knowing that many of them were not written merely for the person to whom they were directed, but were general epistles, meant to be read by a large circle, we expected to find them |