Τ CIVIL DISABILITIES OF THE JEWS JANUARY, 1831 NOTE ON THE ESSAY HE success of the arguments contained in this essay has been so complete and their justice would now be so generally admitted, at least within the British Empire, that little need be said by way of preface or commentary. It is true that they are not all beyond criticism. When Macaulay asserts the identity of the two propositions : It is right that some person or persons should possess political power, and Some person or persons must have a right to political power, he commits an obvious fallacy. Arguing in this way all who think that capital punishment is in some cases just might say, "It is right that some persons should be hanged, that is to say some persons have a right to be hanged." Such a mode of speaking might approve itself to Plato who thought that a reasonable culprit would hasten to the magistrate to receive his punishment, as a reasonable invalid hastens to the physician to obtain a remedy, but it would not have commended itself to plain English people like Macaulay himself. In truth, no man has a right to political power which is essentially a trust, and the question whether any condition of men ought to have political power can only be determined by reference to the effect which the giving them power would have upon the general well-being. Jews or tenpound householders or grown-up men living with their fathers ought to have political power if their having it will be for the good of the commonwealth, but not otherwise. Neither is it true in all cases and without any qualification that differences of religion are absolutely irrelevant to the bestowal of political power. In some cases the differences of thought and feeling between the adherents of different creeds are so many and so considerable that harmonious co-operation in the same body politic becomes almost inconceivable. Whilst Mohammedanism and Hinduism remain what they are it is scarcely conceivable that Mohammedans and Hindus could really blend in one constituent body for the choice of a parliament which should govern India. In such a case one of the contending creeds, or else the followers of some other creed, must reign if anarchy is not to ensue. Even where religious differences are far fewer and slighter than the differences which separate MoVOL. I.-19 hammedans and Hindus, mutual exasperation and intolerance may render the political equality of different sects difficult and precarious. All that we can say is, that at the present time Catholic and Protestant, Jew and freethinker, can safely and beneficially be treated alike for political and constitutional purposes. Macaulay's argument was doubtless more telling because he ignored possible cases which it might not cover, and confined himself to the circumstances of his own age and country. CIVIL DISABILITIES OF THE JEWS Statement of the Civil Disabilities and Privations affecting Jews in England. 8vo. London: 1829. TH HE distinguished member of the House of Commons1 who, towards the close of the late Parliament, brought forward a proposition for the relief of the Jews, has given notice of his intention to renew it. The force of reason, in the last session, carried the measure through one stage in spite of the opposition of power. Reason and power are now on the same side; and we have little doubt that they will conjointly achieve a decisive victory. In order to contribute our share to the success of just principles, we propose to pass in review, as rapidly as possible, some of the arguments, or phrases claiming to be arguments, which have been employed to vindicate a system full of absurdity and injustice. The constitution, it is said, is essentially Christian; and therefore to admit Jews to office is to destroy the constitution. Nor is the Jew injured by being excluded from political power. For no man has any right to power. A man has a right to his property; a man has a right to be protected from personal injury. These rights the law allows to the Jew; and with these rights it would be atrocious to interfere. But it is a mere matter of favour to admit any man to political power; and no man can justly complain that he is shut out from it. We cannot but admire the ingenuity of this contrivance for shifting the burden of the proof from those to whom it properly belongs, and who would, we suspect, find it rather cumbersome. Surely no Christian can deny that every human being has a right to be allowed every gratification which produces no harm to others, and to be spared every mortification which produces no good to 1 Robert Grant, 1779-1838, a well-known member of the Whig party, sat for the Inverness burghs in the Parliament of 1826, and made a motion for the relief of the Jews in the session of 1830. He afterwards became Judge-Advocate General, a member of the Board of Control and finally Governor of Bombay. He died in India. others. Is it not a source of mortification to a class of men that they are excluded from political power? If it be, they have, on Christian principles, a right to be freed from that mortification, unless it can be shown that their exclusion is necessary for the averting of some greater evil. The presumption is evidently in favour of toleration. It is for the persecutor to make out his case. The strange argument which we are considering would prove too much even for those who advance it. If no man has a right to political power, then neither Jew nor Gentile has such a right. The whole foundation of government is taken away. But if government be taken away, the property and the persons of men are insecure; and it is acknowledged that men have a right to their property and to personal security. If it be right that the property of men should be protected, and if this can only be done by means of government, then it must be right that government should exist. Now there cannot be government unless some person or persons possess political power. Therefore it is right that some person or persons should possess political power. That is to say, some person or persons must have a right to political power. It is because men are not in the habit of considering what the end of government is, that Catholic disabilities and Jewish disabilities have been suffered to exist so long. We hear of essentially Protestant governments and essentially Christian governments, words which mean just as much as essentially Protestant cookery, or essentially Christian horsemanship. Government exists for the purpose of keeping the peace, for the purpose of compelling us to settle our disputes by arbitration instead of settling them by blows, for the purpose of compelling us to supply our wants by industry instead of supplying them by rapine. This is the only operation for which the machinery of government is peculiarly adapted, the only operation which wise governments ever propose to themselves as their chief object. If there is any class of people who are not interested, or who do not think themselves interested, in the security of property and the maintenance of order, that class ought to have no share of the powers which exist for the purpose of securing property and maintaining order. But why a man should be less fit to exercise those powers because he wears a beard, because he does not eat ham, because he goes to the synagogue on Saturdays instead of going to the church on Sundays, we cannot conceive. The points of difference between Christianity and Judaism have very much to do with a man's fitness to be a bishop or a rabbi. But they have no more to do with his fitness to be a |