tions. In this
fact the Jews possess an element of stability which is wholly
independent of all considerations of creed and ritual. Few things are
more curious than the effect of persecution on the Jewish element in
Spain and Portugal. Tens of thousands of Jews in those countries were
burned at the stake or driven into exile, but great numbers also
conformed. They mixed in a few generations with the old Christian
population, and Spain and Portugal, M. Leroy-Beaulieu truly says, are
now among the countries in which the Jewish blood is most evidently
and most widely diffused.

Another consideration, which M. Leroy-Beaulieu has omitted to mention,
but which appears to me to have much weight, is the condemnation of
lending money at interest by the Church. This condemnation, which
lasted many centuries, had two important consequences. One of them was
that the Jews became almost the only moneylenders in Europe. The trade
was deemed sinful for a Christian, but it was found to be a very
necessary one; and the Jews (as some Catholic theologians observed)
being already damned, were allowed to practise it. The other
consequence was that on account of the stigma which the Church
attached to moneylending, the amount of money to be lent was greatly
diminished, or in other words, the rate of interest was enormously and
artificially raised. At a time, therefore, when Catholic intolerance
made it impossible for the Jews to mingle with and be absorbed in
surrounding nations they acquired one of the greatest elements of
power and stability that a race can possess--a monopoly of the most
lucrative trade in the world.

The physical characteristics of the race are very remarkable and they
are especially displayed among the Eastern Jews, who still maintain
scrupulously amid poverty and persecution the religious observances of
their ancestors. It is now clearly shown that the Levitical code was
in a high degree hygienic, and even anticipates some of the
discoveries of modern physiology. Prescriptions about forbidden kinds
of food and about the mode of cooking food, which only excited the
ridicule of Voltaire, have a real hygienic value in the eyes of Claude
Bernard and of Pasteur. The Jews have never adopted the Catholic
notions about the sanctity of celibacy and virginity, but they lay
great stress on the purity of marriage. Although they live chiefly in
towns, illegitimate births are proportionately rarer among them than
among either Prot