FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>  
ery path to distinction. At one time the voice of this party urged that differences of creed were made dangerous only by the denial of citizenship--that you must make a man a citizen before he could feel like one. At present, apparently, this confidence has been succeeded by a sense of mistake: there is a regret that no limiting clauses were insisted on, such as would have hindered the Jews from coming too far and in too large proportion along those opened pathways; and the Roumanians are thought to have shown an enviable wisdom in giving them as little chance as possible. But then, the reflection occurring that some of the most objectionable Jews are baptised Christians, it is obvious that such clauses would have been insufficient, and the doctrine that you can turn a Jew into a good Christian is emphatically retracted. But clearly, these liberal gentlemen, too late enlightened by disagreeable events, must yield the palm of wise foresight to those who argued against them long ago; and it is a striking spectacle to witness minds so panting for advancement in some directions that they are ready to force it on an unwilling society, in this instance despairingly recurring to mediaeval types of thinking--insisting that the Jews are made viciously cosmopolitan by holding the world's money-bag, that for them all national interests are resolved into the algebra of loans, that they have suffered an inward degradation stamping them as morally inferior, and--"serve them right," since they rejected Christianity. All which is mirrored in an analogy, namely, that of the Irish, also a servile race, who have rejected Protestantism though it has been repeatedly urged on them by fire and sword and penal laws, and whose place in the moral scale may be judged by our advertisements, where the clause, "No Irish need apply," parallels the sentence which for many polite persons sums up the question of Judaism--"I never _did_ like the Jews." It is certainly worth considering whether an expatriated, denationalised race, used for ages to live among antipathetic populations, must not inevitably lack some conditions of nobleness. If they drop that separateness which is made their reproach, they may be in danger of lapsing into a cosmopolitan indifference equivalent to cynicism, and of missing that inward identification with the nationality immediately around them which might make some amends for their inherited privation. No dispassionate observ
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>  



Top keywords:

rejected

 
clauses
 

cosmopolitan

 

interests

 

repeatedly

 

advertisements

 
judged
 
national
 

clause

 

algebra


Christianity

 

morally

 

stamping

 

observ

 

inferior

 
mirrored
 

servile

 
dispassionate
 

resolved

 

suffered


analogy

 

degradation

 

Protestantism

 
question
 

conditions

 

nobleness

 

inevitably

 

amends

 
antipathetic
 

populations


separateness

 

reproach

 
identification
 

missing

 

nationality

 

immediately

 
cynicism
 
danger
 

lapsing

 

indifference


equivalent
 

privation

 

Judaism

 

persons

 

polite

 

parallels

 

sentence

 
expatriated
 

denationalised

 
inherited