n
for the exclusion.

My honourable friend has appealed to us as Christians. Let me then ask
him how he understands that great commandment which comprises the law
and the prophets. Can we be said to do unto others as we would that they
should do unto us if we wantonly inflict on them even the smallest
pain? As Christians, surely we are bound to consider, first, whether,
by excluding the Jews from all public trust, we give them pain; and,
secondly, whether it be necessary to give them that pain in order to
avert some greater evil. That by excluding them from public trust
we inflict pain on them my honourable friend will not dispute. As a
Christian, therefore, he is bound to relieve them from that pain, unless
he can show, what I am sure he has not yet shown, that it is necessary
to the general good that they should continue to suffer.

But where, he says, are you to stop, if once you admit into the House of
Commons people who deny the authority of the Gospels? Will you let in
a Mussulman? Will you let in a Parsee? Will you let in a Hindoo, who
worships a lump of stone with seven heads? I will answer my honourable
friend's question by another. Where does he mean to stop? Is he ready to
roast unbelievers at slow fires? If not, let him tell us why: and I
will engage to prove that his reason is just as decisive against the
intolerance which he thinks a duty, as against the intolerance which he
thinks a crime. Once admit that we are bound to inflict pain on a man
because he is not of our religion; and where are you to stop? Why stop
at the point fixed by my honourable friend rather than at the point
fixed by the honourable Member for Oldham (Mr Cobbett.), who would make
the Jews incapable of holding land? And why stop at the point fixed by
the honourable Member for Oldham rather than at the point which would
have been fixed by a Spanish Inquisitor of the sixteenth century? When
once you enter on a course of persecution, I defy you to find any reason
for making a halt till you have reached the extreme point. When my
honourable friend tells us that he will allow the Jews to possess
property to any amount, but that he will not allow them to possess the
smallest political power, he holds contradictory language. Property
is power. The honourable Member for Oldham reasons better than my
honourable friend. The honourable Member for Oldham sees very clearly
that it is impossible to deprive a man of political power if you
suffer him