the better: for, surely, as Christians,
we cannot wish that they should bestir themselves to pervert us from
our own faith. But that the Jews would be unsocial members of the civil
community, if the civil community did its duty by them, has never been
proved. My right honourable friend who made the motion which we are
discussing has produced a great body of evidence to show that they have
been grossly misrepresented; and that evidence has not been refuted by
my honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford. But what
if it were true that the Jews are unsocial? What if it were true that
they do not regard England as their country? Would not the treatment
which they have undergone explain and excuse their antipathy to the
society in which they live? Has not similar antipathy often been felt
by persecuted Christians to the society which persecuted them? While
the bloody code of Elizabeth was enforced against the English Roman
Catholics, what was the patriotism of Roman Catholics? Oliver Cromwell
said that in his time they were Espaniolised. At a later period it
might have been said that they were Gallicised. It was the same with the
Calvinists. What more deadly enemies had France in the days of Louis
the Fourteenth than the persecuted Huguenots? But would any rational man
infer from these facts that either the Roman Catholic as such, or the
Calvinist as such, is incapable of loving the land of his birth? If
England were now invaded by Roman Catholics, how many English Roman
Catholics would go over to the invader? If France were now attacked by
a Protestant enemy, how many French Protestants would lend him help?
Why not try what effect would be produced on the Jews by that tolerant
policy which has made the English Roman Catholic a good Englishman, and
the French Calvinist a good Frenchman?

Another charge has been brought against the Jews, not by my honourable
friend the Member for the University of Oxford--he has too much learning
and too much good feeling to make such a charge--but by the honourable
Member for Oldham, who has, I am sorry to see, quitted his place. The
honourable Member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are naturally a mean
race, a sordid race, a money-getting race; that they are averse to all
honourable callings; that they neither sow nor reap; that they have
neither flocks nor herds; that usury is the only pursuit for which they
are fit; that they are destitute of all elevated and amiable sen