THE

CHRISTIAN REFORMER.

No. CLXVIII.]

DECEMBER, 1828. [Vol. XIV.

STATEMENT OF THE CIVIL DISABILITIES AND PRIVATIONS AFFECTING THE JEWS IN ENGLAND.

THE late application to Parliament for the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, which proved successful, excited some of the Jewish people to come before the Legislature with their grievances. One respectable gentleman of that nation, Mr. Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, petitioned the Lords for an exemption on the part of his people from that clause of the Declaration substituted for the Sacramental Test, which relates to "the true faith of a Christian,”—but without avail, though the prayer was ably supported by Lord Holland and other noble-minded peers. At the same period, there appeared the following "Statement," which was generally circulated amongst Members of Parliament. As the Jews mean to pursue their application to the Legislature in the next session, the republication of it appears to us very desirable. It will be seen from it that the civil condition of the Jews in England is not quite so grievous as is vulgarly supposed, though grievous enough to justify them in every constitutional attempt to gain relief, and to awaken for them the sympathies of all those Christians, that hold privations and penalties on account of faith and worship to be as contrary to the gospel, as they are vexatious to individuals and injurious to the community.

THE object of the following Statement being more with a view to afford information as to the present civil condition and disabilities of the Jews in England, than to enter into an historical detail of the hardships and persecutions endured by them in past ages, a short recapitulation need only on this occasion be given, of the origin and progress of their establishment in this country.

Their first appearance in England as a body, and in any number, was at the period of the Norman invasion, although it is equally certain that individuals of their nation

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sojourned here under some of the Saxon monarchs; allusion to them being made in some ecclesiastical muniments in the year 740, and again in 833.

The early Chronicles, from the Conquest downwards, afford a frightful series of atrocious massacres and persecutions to which the Jews were from time to time subjected, according to the caprice or avarice of the sovereign, and the ignorance and bigotry of the people.

They were during this period considered the immediate property of the Crown, and were specifically reserved as such in more than one Royal Charter;* in this character they were occasionally the objects of some special immunities and privileges, granted, it should seem, with the view of allowing scope to their commercial enterprise, for which they, by their foreign relations, had many facilities, and that they might thus by their habitual tendency to accumulate wealth, afford a more valuable prey to their Royal Masters, who, in some cases, after extorting to the uttermost farthing from their unhappy victims, sold them to a subject; they were thus transferred by Henry III. to his brother Richard, Duke of Cornwall, in order that, as the Chronicler relates, whom the former had flayed the latter might eviscerate.

Traces are found in Parliamentary, Municipal, and Fiscal records, of various alternations of persecution and protection, affording matter of interest to the antiquarian and historian ; but for the present purpose it may suffice to state, that only one statute relating to this people, and which was passed during the first period of their settlement in England, remains specifically unrepealed: it is of uncertain date, although attributed to 3d Edward I., and having been long considered obsolete, remains in the original Law French, without any translation attached, and is only to be met with in the appendix to Ruffhead's Statutes.†

* In Henry 3d's Charter to the City of London, granted on the 26th March, in the 52nd year of his reign, the exception runs thus: "But as touching our Jews and Merchant Strangers, and other things out of our aforesaid grant, touching us, or our said City, we and our heirs shall provide as to us shall seem expedient."

This Act is commented upon by Daines Barrington, in his Observations on the Statutes, and by him considered obsolete; in point of fact, it may be doubted whether it was not virtually repealed by 37th Henry VIII. Cap. 9, which, in the most comprehensive words, re

Within a very few years from the passing of that act, and after enduring every species of the most aggravated cruelty and oppression, the Jews were, in the year 1290, banished the kingdom by a Royal Proclamation, under the standing pretence of grinding the poor by their usurious dealings, and they departed accordingly, to the number, as is computed, of 16,500 persons.

So general and complete must have been the exile of the Jews, that no mention whatever of them occurs in our annals for the long interval of near 400 years, or until after 1656, when Cromwell, on the petition on their behalf of Manasseh Ben Israel, a Physician, in Holland, highly distinguished for his scientific knowledge, was induced, as is supposed, to agree to their re-establishment in England; but such consent, if given, does not appear to have been then acted on, as in 1663, the whole number of Jews in London did not exceed twelve; in the years immediately following, however, a great influx of them took place, although sanctioned by no special permission, and in consequence it was held, on an elaborate argument in the case of The East India Company v. Sand, that the Jews reside in England only by an implied licence, which, on a proclamation of banishment, would operate like a determination of letters of safe conduct to an alien enemy.-(2 Show. 371.)

The Jews on such their re-establishment were spared the direct hardships and inflictions they had endured during their former settlement here, but notwithstanding had to encounter much illiberality and jealousy on the part of the principal merchants of London, who, in 1685, petitioned James the 2nd to insist on the Alien Duty of Customs being exacted from all Jews, notwithstanding their having obtained letters of denization; similar petitions were presented from the Hamburgh Company, the Eastland Company, and the merchants of the West and North of England; but the King, as his brother Charles II. had before done, refused to comply with the prayer of such petitions. The merchants renewed their application in 1690 to William the 3rd, when, after much discussion before the Privy Council, an order was issued, the effect of which was, to render the Jews liable to the Alien Duty.

peals all previous Acts relating to usury; the restraint of which was the chief, if not the only, object of the Act of 3d Edward I. in question.

Upon this the merchants drew up a most loyal address of thanks to the King, and no farther notice appears to have been taken of the Jews until the 1st year of Queen Ann, when, it being represented to both Houses of Parliament that the severity of Jewish parents towards such of their children as were desirous of embracing the Christian faith, was a great hindrance to their conversion, it was enacted, (Stat. 1 Ann, c. 30,) that "if the child of any Jewish parent is converted to the Christian religion, or is desirous of embracing it, upon application to the Lord Chancellor, he may compel any such parent to give his child a sufficient maintenance in proportion to his circumstances."

Early in the following reign a petition was presented to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, praying that no Jew might be admitted a Broker: no order or by-law seems to have been made upon such petition, which comprised only the most futile allegations.

In an Act passed 10th George I. c. 4, providing for the administering the oath of abjuration for the purposes contemplated by that statute, the following clause was introduced in favour of the Jews: "Whenever any of his Majesty's subjects professing the Jewish religion shall present himself to take the oath of abjuration, the words, upon the true faith of a Christian,' shall be omitted out of the said oath." This provision, exclusive of the very proper object of it, is so far additionally valuable, as affording the first legislative recognition of the relation of Sovereign and Subject as regards the Jews born within the British dominions; and they are also, as such, included in the Act of 13th George II. c. 7, which enacts, that every Jew who shall have resided seven years in any of his Majesty's Colonies in America, shall, upon taking the oath of abjuration, qualified as above, be entitled to all the privileges of a naturalborn subject of Great Britain.

Following up the preceding provision, whereby naturalization was thus effected without requiring that, in compliance with the Act of 7th James I., the party applying to be naturalized should first receive the sacrament, the famous Act for permitting persons professing the Jewish religion. to be naturalized by Parliament, was passed in 1753, 26th George II. c. 26. The principal clauses of which were, that Jews, upon application to Parliament, might be naturalized without taking the sacrament; that they must have resided three years in England or Ireland; and for disabling them,

notwithstanding, from purchasing or inheriting any advowson or right of patronage in the Church.

It would now be scarcely credible, were it not matter of authentic history, that this mere permission given to the Legislature to naturalize such foreign Jews as might apply, being qualified as above mentioned, excited such a ferment throughout the country, as to accelerate a Session of Parliament for the purpose of passing, as its first Act, (27 George II. c. I.) a repeal of the Act in question, stating, by way of reason in the preamble, " that occasion had been taken from the said Act to raise discontents, and to disquiet the minds of many of his Majesty's subjects.'

By the 26th George II. c. 33, commonly called the Marriage Act, the Jews and Quakers are the only communities specially excepted out of the operation of it.

Mr. Serjeant Heywood, in his valuable book on County Elections, has the following words: "Since their return (after being banished by Edward I.) Jews have been possessed of real estates, without molestation; and notwithstanding the doubts thrown out in both Houses of Parliament in 1753, may, I conceive, vote at county elections, upon taking the oaths, according to the ceremonies of their religion, as they are always permitted to do when sworn in the Courts of Justice."

The result of the foregoing review of the public and legislative proceedings with reference to the Jews in England, appears most distinctly to prove that, with the single exception of the Act of Ann, as affecting parental controul, and under which not more than two or three applications have ever been made in Chancery, there is no disabling statute whatsoever affecting the claim of his Majesty's subjects professing the Jewish religion to a full and equal participation with their Christian fellow-subjects in the reciprocal rights and privileges consequent upon the obligation and duty of allegiance as natural-born subjects of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom, including the power to acquire, inherit, possess, convey and transmit every species of property, real as well as personal.

Having thus satisfactorily established the fact, that there. is no particular Act of Parliament affecting the free and unfettered power of the English Jews to pursue the fair and free course of industry and talent, in common with their countrymen, it is the more to be regretted that any impediment should be thrown in their way by any local regula