The last object of caricature which can be mentioned in the present chapter is the Jew--the odious Jew--accursed by the clergy _as_ a Jew, despised by good citizens as a usurer, and dreaded by many a profligate Christian as the holder of mortgages upon his estate. When the ruling class of a country loses its hold upon virtue, becomes profuse in expenditure, ceases to comply with natural law, comes to regard licentious living as something to be expected of young blood, and makes a jest of a decorous and moral conversation, then there is usually in that country a less refined, stronger class, who _do_ comply with natural law, who _do_ live in that virtuous, frugal, and orderly manner by which alone families can be perpetuated and states established. In several communities during the centuries preceding the Reformation, when the nobles and great merchants wasted their substance in riotous living or in insensate pilgrimages and crusades, the Jew was the virtuous, sensible, and solvent man. He did not escape the evil influence wrought into the texture of the character by living in an atmosphere of hatred and contempt, nor the narrowness of mind caused by his being excluded from all the more generous and high avocations. But he remained through all those dismal ages temperate, chaste, industrious, and saving, as well as heroically faithful to the best light on high things that he had. Hence he always had money to lend, and he could only lend it to men who were too glad to think he had no rights which they were bound to respect. The caricature on the next page was also discovered upon a vellum roll in the Public Record Office in London, the work of some idle clerk 642 years ago, and recently transferred to an English work[7] of much interest, in which it serves as a frontispiece. [Footnote 7: "History of Crime in England," vol. i., by Luke Owen Pike, London, 1873.] [Illustration: Caricature of the Jews in England, A.D. 1233.]