Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
It would be impious to let a Jew sit in Parliament. But a Jew may make
money; and money may make members of Parliament. Gatton and Old Sarum
may be the property of a Hebrew. An elector of Penryn will take ten
pounds from Shylock rather than nine pounds nineteen shillings and
eleven-pence three farthings from Antonio. To this no objection is made.
That a Jew should possess the substance of legislative power, that he
should command eight votes on every division as if he were the great
Duke of Newcastle himself, is exactly as it should be. But that he
should pass the bar and sit down on those mysterious, cushions of green
leather, that he should cry “hear” and “order,” and talk about being on
his legs, and being, for one, free to say this and to say that, would be
a profanation sufficient to bring ruin on the country.
That a Jew should be privy-councillor to a Christian king would be an
eternal disgrace to the nation. But the Jew may govern the money-market,
and the money-market may govern the world. The Minister may be in doubt
as to his scheme of finance till he has been closeted with the Jew.
A congress of sovereigns may be forced to summon the Jew to their
assistance. The scrawl of the Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be
worth more than the royal word of three kings, or the national faith of
three new American republics. But that he should put Right Honourable
before his name would be the most frightful of national calamities.
It was in this way that some of our politicians reasoned about the Irish
Catholics. The Catholics ought to have no political power. The sun of
England is set for ever if the Catholics exercise political power. Give
the Catholics everything else; but keep political power from them.
These wise men did not see that, when everything else had been given,
political power had been given. They continued to repeat their cuckoo
song, when it was no longer a question whether Catholics should
have political power or not, when a Catholic association bearded the
Parliament, when a Catholic agitator exercised infinitely more authority
than the Lord Lieutenant.
If it is our duty as Christians to exclude the Jews from political
power, it must be our duty to treat them as our ancestors treated them,
to murder them, and banish them, and rob them. For in that way, and in
that way alone, can we really deprive them of political power. If we do
not adopt this course, we may take away the shadow, but we must leave
them the substance. We may do enough to pain and irritate them; but we
shall not do enough to secure ourselves from danger, if danger really
exists. Where wealth is, there power must inevitably be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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