the special exchequer of the Jews--been used by the sovereign as a means of extorting a revenue from his subjects. In the 17th century a considerable number of Jews had made a home in the English colonies, where from the first they enjoyed practically equal rights with the Christian settlers. Cromwell, upon the inconclusive termination of the conference summoned in 1655 at Whitehall to consider the Jewish question, tacitly assented to the return of the Jews to this country, and at the restoration his action was confirmed. The English Jews "gradually substituted for the personal protection of the crown, the sympathy and confidence of the nation" (L. Wolf, _Menasseh ben Israel's Mission to Cromwell_, p. lxxv.). The city of London was the first to be converted to the new attitude. "The wealth they brought into the country, and their fruitful commercial activity, especially in the colonial trade, soon revealed them as an indispensable element of the prosperity of the city. As early as 1668, Sir Josiah Child, the millionaire governor of the East India company, pleaded for their naturalization on the score of their commercial utility. For the same reason the city found itself compelled at first to connive at their illegal representation on 'Change, and then to violate its own rules by permitting them to act as brokers without previously taking up the freedom. At this period they controlled more of the foreign and colonial trade than all the other alien merchants in London put together. The momentum of their commercial enterprise and stalwart patriotism proved irresistible. From the exchange to the city council chamber, thence to the aldermanic court, and eventually to the mayoralty itself, were inevitable stages of an emancipation to which their large interests in the city and their high character entitled them. Finally the city of London--not only as the converted champion of religious liberty but as the convinced apologist of the Jews--sent Baron Lionel de Rothschild to knock at the door of the unconverted House of Commons as parliamentary representative of the first city in the world" (Wolf, loc. cit.).