The pioneers of this emancipation in Holland and England were Sephardic (or Spanish) Jews--descendants of the Spanish exiles. In the meantime the Ashkenazic (or German) Jews had been working out their own salvation. The chief effects of the change were not felt till the 18th century. In England emancipation was of democratic origin and concerned itself with practical questions. On the Continent, the movement was more aristocratic and theoretical; it was part of the intellectual renaissance which found its most striking expression in the principles of the French Revolution. Throughout Europe the 18th century was less an era of stagnation than of transition. The condition of the European Jews seems, on a superficial examination, abject enough. But, excluded though they were from most trades and occupations, confined to special quarters of the city, disabled from sharing most of the amenities of life, the Jews nevertheless were gradually making their escape from the ghetto and from the moral degeneration which it had caused. Some ghettos (as in Moravia) were actually not founded till the 18th century, but the careful observer can perceive clearly that at that period the ghetto was a doomed institution. In the "dark ages" Jews enjoyed neither rights nor privileges; in the 18th century they were still without rights but they had privileges. A grotesque feature of the time in Germany and Austria was the class of court Jews, such as the Oppenheims, the personal favourites of rulers and mostly their victims when their usefulness had ended. These men often rendered great services to their fellow-Jews, and one of the results was the growth in Jewish society of an aristocracy of wealth, where previously there had been an aristocracy of learning. Even more important was another privileged class--that of the _Schutz-Jude_ (protected Jew). Where there were no rights, privileges had to be bought. While the court Jews were the favourites of kings, the protected Jews were the protégés of town councils. Corruption is the frequent concomitant of privilege, and thus the town councils often connived for a price at the presence in their midst of Jews whose admission was illegal. Many Jews found it possible to evade laws of domicile by residing in one place and trading in another. Nor could they be effectually excluded from the fairs, the great markets of the 18th century. The Sephardic Jews in all these respects occupied a superior position, and they merited the partiality shown to them. Their personal dignity and the vast range of their colonial enterprises were in striking contrast to the retail traffic of the Ashkenazim and their degenerate bearing and speech. Peddling had been forced on the latter by the action of the gilds which were still powerful in the 18th century on the Continent. Another cause may be sought in the Cossack assaults on the Jews at an earlier period. Crowds of wanderers were to be met on