Essay and speech on Jewish disabilities — John Shaqi
Essay and speech on Jewish disabilitiesMacaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
Religion
Essay and speech on Jewish disabilities
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
Jews -- Great Britain
which does not invite, nay, which hardly even admits neophytes?” The
truth is, that bigotry will never want a pretence. Whatever the sect
be which it is proposed to tolerate, the peculiarities of that sect
will, for the time, be pronounced by intolerant men to be the most
odious and dangerous that can be conceived. As to the Jews, that they
are unsocial as respects religion is true; and so much the better:
for, surely, as Christians, we cannot wish that they should bestir
themselves to pervert us from our own faith. But that the Jews would
be unsocial members of the civil community, if the civil community did
its duty by them, has never been proved. My right honourable friend who
made the motion which we are discussing has produced a great body of
evidence to show that they have been grossly misrepresented;[27] and
that evidence has not been refuted by my honourable friend the Member
for the University of Oxford. But what if it were true that the Jews
are unsocial? What if it were true that they do not regard England
as their country? Would not the treatment which they have undergone
explain and excuse their antipathy to the society in which they live?
Has not similar antipathy often been felt by persecuted Christians to
the society which persecuted them? While the bloody code of Elizabeth
was enforced against the English Roman Catholics, what was the
patriotism of Roman Catholics? Oliver Cromwell said that in his time
they were Espaniolised. At a later period it might have been said that
they were Gallicised. It was the same with the Calvinists. What more
deadly enemies had France in the days of Louis the Fourteenth than the
persecuted Huguenots? But would any rational man infer from these facts
that either the Roman Catholic as such, or the Calvinist as such, is
incapable of loving the land of his birth? If England were now invaded
by Roman Catholics, how many English Roman Catholics would go over to
the invader? If France were now attacked by a Protestant enemy, how
many French Protestants would lend him help? Why not try what effect
would be produced on the Jews by that tolerant policy which has made
the English Roman Catholic a good Englishman and the French Calvinist a
good Frenchman?[28]
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