In the following year Count Mirabeau (1749–91) the most distinguished of the advocates of Jewish emancipation in France, calls attention in his essay _On Moses Mendelssohn and the Political Reform of the Jews_ (1787) to the striking similarity of the enactment of Virginia to the conclusions at which the Jewish philosopher of Berlin arrived by abstract reasoning; assuming that Mendelssohn never saw the preamble of the American law, which was drafted by Jefferson four years before the publication of “Jerusalem” in 1783. It is clear, however, that about seven years later, when the great French Revolution, which was influenced by the American Revolution much more than is commonly supposed, was in full swing, even the debates of the Constitutional Convention of Virginia of 1776 had become known to the friends of religious liberty in France. In the course of a petition in favor of their own emancipation, addressed by the French Jews to the National Assembly on January 29th, 1790, they said: “America, to which politics will owe so many useful lessons, has rejected the word toleration from its code, as a term tending to compromise individual liberty and to sacrifice certain classes of men to other classes. To tolerate is, in fact, to suffer that which you could, if you wish, prevent and prohibit.” There were not many Jews in Virginia in the time when this momentous question was discussed and solved. Individual Jews are mentioned in the Seventeenth Century, but the first record of a congregation occurs in connection with the address to Washington, mentioned above (page 102), which was sent by the Hebrew congregations of Philadelphia, Richmond, New York and Charleston. The minute-book of the Congregation Bet Shalom of Richmond, Va., dates back to the year 1791, and it is assumed that the first or Sephardic congregation was organized in that year. The first place of worship was in a room of a three-story brick building on the west side of 19th street, between Franklin and Grace streets, where one of the members resided. It later moved to a small brick building, erected on the west side of 19th street in the rear of the Union Hotel, which then stood on the corner of Main street. After some years a lot was purchased from Dr. Adams on the east side of Mayo street, above Franklin street, on which a commodious synagogue was erected, in which the congregation worshipped for upwards of three-quarters of a century. The burial ground on Franklin street, near 21st street, which is now enclosed with a substantial granite wall, was conveyed by Isaiah Isaac to Jacob I. Cohen, Israel I. Cohen, David Isaac, Moses Mordecai, Jacob I. Cohen, Jr., Simon Gratz, Aaron Levy, Moses Jacob and Levy Myers, as trustees, on October 21st, 1791. It was used until about 1816, when Benjamin Wolfe, then a member of the Common Council of the City of Richmond, made application on behalf of the congregation for a new piece of ground, which was granted by an ordinance passed on the 20th