Though the outlook in Spain was very dark, it was much worse in all other known countries, which accounts for the fact that there was hardly any emigration from the Christian parts of Spain in the time immediately preceding the expulsion. The Spanish Jew was then, and has to some extent remained even unto this day, the aristocrat among the Jews of the world. His intense love for that country is still smouldering in the hearts of his descendants, and not without reason. In other European countries the Jew could, during the middle ages, only enjoy the sympathy and sometimes be accorded the protection of the nobility. In Spain and Portugal he actually belonged to that class. For, as Selig (Dr. Paulus) Cassel has justly remarked (in his splendid article _Juden_ in Ersch and Gruber’s Encyclopædia) sufficient attention has not been paid by Jewish historians to the important fact that Spain and Portugal were the only considerable countries during the Middle Ages in which the Jews were permitted to own land. The statement, for which there is an apparent Jewish authority, that they owned about a third of Spain at the time of their exile, is doubtless an exaggeration, but there can be no question of their being extensive holders of land-properties. This largely explains why the Jew in Spain has not sunk in public estimation as much as he did in other countries, why his fate was different, and, in the end, worse than that of his more humiliated and degraded brother elsewhere. When the German or French Jew was forced out of commerce he could only become a money-lender at the usurious rates prevailing in those times. This vocation drew on him the contempt and hatred of all classes, as was always the case and as is the case in many places even to-day. But while the usurer was despised he was very useful, often even indispensable, especially in those times when there was a great scarcity of the precious metals and of convertible capital. This may explain why the exiled Jews were in other countries usually called back to the places from which they were exiled. The prejudice of the age may render their work disreputable, but it was none the less necessary; they were missed as soon as they left, and on many occasions negotiations for their return were begun as soon as the popular fury cooled down, or when the object of spoliation was attained.