The prosperity of those who remained in Curaçao went on increasing in the eighteenth century. A benevolent society was established in 1715; five years later they responded liberally to an appeal for aid from the Congregation Shearith Israel of New York, and in 1756 met with an equal generosity a similar appeal from the Jews of Newport. By 1750 their numbers had increased to about two thousand. They were prosperous merchants and traders, and held positions of prominence in the commercial and political affairs of the island. By the end of the century they owned a considerable part of the property in the district of Willemsted; and as many as fifty-three vessels are said to have left in one day for Holland, laden with goods which for the most part belonged to Jewish merchants. A new congregation, which called itself “Neweh Shalom” and occupied a tract across the harbor from Willemsted, was organized about 1740, and its Synagogue in the “Otrabanda” was consecrated on Ellul 12, 5505 (1745). It was established chiefly in order to save those who lived there from crossing the water on the Sabbath to attend divine services, and for a time it was regarded as merely a branch of the older congregation and as under its direction. This led to a series of disputes which culminated, in 1749, in an open breach. It was settled by the intervention of Prince William Charles of Orange-Nassau, in a decree dated April 30, 1750, in which the original jurisdiction of the older congregation, subject to the regulations of the Portuguese community of Amsterdam, was sustained. The arrangement lasted for the following one hundred and twenty years, when the younger congregation became independent (1870). The increase in numbers and material well-being continued during the nineteenth century, but the community was not without internal dissensions. It was due to one of these controversies between the Parnassim and the ministers that a society called the “Porvenir” was founded in 1862. In the following year it developed into a Reform Congregation under the name “Emanuel,” whose new Synagogue, in the quarter “Scharlo,” was dedicated in 1866. About three years before a moderate change in the direction of reform was introduced into the liturgy of the oldest congregation. The congregations of Curaçao now have more than one thousand members, nearly four-fifths of it belonging to Mickweh Israel. The Jews are among the leading citizens of the island, in business, as well as in the professions; they occupy executive and judicial positions, and are well represented among the officers of the militia. Almost all of them, like in Holland itself, are true to their religion, and there are probably less apostasies and intermarriages than in any other free community in which the emancipation of the Jews has been fully carried out in theory as well as in practice. * * * * *