At the very time when the Jews of Poland were trodden down, slaughtered, or driven through Europe like terrified wild beasts, a land of freedom was opened, from which the Jews had been banished for more than three centuries and a half. England, which the wise queen Elizabeth and the brave Cromwell had raised to be the first power in Europe, a position very different from that of crumbling Poland, again admitted Jews, not indeed through the great portal, yet through the back door. But this admission was so bruited abroad, that it was like a triumph for Judaism. The Jews of Amsterdam and Hamburg looked with longing to this island, to which they were so near, with whose merchants, shipowners, and scholars they were in connection, and which promised wide scope for the exercise of their varied abilities. But settlement there seemed beset with insuperable obstacles. The English episcopal church, which exercised sway over the English conscience, was even more intolerant than the popery which it persecuted. Not granting freedom to Catholics and Dissenters, would it tolerate the descendants of those aspersed in the New Testament? The English people, who for centuries had seen no Jew, shared to the full the antipathy of the clergy. To them every Jew was a Shylock, who, with hearty goodwill, would cut a Christian to pieces--a monster in human form, bearing the mark of Cain. Who would undertake to banish this strong prejudice in order to render people and rulers favorable to the descendants of Israel?