But the Messiah did not come; and twenty-four years later, under William and Mary, an attempt was made to fleece the unpopular race in London. It was proposed in the Commons that £100,000 should be exacted from the Jews; and the proposition impressed the House as tempting. But the Jews presented a petition pleading their inability to comply and declaring that they would rather leave the kingdom than submit to such treatment. Their protest was seconded by statesmen who, be their personal feelings towards the Jews what they might, objected to the measure as contrary to the spirit of the British Constitution; and after some discussion the project was abandoned, though not the prejudice which had made such a proposal possible. Sober Protestantism did not in the least share the Puritan preference for Hebrew ideals. If the _Spectator_ may be taken as a mirror of public opinion on the subject, in the reign of Queen Anne, English Protestants objected to “the Multiplicity of Ceremonies in the Jewish Religion, as Washings, Dresses, Meats, Purgations, and the like.” Addison states that the reason for these minute observances, adduced by the Jews, was their anxiety to create as many occasions as possible of showing their love to God, by doing in all circumstances of life something to please Him. However, this explanation does not seem convincing to the critic, who goes on to remark that Roman Catholic apologists use similar arguments in defence of their own rites, and concludes, “But, notwithstanding the plausible Reason with which both the Jew and the Roman Catholick would excuse their respective Superstitions, it is certain there is something in them very pernicious to Mankind, and destructive to Religion.”[134] Accordingly, a statute of Queen Anne encouraged conversion to Christianity by compelling Jewish parents to support their apostate children. Addison, elsewhere, recognises the advantages, commercial and other, which the world owes to the Jews’ dispersion through the nations of the earth; but he quaintly observes: “They are like the Pegs and Nails in a great Building, which, though they are but little valued in themselves, are absolutely necessary to keep the whole Frame together.”[135] He is impressed by the multitude of the Jews, despite the decimations and persecutions to which they had been exposed for so many centuries, no less than by their world-wide dissemination and firm adherence to their religion; and he endeavours to explain these remarkable phenomena by several reflections which deserve to be quoted, not only on account of the intrinsic sound sense of some of them, but also for the sake of the picture which they present of the Jewish nation in the early days of the eighteenth century, as it appeared to a highly cultured Gentile, and of the highly cultured Gentile’s attitude towards the nation: