It is curious to note that the Jewish Board of Deputies in England did not move during the Congress. The reason is perhaps not difficult to understand. They were always timid in regard to high politics, and, in 1783, when it was proposed to address the King on the American Peace, they actually passed a resolution declaring that it was their duty to avoid such "political concerns."[16] In the case of the Congress of Vienna, however, they may well have felt that they could not touch the question of religious liberty, and especially of Jewish emancipation, without risking an imputation of Jacobinism. Moreover, the British Cabinet then in power was a Coalition Cabinet of pro-Catholics and anti-Catholics, and they could not well listen to any proposals that they should champion Jewish emancipation in Vienna, while in Downing Street the question of Roman Catholic emancipation could not even be discussed. Fortunately, these considerations did not apply to the German Jews. Frankfurt and the Hansa towns sent deputations to Vienna to plead the cause of Jewish emancipation. The Frankfurt deputation was headed by Jacob Baruch, father of Ludwig Boerne. They managed to secure the support of both Hardenberg and Metternich, and when it was found that the Tsar was not averse from some concession to the Jews, they agreed to propose the insertion of a clause--or rather half a clause--in the Final Act of the Conference providing for the gradual extension of civil rights to the Jews of Germany. Unfortunately for a long time this concession remained a dead letter, owing not only to the ill-will of the German Governments themselves, but to an apparently harmless verbal amendment which was introduced into the clause by the Redaction Committee at the last moment. In the final _alinea_ it was stipulated that "the rights already conferred on the Jews in the several Federated States shall be maintained." The object of this was to secure to the Jews of Germany the liberties granted to them by Napoleon during the French occupation. This design was frustrated by the Redaction Committee, at whose instance the word "_by_" was substituted for "_in_," the result being that the rights secured to the Jews were not those of the French occupation, but only those which had been grudgingly, and in very small measure, granted to them by the Federated States themselves in the dark days before the Napoleonic irruption.