=1. Manasseh presents his Petition.=――In October 1655, Manasseh ben Israel, with his only son Samuel, and two or three eminent Amsterdam Jews who had accompanied them, were safely arrived in London and settled in lodgings in the Strand. The first thing that was done was to personally present an address to the Protector, and a declaration to the Commonwealth, setting forth the objects of the Jewish visit to England, was published at the same time. Both these documents are very remarkable. Although humble petitions from an outcast people, who had been ignominiously thrust forth into exile 365 years before, Manasseh’s appeals have not the smallest trace of reproach nor of servility, into either of which mistakes it would have been so easy to fall. The Jewish case is stated with dignity, and on its merits, it is pleaded without passion, and on the grounds of justice rather than of favour. The ‘clemency’ and ‘high-mindedness’ of Cromwell are certainly taken for granted, but equally is assumed the worthiness of the clients who appeal. Manasseh, with a certain shrewdness, makes a point of the ‘profit’ which the Jews are likely to prove to their hosts. ‘Where the Jewes are once kindly receaved,’ he urges, ‘they make a firm resolution never to depart from thence, seeing they have no proper place of their own; and so they are always with their goods in the cities where they live a perpetual benefit to all payments.’[49] ‘Profit,’ proceeds Manasseh, ‘is a most powerful motive,’ and, therefore, he ‘deals with that point first.’ He dwells on the ‘ability’ and ‘industry and naturall instinct of the Jews for merchandizing,’ and on the fact that ‘wheresoever they go to dwell, there presently the traficq begins to flourish.’ And then, urging his claim on higher grounds, Manasseh dwells on the loyalty of the Jews, which he shows is a religious duty with the race, and cannot fail to make of them law-abiding, and law-defending, citizens of their adopted states. He shows from history that Jeremiah’s injunction to ‘pray for the peace’ and to ‘seek the peace’ of the cities to which they are ‘led captive,’ has been literally, and over and over again, fulfilled by Jews. In a few well-chosen and dignified words he refers to the slanderous and superstitious statements of which Jews have been the subject. He disposes with brief and distinct denial of the simply silly accusations, such as the killing of Christian children for the manufacture of passover cakes, only with quiet emphasis recalling that in the early days, when the Church was struggling against paganism, ‘the self-same ancient scandalls were cast upon innocent Christians.’ The more serious, because less entirely untrue, charges of ‘usury,’ which have been brought against Jews, Manasseh meets as boldly. Whenever, wherever, the practice exists, he frankly denounces it as ‘infamous.’ But he will not admit that ‘usury’ is in any sense a _Jewish_ principle, nor in any but a cruelly acquired one a _Jewish_ practice.