=3. Converts.=――In all communities there are individuals who, besides an aptitude for coming to the front, have a very strong liking for that position. They like their voices to be loudly heard, their talents to be widely seen, their wealth to bring them its full social benefit and recognition. For Jews with such tendencies, the conditions of Jewish life for near upon fifteen hundred years had been hard, and the temptation to throw off the cruel, crippling restraints, and to let their light shine out before men, was strong. Some found the temptation impossible to resist, and through the gate of baptism such men and women passed, to gain the open vantage-ground for which they longed. There were many so-called converts to Christianity among the Jews of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Perjurers for position would be perhaps a more accurate if a harsher phrase by which to describe them, for there was very little of religious motive, or even of pretence of it, about these ‘conversions.’ Those who deserted Judaism did so from their keen desire of a career of social and political equality with their Christian countrymen. To this end they took the easiest and quickest road. They would not patiently work, and wait to be emancipated; it was so much simpler to walk into church and be married, or ‘converted.’ And so they left their posts, these deserters, but Judaism survived their loss, and perhaps was all the stronger and purer for the definite defection of such weak and selfish adherents. It is curious to note how insincere were these ‘converts.’ Sampson Abudiente, who in 1754 changed his name and his religion, may serve as a typical instance. Sampson Abudiente was a very rich man, and his special temptation was to possess a landed estate, which, as a Jew, was in those days impossible. By a special Act of Parliament, obtained through the influence of Sir Robert Walpole, Sampson Gideon, late Abudiente, gained his desire, and to ensure this estate passing to his children, he brought them all up as Christians. His son, under the title of Lord Eardley, subsequently became a member of the Irish peerage. Sampson Gideon lived in great state at Belvedere House, Erith, entertained ‘nobility and gentry,’ cut all connection with his people, and died in 1763, to all outward seeming, a good Christian _parvenu_. Then came the reading of the will. In it 1,000l. was left to the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, on the condition, and with the earnest request, that the testator might be buried in the בֵּית חַיִּים at Mile End, and that his name might be included in the loving mention of our dead which is made in Jewish synagogues on the Day of Atonement and other holy days. It was further found that ever since his conversion, Sampson Gideon had anonymously kept up all his payments as a member of the congregation, and thus there was no ground for refusing the dead man’s request.