In a note to his chapter on the Industrial History of Rationalism, Mr. Lecky charges St. Thomas with what is nothing less than moral obliquity. The Duchess of Brabant, he says, had a scruple of conscience about tolerating the Jews. She therefore consulted St. Thomas; "who replied, among other things that the Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude, and that all their property being derived from usury might lawfully be taken from them." Mr. Lecky is inaccurate both as to the confiscation of their property and as to the perpetual servitude. St. Thomas does not say that all their property was derived from usury, and it would, indeed, have been rather a rash judgment in him to say so. But the Duchess of Brabant had apparently desired to impose new burdens on the Jews, and in writing to St. Thomas had stated that all their property seemed to be derived from usury; to which he replied, that _if this were so_, they might lawfully be compelled to make restitution. Nor does this by any means imply that all their property was to be taken away from them, as appears from St. Thomas's letter among his opuscula, [Footnote 25] and from his general doctrine respecting restitution. [Footnote 26] With respect to the perpetual servitude what St. Thomas does say is this: "_Although according to the laws_ the Jews be, or were, through their own fault doomed to perpetual servitude, and thus princes could appropriate their possessions as their own, yet this is to be understood leniently, so that the necessaries of life be by no means taken from them. _But since we ought, as the apostle declares, to walk honestly in the sight of those who are without, of Jews and Gentiles, and the Church of God, as the laws declare, compulsory service is not to be required of them, which they were not wont to perform in time past._" He goes on to say that if ill-gotten goods were taken from the Jews, it would be unlawful for her to retain them, but they would have to be restored to those from whom they had been unjustly taken; and even under these conditions he declines to sanction any proceeding against them, but only "si nihil aliud obsistat." Mr. Lecky also quotes, he says, the Histriones of St. Thomas. What the Histriones of St. Thomas are, we have not, we confess, the most remote idea. [Footnote 25: Opusc. xxii, in calce Opusculi de Regimine Principum.] [Footnote 26: Summa, 2, 2, q. 61-62, etc.]