Produced by David Widger THE CHARACTER OF THE JEW BOOKS Being, A Defence of The Natural Innocence of Man, Against Kings and Priests or Tyrants and Impostors BY PHILANTHROPOS London: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET. 1821. Price Twopence. THE CHARACTER OF THE JEW BOOKS Justice is due to all men; it is a gem that sheds a brilliant radiance upon the tyrant and the slave, upon the rich and the poor; Justice is in the moral world what the sun is in the physical, one illuminates the intellectual, the other the terrestrial system. By the standard of justice measure the rulers of the earth; try their actions, calculate their characters, weigh their governments in the balance of justice; when analyzed by this test and found unalloyed, grant unmeasured praise; if deficient, if tyranny, villainy, bigotry and cruelty preponderate, condemn them, and consign them to the execration of all mankind. Notwithstanding the exertions of Philosophy, and the undaunted perseverance of _a few men_, barbarity, cupidity and bigotry, generally prevail; the numerous devotees, the thronged congregation of rogues, slaves, and fools at the shrine of avarice, too frequently paralyze the efforts of liberal men; mean, pitiful, despicable traffic, has introduced mercantile ideas, and consequently _this nation of hucksters estimates merit in money_. The rich assume to be privileged, and unceasingly condemn and revile the industrious poor, as being vicious, immeasurably criminal, and abandoned to every moral offence: regardless of themselves, their families, their society, and their souls; let us enquire if those charges are just, if the poor are degenerated, if they have abandoned themselves to contempt, to degradation, to confinement, and to death; _let us endeavour to ascertain if the laws of nature are changed, let its endeavour to ascertain if the precepts of reason are revoked, let us endeavour to ascertain if death is preferred to life_. The poor are the most numerous, the most industrious, and the most useful part of society; should this portion, this staple part, this lever of the nation be so deserving of contempt, of execration, and of condemnation, as some puny-minded, rickety-headed fools would have us believe, much might be feared for the continued indissolubility of the nation; such as have monopolized the labour of the poor, and enjoy the rank of the privileged rich, incessantly insist that severe laws, vindictive tortures, and daily sanguinary executions would insure tranquility endangered, preserve religion scoffed, suppress blasphemy encouraged, strengthen monarchies loathed, despised, scorned, hated and execrated. The passions of distrust, revenge, fear, hatred, malice and cruelty distract the rich, that thrive by treachery, hypocrisy, tyranny and rapacity; conscious of turpitude, stung by remorse, alarmed for the safety of ill-gotten gains, the robbers and impostors are afraid the