What do travellers answer when asked whether the soil of the Holy Land is waste and barren, unable to support even its sparse population? They will tell us that it is naturally rich and fertile, but has become unproductive by long neglect and abuse.[149] As it has been with the land of the Jews, so it has been with themselves. Their true national character is among the noblest—if it is not the very noblest—that the world has seen. Whatever great qualities humanity may possess, it is by men of this race that they have been exhibited in their highest development. If we ask from what nation has arisen the ablest legislator, the most far-seeing statesman, the wisest philosopher, the most chivalrous warrior, the greatest monarch, the most Heaven-inspired poet, we must answer, in every instance, From the nation of the Jews. Nor is it to individuals alone that this applies. What struggle for national independence was ever more gallant than that of the Maccabees? Which among all the countless nations, overthrown by the military genius of Rome, ever resisted so long, or with such fatal effect, her illimitable power, as the defenders of Jerusalem? But, no doubt, centuries of oppression had their effect in deteriorating the nobler, and developing the meaner, features of the Jewish character, until the Jews became at last almost—though not quite—what their persecutors believed them to be.[150] Shut out from every nobler pursuit, forbidden the career of the statesman, the soldier, the artist, the author, or the physician, except within the narrow bounds of their own despised race—they were driven to the one sordid trade of money-getting, and compelled even in that to practise the extremity of exaction and rigour, or else—subject as they were to continual lawless plunder—they could not have lived. If they were at any time disposed to show mercy, no one believed it to be anything but a subtle scheme for securing some worldly end. Treated systematically as the outcasts of humanity, what wonder if they often really became so? FOOTNOTES: [145] It is stated that the Jewish money-lenders demanded thirty-two and a-half per cent. on their loans, together with compound interest! [146] The Jews were actually driven out of Ravenna in 1484, in consequence of the agitation he stirred up against them. [147] Peter of Clugny wrote: ‘If the Saracens are justly to be detested, how much more are the Jews to be execrated and regarded with hate!’ Louis IX. charged them with being in league with evil spirits to injure and destroy men. It has been affirmed that Luther treated the Jews with lenity and toleration. But, if he ever really did evince this spirit towards them, it was only at the outset of his career. Later on he was stern and merciless in his tone towards them. ‘Burn their synagogues and schools,’ were his words; ‘break into and destroy their houses. Forbid their Rabbins, on pain of death, to teach,’ etc.