After the fall of Napoleon, when Germany was reconstructed professedly as nearly as possible on its ancient basis, one article of the Federal Act of the Germanic States, promulgated in June, 1815, secured to the Jews the possession of equal rights of citizenship throughout Germany, conditionally only on their compliance with the laws of the State in which they resided. But it is always easier to frame a law than to ensure its observance, and this was especially the case in Germany, which consisted of a great number of federal States, in which there was a great difference of opinion on many subjects, and especially as regarded the status of the Jews. The principle of Jewish equality, social and political, with the Christian inhabitants of every country, did make its way, but very slowly, and several generations passed before it came to be fully acknowledged. Nor was it only the _vis inertiæ_, so to speak, of public opinion that had to be overcome. In some countries, at all events, there was a positive reaction against the favour which had been shown by Diets and Governments to the Jews. Even as early as 1815, Frankfort, Lubeck, and Bremen made several enactments, revoking the civil privileges which had been granted to the Jews. Commercial jealousy does not seem to have been the main, or at all events the sole, occasion of this change of policy. The Jews were attacked by men of learning and ability, whom we might have expected to be superior to the prejudices they displayed. The faults of their national character were alleged against them—their exclusiveness, their inveterate obstinacy, their greed of gain, and especially the bigotry of their religious belief. This was no doubt offensive to the rationalizing school, which was rising into eminence. Some of the German professors insisted on their being regarded as always and everywhere aliens, who could not be made to amalgamate with any other nation—who might exist in great numbers _in_ any land, but would never be of it. The effect of this agitation was, for the time, at all events, to throw back the question of Jewish emancipation. They were excluded from holding magisterial offices, professorships in the Universities, commissions in the army. In some States the question of their expatriation was mooted; it was even carried out at Lubeck, so far as the city itself was concerned. In other places something of the old mediæval outrages were renewed. At Hamburg and other towns the houses of the Jews were pillaged and demolished. It is even said that in some places the old cry of the monk Rodolph, ‘Hep, Hep,’ was again heard.