Again, there was to be advanced for this Liberal attitude of the
nineteenth century the very powerful argument that while to one party in
the issue, the Englishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, etc., it seemed
well enough and certainly did no harm, it was highly acceptable to the
other. The Jew as a rule not only accepted but welcomed this particular
way of dealing with what _he_ at any rate has always known to be a very
grave problem indeed. For the Jew has a racial memory beyond all other
men. The arrangement seemed to give him all the security of which his
racial history (a thing of which every Jew is acutely conscious) had
made him ardently desirous. I think we should add (though the phrase
would be quarrelled with by many modern people) that this fiction
satisfied the Jew's sense of _justice_. For it is no small part of the
problem we are examining that the Jew does really feel such special
treatment to be his due. Without it he feels handicapped. He is, in his
own view, only saved from the disadvantage of a latent hostility when he
is thus protected, and he is therefore convinced that the world owes him
this singular privilege of full citizenship in any community where he
happens for the moment to be, while at the same time retaining full
citizenship in his own nation.
Now, if in any conflict an arrangement seems workable enough to one
party and is actually acclaimed by the other, it is not lightly to be
disregarded.
If, for instance, a man and his tenant quarrel about the tenure of a
field upon a very long lease, the tenant caring little about nominal
ownership but very much about his inviolable tenure, the landlord quite
agreeable to a very long lease but keen on retaining the titular
ownership, that quarrel can be easily settled. One could give any name
to the tenant's position other than the name of "owner," yet satisfy all
his practical demands. A rough parallel exists between such a position
and the attempt at a settlement which marked the nineteenth century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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