“With every deference due to Dr. Jost, and the research displayed in his History of the Jews, we are bound in this instance to support Mr. Moses Samuels’ opinion, that we had great men living in England eight hundred years ago. Although the Rev. Mr. Margoliouth might have read _through the Talmud again carefully_ (no easy task!) he must have overlooked the passage in Josephoth [Tosephoth I suppose] (not having a Talmud at hand, we must defer the quotation of ‘chapter and verse’ to our next number), where the חכמי נרוויש (wise men of Norwich) are mentioned. Mr. Samuels’ opinion is also supported by the authority (no small one, even if compared with Dr. Jost and the Rev. Mr. Margoliouth) of the שלשלת הקבלה (Chain of tradition), which places ׳ר מאיר מאינגלטירה (Rabbi Meyer of England) in the same category with Jarchi, Rabenu――Tam, and Maimonides; vide שלשלת הקבלה fol. 41, p. 2.――Amsterdam Edition, 8vo.” That the Jews had learned men in this country, I know full well, and the editor of the “Jewish Chronicle” might have known this by my quotation from Ben Virga. It is the especial mention of the wise men of Norwich and of York, that I am anxious to know about. Nearly two months have passed away, and the promised “quotation of chapter and verse” has not been given yet.¹ To return, however, to the immediate subject. ¹ It is now about a year since he made this promise, I venture therefore respectfully to ask him once more for a fulfilment of the same. Thus was this unfortunate race, after nearly two centuries of almost continual persecution, driven from the country and robbed of their possessions. In the circumstances that attended this last act of violence, we see displayed a continuance of the same oppression and cruelty which the treatment they had experienced, both from the monarch and the people, had ever evinced. If, as was pretended, their banishment was sought as a relief from the grievances which their usurious dealings inflicted upon the nation, we cannot find, in this circumstance, any necessity for their expulsion, or any justification for the rapacity, that caused their estates to be confiscated to the crown, or, for the malice that dictated the cruelties to which, on that occasion, they were exposed, from the populace. The sums which were advanced to the king by the commons and by the clergy, as the price of their expulsion, were more than made up to them by the robbery they practised upon the unfortunate exiles before their leaving the shores of this country. And the desire that the nation seems to have entertained for their removal may, without error, be traced principally to _this_ source.