WHEN I had the honour of addressing you from this platform on Tuesday evening last, I endeavoured to establish, by circumstantial evidence, the probability that the Jews visited this country at a very early period of their history. I flatter myself, however, that I have succeeded in demonstrating that some Jews were certainly in this island in the very first century of the Christian era. How few, or how many, is doubtful. It is not too much, however, to expect that some of your minds, at least, have been exercised on this important inquiry since we last met together. It is not at all unlikely that some objections against my arguments suggested themselves to your minds――objections which may at first sight seem both plausible and natural. For instance, I know that a question suggests itself on taking my view of the early introduction of the Jews into this country――why did not Julius Cæsar make any mention of them in his history of Britain? I meet it by another question. Did Cæsar omit nothing else? Read his writings and compare them with the works of later historians, and then tell me whether his silence on the existence of the Jews in this country furnishes any argument against their having really been here. If indeed he omitted nothing else but the Jews, there would then be some force in the argument, but since we know that Cæsar’s history of Britain affords us but a bird’s-eye view of the state of the country in his time, what then is the value of such an argument? Again, supposing that Cæsar wrote a minute and detailed description of Britain, would there have been any necessity on his part to mention the existence of the Jews? Certainly not; he wrote for the benefit of his countrymen, to give them some information respecting the Britons. The Romans knew who the Jews were; it would have been a waste of time on Cæsar’s part to have given them information on a subject they were already acquainted with. He might as well have described the Roman army; especially since it is supposed that many Jews accompanied him as soldiers to Britain. Another argument has been advanced against their establishment in this country at so early a period, which was――“It is not probable that a total silence respecting them would have prevailed among the British writers of those days, had any portion of them been then established in Britain.” I mention those objections because they are the strongest which have been produced, and you will find them in the eighth volume of the “English Archæologia,” page 390.