If Judaism, therefore, should ever attain the supreme power, the working and unlearned classes will be placed in the power and at the mercy of the learned, and every disciple of a wise man will wield the absolute power of an autocrat. But some one may say, that if the disciple of a wise man should excommunicate any one hastily that the people would not regard his excommunication. But if they did not, they would do it at their peril, for the oral law expressly declares that they are bound to observe the excommunication not only of a rabbi, but of one of his disciples:— הרב שנידה לכבודו כל תלמידיו חייבין לנהוג בו נדוי במנודה אבל תלמיד שנידה לכבוד עצמו אין הרב חייב לנהוג בו נדוי אבל כל העם חייבין לנהוג בו נדוי ׃ “When a rabbi excommunicates on account of his honour, all his disciples are bound to treat the excommunicate person as such. But when a disciple excommunicates on account of his own honour, the rabbi is not bound to treat that person as excommunicate, but all the people are bound.” (Ibid. c. vi. 13.) Nothing can more clearly prove the injustice of such excommunication. If the rabbi be not bound to regard the disciples’ excommunication, why should all the people be bound? If the offence committed against the disciple be a sin before God, and such it ought to be to require such severe punishment, the excommunication ought to be as binding upon the rabbi as upon the people. But if it be not binding upon the rabbi, then the offence for which it was inflicted cannot be a sin in the sight of God, it is therefore an arbitrary and unjust punishment, and it is both wicked and cruel to require the people to obey it. But the principle itself is monstrous, that the disciple of a rabbi should be constituted both judge and jury in his own case, and have the power of lording it over those, whose circumstances do not permit them to devote their time to study, and who, therefore, cannot be enrolled in the privileged class. Just suppose that the clergy of this land, or the professors and students at our Universities, were to claim such power, and to excommunicate and anathematize all who treated them with disrespect, and that without any trial or conviction before a legal tribunal, and that the unfortunate victims were to be separated from society, ruined, and then their dead bodies treated with dishonour, would not this be regarded as a monstrous and insupportable tyranny? Yet this is what the oral law claims for the rabbies and their disciples, and what they would possess and exercise if Judaism ever attains to supreme power. Would the Jews wish such a power established? Do they desire to live under such a government? If they do not, if they prefer the personal liberty and the even-handed justice secured to them by Christian laws, then they confess that the Christian principles are better than those of their own religion, and they must be charged with inconsistency in professing and asserting the truth of a religion, which they hope may never triumph.