statute are necessary; the first to guard the morals of the people; the second for the immediate protection of the government 1." In the year 1813, in favour of Unitarians, the Act, so far as it relates to persons denying any one of the Persons in the Holy Trinity to be God, was repealed2, and this concession was at the time regarded as a signal proof of the liberality and religious toleration of the age; but the remainder of the Act is still nominally in force. It might be made use of to prevent conversions from Christianity to Judaism, if these should ever take place upon a large scale, or any active missionary organization were established among the Jews for this purpose. For though the offence struck at by the statute can only be committed by persons who have been educated in or made profession of the Christian religion, still by the law of England all persons who instigate or aid and abet or are accessory to a misdemeanour committed by others are themselves guilty of a misdemeanour and punishable in the same way as those guilty of the principal crime; the law not recognizing any distinction in the punishment of crimes lower than felony. Hitherto there has been no occasion to attempt to use the statute in this way; should, however, one arise, the bitterness of religious controversy would probably prompt such an attempt, there being no other mode of repressing proselytism by the criminal law not foredoomed to failure.

The statute has a curious history for the Jews, though it may safely be affirmed that no Jew was ever prosecuted under it. It originated in a humble address presented by the Commons to His Majesty asking for the suppression of profaneness and immorality in all books which endeavour to undermine the fundamentals of the Christian religion and to punish the authors "," and that His Majesty should issue a Royal Proclamation to that effect. The address was drawn up by a committee of the House of Commons 53 Geo. III. c. 160, s. 2. 3 Cobbett's Parl. History, vol. V, p. 1172.

13 B. & Ald. p. 166.

2

appointed on February 9, and was presented to the King on the 17th. The King expressed his satisfaction at the receipt of this address, and immediately gave directions for the publication of the Proclamation asked for, and at the same time expressed a wish that more effectual provision should be made by the Legislature for suppressing the evils complained of. This Royal Proclamation or its successor, framed in a great measure upon the words of the parliamentary address presented to the King, is still publicly read in every county town throughout the country at the opening of every commission of assize and quarter sessions. The Bill for more effectual suppressing of blasphemy and profaneness, the substance of which has been already set forth, was also introduced in deference to the expression of the royal wishes contained in the King's answer. When the Bill reached the Lords, an amendment to omit the words "having been educated in or at any time having made profession of the Christian religion" was proposed and carried. The effect of this amendment would obviously be to render every Jew resident in the kingdom liable to the same pains and penalties provided by the enactment, including three years' imprisonment in the case of a second conviction. The House of Commons rejected the amendment, and appointed a committee to draw up reasons to be offered at a conference of the Lords for disagreeing with it1. Reasons were accordingly drawn up, read to the House, and agreed to; they are of sufficient interest to be given verbatim, and are as follows:—

"The Commons do conceive, That the First Amendment in the First Skin, Line 14, 15, made by your Lordships, will subject the Jews who live amongst us to all the Pains and Penalties contained in the Bill; which must therefore of necessity ruin them, and drive them out of the Kingdom; and cannot be thought was the intention of your Lordships, since here they have the means and opportunities to be informed of and rightly instructed in the principles of the 1 Commons' Journals, May 18, 1698.

true Christian Religion; for which Reasons the Commons disagree with your Lordships in the said Amendment 1." The Lords showed that the ruin and expulsion of the Jews was not intended, by allowing the Bill to pass without the obnoxious amendment.

The conduct of Parliament in preventing an injustice being done to the Jews then but recently settled in the kingdom should not pass unnoticed, especially as it could not in any way have been influenced, as Parliament is nowadays so often, by a desire to conciliate Jewish votes, for at the time there was probably no Jew entitled to exercise the Parliamentary franchise. The alleged motive of the Commons in protecting the Jews, strange as it may seem to us, is probably the true one. The gentlemen of the House of Commons perhaps really thought that the Jews, if they only had an opportunity of being instructed in the principles of the true Christian religion as enunciated by the Church of England, would be ultimately converted to Christianity, a result which would not ensue if they were driven by unjust laws to lands belonging to Christendom no doubt, but shrouded by the darkness of false Papal or Lutheran doctrine. At any rate, we can see that there was in those days, as in these, an intense desire to bring the Jews into the Christian fold. As no exception in their case was made, and the matter had been discussed, it was evidently intended that Jewish proselytes to Christianity, if they relapsed into Judaism, should be dealt with under the Act. Though such cases are constantly arising, there is no trace of any prosecution under the Act having ever taken place. It may be that the knowledge of the revelation of the methods employed by the conversionists which in such a case would inevitably be made has effectually deterred those imbued with the missionary spirit from undertaking such a prosecution; or it may be that it has never been thought worth while to exact the penalty which in the case of a first conviction is merely incapacity 1 Commons' Journals, May 21, 1698.

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to hold any office, ecclesiastical, civil, or military, a punishment which would be of little effect in almost every case of double apostasy, for the persons who publicly indulge in numerous changes of their religious profession have rarely any reasonable expectation of attaining any of the offices from holding which the Act debars them. In any cases the Act, though it still appears in the statute-book, has been allowed to become a dead letter.

The freedom accorded to the practice of the Jewish religion in this country has now been dealt with in outline. It has been shown how the Acts compelling outward conformity with the religion of the Established Church were not enforced against the Jews, and how, when a gross and malignant libel upon the rites of the Jewish religion likely and intended to lead to violence against its votaries was published, the courts of law were ready to inflict punishment upon its author. On the other hand, two Acts were placed upon the statute-book, one compelling Jews whose children might become converted to Protestantism to provide them with suitable maintenance; the other enabling a criminal prosecution to be brought against Jews who should obtain proselytes from Christianity. Of these statutes the first was repealed in 1846; the second has never been acted upon, though it still remains a part of the law of England. I will now turn to the legal position of endowments created for the purpose of furthering the Jewish religion. Such endowments are constituted by vesting the property which is the subject of them in a trustee or trustees in trust for or to the use of the institution intended to be benefited. But any trust which has for its object the propagation of religious views not tolerated by the law in force at the time will be held void by a court of justice as being contrary to the policy of the law. If a charitable purpose can be discovered in the document creating the trust, the court will apply the property to some other charitable purpose; and if no charitable intention appears, will vest it in the person who would have been entitled if

the trust had never been created. Thus before the year 1688, when the Toleration Act was passed, gifts in favour of the places of worship, ministers, and schools of Protestant Dissenters were invalid1. As to the effect of the Toleration Act, Lord Mansfield is reported to have said that Nonconformity is rendered by it "not only innocent but lawful," and that the protecting clauses of the statute "have put it not merely under the connivance but under the protection of the law-have established it. For nothing can be plainer than that the law protects nothing in that very respect in which it is at the same time in the eye of the law a crime. Dissenters by the Act of Toleration therefore are restored to a legal consideration and capacity 2."

It has already been shown that the provisions of the Toleration Act were confined to Protestant Nonconformists, and that the Jews received no benefit under it, and it was not until 1846 that Jewish religious endowments were made valid. Several cases came before the courts; for instance, in the year 1744 the case of Da Costa v. De Paz was tried. It is reported in Ambler at p. 228, and in 1 Dickens at p. 258; but as Lord Eldon, in giving his decision in Moggridge v. Thackwell, complained that these reports are not very accurate 3, the subjoined account is taken from a note extracted from Mr. Coxe's MSS. in Lincoln's Inn Library by Mr. Swanston. Elias de Paz, by his will dated November 4, 1839, directed his executors to invest a sum of £1200 in some government or other security, and directed that the revenue arising therefrom should be applied for ever in the maintenance of a Yesiba or assembly for daily reading the Jewish law, and for advancing and propagating their holy religion, and directed that his executors during their respective lives should have

1 Att.-Gen. v. Baxter, 1 Vern. 248, decided in Trinity Term, 1684, revised in 1689 after the Revolution, 2 Vern. 105.

23 Mer. p. 376 (note).

4 2 Swanston, p. 487 seq.

See 7 Ves. p. 76.