of a Christian' were originally introduced into the Oath for the immediate purpose of binding certain Roman Catholics, it is unreasonable to assume that the Parliament which so introduced them did not intend that the profession of Christianity should be a necessary qualification for admission to the Legislature, when they enacted that a Declaration of that faith should form part of the Oath required to be taken by every member of both Houses. 2nd. Because the constant intention of the Legislature may be further inferred from the fact that neither at the time of the introduction of these words were the Jews admissible nor have they at any subsequent period been admitted to sit and vote in either House of Parliament. 66 "3rd. Because exclusion from seats in Parliament and offices of the State on the ground of religious opinion and for other reasons where the general good of the State appears to require it, is a principle recognized in the settlement of the succession to the Crown and in other cases; and has, moreover, been further and recently sanctioned by the House of Commons in some of the provisions of the present Bill. "4th. Because, without imputing any disloyalty or disaffection to Her Majesty's subjects of the Jewish persuasion, the Lords consider that the denial and rejection of that Saviour, in whose name each House of Parliament daily offers up its collective prayers for the divine blessing on its councils, constitutes a moral unfitness to take part in the legislation of a professedly Christian community. "5th. Because, when the Commons plead in support of their views, in a matter which equally concerns the constitution of both branches of the Legislature, their repeated recognition of the expediency of removing this disability of the Jews, and admitting them to their councils, the Lords desire to refer to their equally firm adherence to the principle of retaining those privileges which they believe to be peculiarly and inseparably The House of Com mons and the compromise. 296 THE JEWS AND THE ENGLISH LAW attached to Parliament as an exclusively Christian The next day the Jewish Relief Bill was read for the first time in the House of Commons, and Lord John Russell made a motion for the adjournment of the House in order to explain the course he proposed to adopt. He would move the second reading of the new Bill, and ask the Government for facilities for carrying it through its remaining steps before the end of the session. If this were done the House might concur in the Lords' amendments to the Oaths Bill without proceeding to discuss their reasons. He would, of course, have preferred that the Lords should have said that the object in view, namely, the admission of Jews to sit and vote in that House, would have been better provided for in a separate Bill, instead of giving reasons why no Bill of the kind should pass at all. He was, however, assured that the course taken was not intended as an insult to the House of Commons, and the compromise, by which the Lords merely retained the right to exclude a Jew, if created a peer, from their own House, he was willing to accept as the best practical solution of the question, hoping, as he did, that in course of time Jews would be admitted into the other House also. Mr. Disraeli, as leader of the House of Commons, at once consented to grant the facilities asked for, and the motion was by leave withdrawn 2. The Bill was rapidly passed through the House of Commons; its rejection was moved on the second reading by Mr. Newdegate, who could only muster 65 supporters against 156 opponents of his motion. It went through committee and was reported without amendment. Yet on the motion for the third reading the opposition was again renewed. It was led by Mr. Warren, who declared that the settlement was one in which nothing was settled and that from the moment that the Bill became law would 1 Hansard, vol. 151, pp. 156, 262, 1243-57. 2 Ibid., pp. 1369, 1371–80. date the decline of the moral and religious influence of the House of Commons. On the division being taken, 129 voted for, and 55 against the third reading. The same evening the House took into consideration the Lords' Amendments to the Oaths Bill and the reasons given for insisting upon them, and passed the following resolutions: (1) "That this House does not consider it necessary to examine the reasons offered by the Lords for insisting upon the exclusion of Jews from Parliament, as by a Bill of the present session intituled 'An Act to provide for the relief of Her Majesty's subjects professing the Jewish religion,' their lordships have provided means for the admission of persons professing the Jewish religion to seats in the Legislature." (2) "That this House doth not insist upon its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments to the said Bill." Two days afterwards, on July 23, 1858, the Royal Assent was given to both the Jewish Relief Bill and the Oaths Bill1. Rothschild The following Monday Baron Lionel de Rothschild again Baron de appeared at the table of the House, and was allowed to takes his take the new oath with the omission of the final words, seat in the House. a resolution to that effect having been first proposed by Lord John Russell, and carried by a majority of thirty-two. He was thus at length permitted to take his seat in the House of which he had been a member for eleven years, in the course of which he had been returned as the representative of the city of London no less than five times, at three general and two bye-elections 2. character mise." The controversy which had divided the two Houses The real for ten years was thus settled in a way peculiarly of the consonant to the trend of English constitutional history. "comproThe settlement seems to be destitute of principle and innocent of logic, but it was sufficient to meet the difficulty which had actually arisen; its form, moreover, 1 Hansard, vol. 151, pp. 1614-36, 1754-62, 1863-5, 1879-1906, 1967. 'Ibid., pp. 2105-15. The hastened by the fall of the Liberal Govern ment. was so clumsy that it was in a short time found necessary to amend it. It was said to be a compromise, but it was in fact no compromise, for the whole point at issue was conceded. It is true that the Lords retained the right to prevent a Jewish peer from taking his seat in their House, but there was no intention at that time of making a Jew a peer, and before such a creation became a question of practical politics the Lords had voluntarily surrendered this very questionable privilege. On the other hand the House of Lords may have been thought to have saved its dignity and justified itself in the position it had taken up, for it had all along been maintained that the question did not concern the Lower House alone, and the Lords, while desiring to maintain the exclusively Christian character of the legislature, disclaimed any intention to interfere with the right of the other House to decide upon the validity of the returns and the admission of members elected to it. At any rate a collision between the two Houses or between the House of Commons and the Law Courts had been avoided, and in spite of the absurdity of the result achieved, when looked at from the merely formal point of view, religious liberty had in substance emerged triumphant. Yet The ultimate issue was probably hastened by the settlement advent to office of a Conservative Ministry, although the chief opponents of Jewish emancipation had always been found in the ranks of that party. the successive Tory leaders of the House of Commons, Sir Robert Peel, Lord George Bentinck, and Mr. Disraeli, had been staunch adherents of the cause of religious liberty. Had the Liberal party remained in power, there is no reason to doubt that the majority of the House of Lords would have continued to reject any Jewish Relief Bills sent up to them, so long as the ministry declined to make its acceptance a cabinet question; but when the Conservatives came into office they found it necessary to have the standing cause of difference between the two Houses removed, especially as it was only by the forbearance of their opponents that they could count on a majority in the House of Commons, and they were only carrying on the Government until it was convenient to hold a general election. It would have suited neither party to make the Jewish question a ground of appeal to the country. Both the friends and enemies of religious freedom professed their belief that the country was behind them, but neither were willing to stake their political existence upon such an issue. The fact was that, taking the country as a whole, complete apathy upon the subject reigned among the electors. Lord Palmerston was right therefore from the political point of view in not placing the matter in the forefront of his programme; and Lord John Russell himself, while he remained in the cabinet, had not succeeded in converting the whole of his followers to the cause. Indeed, the measure he brought forward in 1854 had actually been defeated in the House of Commons, and he himself was thought to have become so lukewarm that the next Bill (that of 1856) was entrusted by the Jewish partisans to Mr. Milner Gibson. The exclu the Jews. From the selfish point of view there can be little doubt that the Liberals did right in not making Jewish sion of the emancipation one of the issues of party conflict, and, more- from the subject over, its exclusion from the arena of party politics was of arena of party conno little advantage to the Jews themselves, for if they had flict a come to be regarded as the special favourites of one of the benefit to great political parties in the State, they would assuredly have been looked upon with dislike, if not with hostility, by the other. Experience has shown that it is to the leaders of political parties, more than to the rank and file of their followers or the electors as a body, that a small community like the Jews must look when it requires special treatment or protection. On the one occasion when a policy of justice to the Jews had been made the subject of an appeal to the people, viz. the Naturalization of Jews Act, 1753, the result had proved disastrous to the cause of |