Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/718

684 J E W S Lorraine, the part of France in which the most numerous Jewish population existed. The Jewish inhabitants of the Paris circon- sciiption were in 1808 only 3585 in number, about a tenth of their number in 1 880. Two Jewish newspapers are published in the French language at Paris, and one at Avignon. The Jewish population of Algeria in 1880 was (according to the Annuairc Israelite) 72,800, of whom 52,000 were in the consistorial circonscription of Oran. These figures show a large increase in the population in recent years. M. Cremieux by a stroke of the pen obliged the Israelites in Algiers to become French citizens, a step that had previously involved certain formalities which their conservative feeling resisted. The measure, however, led to an outbreak of the Arabs. In Versailles exertions were made to cancel it, and its operation was suspended, but finally the decree was sustained, and the Jews, who form the class among the native population most fitted for civilization, retain the franchise. England. The Jews were readmitted into England by Cromwell on the application of Manasseh ben Israel ; and the Spanish and Portuguese Jews from Amsterdam took a lease of ground for a burying-place at Stepney in February 1657. The first recorded interment was in 1G58. The city of London, which was afterwards to aid so powerfully in the emancipation of the Jews, petitioned the council in the first years of the restoration to remove the competing Jewish merchants, but, this and other petitions being unsuccessful, a synagogue was built and the copyhold of the cemetery was acquired, although up to fifty years ago doubt was sometimes expressed whether Israelites even if born in the country could hold land in England. The right of Jewish charities to hold land was clearly established by an Act passed in 1846. The Jews were too few in number to be visited with special disabilities, but suffered from the general operation of the Tests Acts, which excluded them from political, civil, and municipal offices, from the bar, &c., and could be invoked to prevent them from voting at parliamentary elections. Jacob Abendana and David Nieto are rabbinical writers who flourished in England in the 17th and early in the 18th centuries. In 1725 Sarmento, a mathematician, was (like Gompertz and others after him) made a Fellow of the Royal Society. Emanuel Mendes da Costa was secretary and librarian of the society a few years later (died 1769). Sir Solomon Medina financed the com missariat in the duke of Marlborough s campaigns. But the Sephardic immigration is best known by the converts to Christianity whom it supplied, as Isaac Disraeli, and his son Lord Beaconsfield (who was baptized at the age of twelve), David Ricardo, the Lopes family, and others. Conversion to Christianity was encouraged by a statute of Anne (repealed in 1846), which compelled Jewish parents to make an allowance to their children who embraced the dominant faith. German Jews began to immigrate in large numbers after the accession of the house of Hanover. English statesmen soon perceived what important contribu tions the business ability of the Jews was capable of render ing to the wealth of the country in which they settled, but the enlightened appreciation of the governing class was long in making its way among the electors. In 1753 Mr Pelham passed his Jewish Naturalization Act, which was repealed the next year owing to popular clamour, " No more Jews, no wooden shoes," becoming as influential a refrain as Lilliburlero. This premature emancipation supplied an argument which afterwards assisted to retard the political liberation of the Jews. The Jews were excepted from the benefit of the Irish Naturalization Act in 1783; the excep tion was abolished in 1846 ; in that year also the obsolete statute De Judaismo, which prescribed a special dress for Jews, &c., was formally repealed. It had been disregarded ever since the return of the Jews under Cromwell. The Reform Act of 1832 gave the right of voting for members of parliament in all constituencies to Jews who possessed the property or other qualification required. Mr Robert Grant, M.P. for Inverness, in 1830 proposed to admit Jewish mem bers to the House of Commons, Mr Huskisson having pre viously presented a petition asking for this concession. The bill was carried on the first reading by eighteen votes, but lost on the second by sixty-three. The Board of Deputies had been appointed in 1760 to watch over the interests of the " Portuguese nation " as the Sephardic Jews called themselves in England and France ; it was shortly after wards joined by delegates of the German congregation, and now represents the orthodox congregations in the principal towns of the United Kingdom. Through this board the House of Commons was frequently petitioned in the next thirty years to grant political equality to the Jews, and the claim was supported by eminent statesmen, notably by Macaulay and by Lord Russell, the latter of whom brought in an annual bill on the subject. Baron Lionel de Rothschild was elected five times by the city of Lon don before he was allowed to vote, and was eleven years a member of the House of Commons without taking the oath. Alderman Salomons was returned for Greenwich in 1851, and took his seat, spoke, and voted, having in repeating the oath omitted the words " on the true faith of a Christian." He was fined 500 by the court of ex chequer, and was obliged to retire from parliament. The enabling bills had been passed year after year in the House of Common*!, but as often rejected by the Lords, until in 1858 a compromise was effected, and Jews were permitted by the joint operation of an Act of Parliament and a resolution of the House of Commons to omit on taking the oath required of a member of the Lower House the words to which they conscientiously objected. In 1866 and 1868 Acts were passed which prescribed an oath in a form unobjectionable to Jews to be used in the Houses of Lords and Commons alike, but no Jew by religion has yet been raised to the peerage. Remarkable legislative provisions in favour of the Jews are the exceptions by which they have enjoyed since 1870 under the Factories Acts the right to labour on Sunday in certain factories if they rest on their own Sabbath. Till 1828 only twelve Jewish brokers were permitted to carry on business in the city of London, and the patent was purchased for large sums when vacancies occurred. No Jew could open a shop in the city till 1832, because that permission was only accorded to freemen. Even baptized Jews were not admitted to the freedom of the city between 1785 and 1828. The first Jewish sheriff of London, Sir D. Salomons, was unable to take the oaths till a special Act was passed by Lord Campbell in 1835, and, although he was followed two years later by another Jewish sheriff, Sir Moses Montefiore, it was not until ten years after his election as alderman that Lord Lyndhurst s Act (1845) enabled him to perform the duties of that office. Among the names of Jews in England distinguished in science and literature are the mathematician Sylvester, the Sanskrit scholar Goldstiicker, and the Orientalists Zedner and Deutsch. The first Jewish barrister (Sir F. Goldsmid) was called to the bar in 1833. The Jews Free School in London is probably the largest and most efficient elementary school in England. Two Jewish newspapers are published in London. The Jewish community in England maintains many charitable and other public institutions. The most important are the boards of guardians in London and Manchester, which are chiefly occupied in the relief of penniless emigrants from Russian Poland. Dr Benisch, the late editor of the Jewish Chronicle, founded in 1871 the Anglo-Jewish association to co-operate with the Alliance Israelite of Paris, which has been already described. The association has nearly 3000 members, chiefly in England and the Colonies, but also at Alexandria and Tangiers. The Jews college in London and the Aria college at Poftsea are designed for the training of ministers and teachers. Three societies for the promotion of Hebrew literature have been formed. The only one which still exists is the Society of Hebrew Literature, to which Christian scholars have contributed equally with the Jewish students of the same subject. The principal religious movement has been the formation of the West London congregation of British Jews, a body of dissent ers, who have simplified the ritual, only keep one day of the festivals, and do not acknowledge the spiritual ascendency of the chief rabbi.