F. H. Goldsmid and Archbishop Whately of Dublin: their significance in the emancipation debate

<plain_text><page sequence="1">F. H. Goldsmid and Archbishop Whately of Dublin: their significance in the emancipation debate TONY HAMMOND A number of factors come to light in what amounts to the final stage of Jewish emancipation in Britain, in the period 1829 to 1858, which bear on the underly? ing issues of Parliamentary reform and the relations between Church and State. While de facto emancipation for Jews had hitherto been typified by a pragmatic process of precedent (since, unlike the situation in Europe generally, Jewish disabilities were not enshrined in specifically anti-Jewish law), in the case of their admission to Parliament, Jews found their position implicated, especially by their opponents, in questions concerning the fundamental character of Britain as a Christian country with an established religion. In broad terms the admission to Parliament of dissenting Christians and particularly of Roman Catholics had had the two-fold effect of creating a precedent essentially favourable to Jewish admission, while at the same time creating another precedent, which was to single the Jews out for a special disability. In this area the debate focused on both broad and specific religious considerations: namely the Christian 'character' of the country, whereby its laws are seen as deriving from Christian values, and also the role of Parliament as a Christian legislature controlling the Church of England. On the other side of the debate, those in favour of reform as a broader, progressive issue, generally, though not exclusively, viewed the exclusion of Jews as inconsistent with the rights of the electorate as well as an inconsistency per se. Within this broad and often heterogeneous debate, an interesting alliance comes to light between Jewish interests and certain Church interests, articulated respectively by F. H. Goldsmid and Archbishop Richard Whately of Dublin. In their complementary positions, taken together, we find one of the more cogent strands in the argument in favour of Jewish emancipation. The significance of their arguments, however, lies perhaps less in their effect on the outcome of the parliamentary debates than in the light they shed on the pressure for institutional reforms, the principles underlying these reforms and some unexpected marriages of interest. Indeed, examination of Goldsmid's and Whately's ideas highlights the ques? tion of the extent to which the debate over Jewish relief in fact is concerned with issues in which Jews are less the subject than certain principles of power 153</page><page sequence="2">Tony Hammond and government, and more specifically, of the relationship between Church and State. That Goldsmid was conscious of straying, so to speak, into anti-Erastian politics is revealed both in some delicacy of language and in a reluctance to carry some of his arguments to their logical conclusions. Richard Whately effectively takes the baton from him and runs ahead. Let us first consider F. H. Goldsmid's Remarks on the Civil Disabilities of British Jews of 1830.1 There were two approaches to the campaign, as Israel Finestein remarks: 'by creating in his own career individual practical grievances and appealing on the grounds of their respective injustices [David Salomons] was able in the end to procure complete and immediate emancipation . . .', whereas the Goldsmids hoped for 'quick and comprehensive legislation'. After the failure of four Bills between 1830 and 1836, they 'were obliged in practice to accept Salomons' system as the best available method'.2 The pamphlet that Goldsmid published in 1830 is not tinged with premoni? tions of disappointment, but in its energy, clarity and 'attack' seems to embody an expectation that reasonableness and logic will carry the day. If there is disap? pointment it is that the Jews have found themselves in the position of having to remind their non-Jewish fellow citizens that they have to ask for what they had every reason to suppose would have been freely granted, but was not. Goldsmid opens the case thus: Wherever the question of removing the disabilities under which the Jews now labour has been mooted, the friendly disposition evinced towards the measure has seemed so general among persons of all religious denominations, that it was intended to have left its accomplishment to the spontaneous bounty of the Christian part of the community . . . But the Jews find that this silence is misconstrued, that the demeanour is ascribed to apathy in the cause of religious liberty . . . They feel, therefore, that they are com? pelled ... to enter at once upon an examination of the change which they desire.3 The premise is immediately asserted that the onus is on those who oppose relief to justify it on two grounds: 'It is only by disproving one of these propositions (i.e. that relief will, ist promote the welfare of the Jews and 2dly . . . [advance] the interest of the country, and certainly in no possible way prejudice [it]), that an adherence to the present system can be justified . . .'.4 Goldsmid proceeds to construct his case along the following lines. He refutes the notion that all offices other than those of Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Lord Lieutenant are now to be 'free to all denominations of His Majesty's subjects', as Peel claimed in his speech on introducing the Catholic Relief Bill.5 He refutes the idea of Jews as aliens, mentioning here too the difference of the present measure from that addressed by the Jew Bill of 1753 and adding that there exists an opinion among 'some members of the higher classes' that as 'all Jews are aliens . . . they are therefore incapable of holding land, and ought to continue deprived of the 154</page><page sequence="3">F. H. Goldsmid and Archbishop Whately of Dublin other rights of British subjects'. Interestingly, as to the claim that Jews may not in law hold land, he cites the case of the late chief-justice, Lord Ellenborough purchasing 'without hesitation of Mr. Benjamin Goldsmid a valuable freehold seat at Roehampton'. In support of his case here and in contesting his further claim that the law of 1813 extends to Jews as well as Unitarians the benefits of the Act of Toleration (1 W &amp; M, c. 18), he directs his reader to Appendices6 in which he reviews in considerable detail the pertinent laws bringing to bear his professional legal skill. At this point he raises 'the more important part of [his] subject, - the priva? tions which the general law of the land inflicts on the Jews'. He turns immedi? ately to the words, 'upon the true faith of a Christian', which occur in the Abjuration Oath and which 'also form part of the Declaration prescribed by a law of 1828 (9 Geo IV c. 17)'. He cites this as a prime example of 'the simplicity of instruments, by which so much hardship is produced'. In connection with this impediment he cites two laws of Elizabeth and one of James I which seem to require an adherence to custom in their timing, 'For the Acts neither compel by penalties any person to tender these, nor enjoin that they should be taken unless when tendered'. It is worth noticing how detailed and expert his dealing with these matters is, but it is in his summarizing analysis that he makes the crucial point that these impediments are essentially accidental in their effect of disabling Jews. With a sound legal reticence he ventures the following conclu? sion: It is impossible to speak with perfect confidence on a subject now perhaps for the first time considered; but I have not been able to discover any other than the two impediments I have mentioned. . . . which can prevent those Englishmen who profess the Jewish religion, from discharging all the functions of citizenship. We should remark that both these impediments arise not out of the substance of the tests, but merely out of the forms of asseveration.7 This point constitutes an essential clarification of the legal position, since it isolates what is, in effect, a single legal impediment, while emphasizing that the impediment is an unintended consequence. (Edward Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff's personal intention in proposing the troublesome phrase is an interest? ing question, but does not materially affect Goldsmid's argument.8) Goldsmid's point that the laws of Elizabeth and James could not have been intended to exclude 'persons of the Hebrew persuasion' rests on the simple fact that in their days 'no Jews resided in England'. He concludes that 'these restrictions are . . . produced by simple chance. The Jew has been accidentally affected by laws of which he was not the object.' In the strict sense Goldsmid's analysis is unquestionably cogent, and by and large opponents in the course of subsequent debates do not quarrel with it. As we shall see, however, the words 'on the true faith of a Christian' naturally lend 155</page><page sequence="4">Tony Hammond themselves to opponents as a hook on which to hang the wider issues concerning the Christian character of the legislature. Goldsmid is of course aware that, legally correct though his case may be, the issue of principle has to be addressed, even if it arises fortuitously out of the 'forms of asseveration'. In short, it may have arisen out of a form of words, but it is not at bottom a formal problem. It is interesting to note the persistence of Goldsmid's claim that Jews do actually care to have their disabilities removed, and that they are not victims of a kind of religious apathy, the note on which he opens his pamphlet. Having tied up some of the legal ends of this stage of his argument, delicately indicating how the unintended harm done to Jewish rights may be made good, he makes the point unequivocally that the Jews could not have requested what was not permitted to the Catholics. In dealing with this aspect of the matter, Goldsmid makes use of what we can think of as the 'question of numbers'. This appeal is made on pragmatic rather than on strictly principled grounds, and is one that persists through the debate. Simply put, the Catholics are a more significant minority numerically. The Jews so small in number that their influence on the affairs of the nation as a whole verges on the inconsequential. Goldsmid writes: For several years past, a large proportion of the population of Ireland had constantly demanded privileges, which Parliament persevered in withholding, whilst even those who thought themselves bound by conscience and principle to resist the Catholic claims, were alarmed at the discontent which the rejection of them occasioned . . . The Jews . . . were sensible that it became not them to ask that which it could not become the legislat? ure to bestow; - that where such vast interests were concerned, they ought not to hope, nay, scarcely to wish that theirs should be considered. Now, however, these circum? stances exist no longer . . . And at this moment Goldsmid briefly inserts the first mention of other countries which have pulled ahead of Britain in conferring what he here describes as 'liberty of conscience'. He cites the Dutch and the French, saying: 'Can it be supposed that England, in other cases the parent of all that tends to freedom, will here refuse even to follow the example of those nations?'9 So far, then, the pamphlet has dealt with questions of legal 'accident' and inconsistency, the resulting harm caused, Jewish reluctance to press their case until now and the broader issue of British liberty, raising the questions of reform and progress. Only now, after this legal and philosophical groundwork, so to speak, has been established does Goldsmid broach the aspect of the issue which is to cause the most difficulty in practice, particularly in the Lords. Namely the development of an Anglican Parliament into first a Protestant and at present a Christian Parliament, with the prospect now extended of a Parliament which is not exclusively Christian.10 Clearly the shape and emphasis of Goldsmid's pamphlet can reasonably be assumed to be responsive to the nature of the opposing argument as he is aware 156</page><page sequence="5">F. H. Goldsmid and Archbishop Whately of Dublin of it. We may reasonably deduce from it the relative weight given to the range of considerations to which the issue gives rise. If this is so, we might be forgiven for deducing that the foregoing arguments, however cogent in themselves, are not judged in themselves enough to carry the day. Of its 35 pages of argument (and 36 pages of appendix and tables), half of the argument is reserved for a case being made for the fitness of Jews, qua Jews, to participate in the framing of law for (Christian) society as a whole. Goldsmid begins by confronting the question whether Jews are equipped for the exercise and enjoyment of the full privileges of citizens. He employs an argument made by Sir James Mackintosh in the Commons' debate of April 1830, and which was taken up by William Hazlitt, the son of a Unitarian minister, and published posthumously in The Tatler in March 1831.11 I quote Goldsmid's articulation of the argument at some length to demonstrate how the whole mood and nature of the argument moves from the working-out of tight legal argument to a more impassioned appeal, manifestly seeking to dislodge a prejudicial and ingrained attitude: We may be told that the followers of this religion have always been employed in trade, in money-getting, and are fit for no other occupation; that their minds are devoid of cultivation, and that they are strangers to liberal pursuits .... And here, as elsewhere, the assertions of prejudice are not so much untrue, as perver? sions and exaggerations of the truth. To the first article of the charge, indeed, the Jewish community must doubtless plead unqualifiedly Guilty. In trade, the Jews have for ages past been almost exclusively employed. I am not, it is true, quite clear that this is a very heinous crime, and I am sure at all events, that England is not the country in which it ought to be so accounted. But if it is a crime, the Jews are Guilty. They have been prevented by the laws, and in some cases by the persecution of Christian Europe, from obtaining power, and not rarely even bread, by other means, and they have obtained them by trade. ... In fine, you prevent the Jew from gaining subsistence unless by trade, - or influence unless by acquiring wealth; and express surprise at his devoting himself to the acquisition of it with more zeal than other men, and consequently often with more success. Against the parallel charge against Jews of 'deficiency in mental cultivation' Goldsmid advances a parallel argument, referring to the degradation produced by contempt, prejudice and persecution in Europe. While here we are concerned with questions of a historical or even sociological nature, the underlying inten? tion is surely to account for such phenomena rationally that are otherwise ascribed to the 'nature' of Jews and their beliefs.12 It is moving the argument perceptibly and gently into the sphere of religious discussion. This he makes his next point. Goldsmid addresses the claim that religious restrictions benefit 'the cause of true religion': an argument that reappears with variations, as we shall see, and which at bottom is the argument against indifference. Goldsmid's reply, deferen 157</page><page sequence="6">Tony Hammond tially modulated ('[a plea] on which it is somewhat difficult for a Jew to speak with propriety to a Christian'), appeals to actual consequences, and argues that restrictions are an invitation to hypocrisy, insincere conversion, opportunism, i.e. all that is harmful to true religion, while encouraging contempt in some for the religiously 'degraded' fellow-citizen. From this it is an easy step to the question of conversion. Here Goldsmid is apparently happy to make the case of the philosemitic Christian conversionists for them.13 If Jews experience a benign and equal relationship with Christians, surely they are the more easily persuaded of, as the Christian believes, the super? ior truth of his religion. This is the argument of 'charitable example' as we may call it, and which, as we shall see, may be developed into the argument of 'restitution' for historical Christian persecutions of Jews.14 Equally, the Christian has nothing to fear from the Jew, since the Jew does not seek to make converts. The next point ostensibly moves away from the religious and into the political, but not in fact. Contending that arguments for restrictions have been based rather on the fear of political danger than on religious grounds, Goldsmid begins by putting forward the numbers argument, supposing there to be not so many as 30,000 Jews in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland, and so too insubstantial a group to pose any political threat. The second aspect of his argument, however, is the more telling, since it raises the fundamental question of Jewish allegiance to the interests of the nation as a whole. We are reminded of Napoleon's concern about the 'peoplehood' of the Jews and the implications of this for their capacity to become French citizens. Clearly in the case of Britain, as has been frequently emphasized, the real and legal citizen- or, more correctly, subject-status of Jews is resolved by the British law of territorial nationality. It does not, however, in reality dispel all concerns about the degree to which the Jewish faith encourages its adherents to identify with Britain rather than the 'People of Israel'. This dual-loyalty question had been a main impediment to Roman Catholic emancipa? tion. Goldsmid's reply draws on the prophetic, 'Seek ye the peace of the city where ye dwell, and pray for it, for in the peace thereof ye shall have peace'. We see this recur in Parliamentary debate, but, for the present, Goldsmid bol? sters his case with the peaceful record of Jews in Christian lands, but especially in the nearly two centuries of the current settlement. It can be fairly claimed, however, that in all that has been argued so far, if the debate as a whole is considered, nothing has been either claimed or refuted that bears on what comes to be the main sticking point. Excellent subjects though the Jews may prove to be - able, loyal, legally qualified, etc. - yet they are not Christians, and not only is the legislature perceived to be Christian, it is also ultimately the regulator of the Established Church. Goldsmid reserves this point till last, effectively conceding that this is the nub: 'It has been said, that against the admission of the Jews to all privileges save one, scarcely a dis? sentient voice will be raised; but that some men conceive that no Jew ought to sit 158</page><page sequence="7">F. H. Goldsmid and Archbishop Whately of Dublin in Parliament, on the ground that a Christian country should have an exclusively Christian legislature.'15 It is perhaps symptomatic of Goldsmid's unease with this aspect of the case, perhaps sensing the intractability of the issue, that he has first recourse to some of his least apposite arguments. He begins by diverting an issue which is primarily one of principle into a practical one, namely, that Jews are too small in number to threaten to make a 'practical' difference. The exact term he uses is, 'dread of practical evil'. Having sought to allay fears of a threat by numbers, he refutes the notion that Jewish opulence might exert disproportionate political influence, by contrasting it with a much more substan? tial Christian opulence. He perseveres in this practical argument by claiming the improbability of ever any more than four Jewish members being elected to the House at any one time: 'To imagine that there could be six Jewish members, would be to make an absolutely extravagant supposition'. He finally comes closer to contesting the principle itself than he ever does to meeting it head on when he at last refers to 'the truth of that important principle, which now seems almost universally recognized, . . . that religious opinions, unless dangerous to society, form no ground for depriving men of rights purely political'. Clearly here the approach to the whole relation between religion and state is subject to distinctly differing premises, bearing in turn also on the Church's Establishment, the case for which has already been complicated by the presence of Dissenters in Parliament, but perhaps made more complicated still by the proposed presence of non-Christians. In Parliamentary debate the preced? ent of atheistic non-Christians arises, but Goldsmid eschews the question him? self.16 Instead he returns to a less theoretical approach and looks to the historical lessons that might be adduced from countries where Jews have been admitted to the legislature of predominantly Christian societies. This review of the manner and order of argument in Goldsmid's pamphlet has, I suggest, enabled us to discern what in fact an active and interested and informed party to the cause for Jewish relief saw as the case to be made, or answered, on both sides. His emphases may in the end be the result of the limitations of his grasp of the question quite as much as his accurate insight into them. In moving on, now, to consider some of the public debate in the Lords and elsewhere it may be possible to see a little more clearly how close Goldsmid had come to the true nature of the argument. (For a note on his further pamph? lets and some developments in Goldsmid's campaign, see the Appendix below.) The development of the debate has been thoroughly documented in M. C. N. Salbstein's The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain. In what follows I shall con? centrate on the question of the Establishment of the Church insofar as it impinges interestingly on the Relief debate, and occupies some of the ground that the arguments of Goldsmid, as we have seen, fail to encroach on with the same cogency as is deployed in his legal analysis. As we have also seen, the reformed House of Commons passed the Bills invariably. It was in the Lords 159</page><page sequence="8">Tony Hammond that the Bills failed. It is to the Lords' debate of August 1833 that I shall turn after a brief review of the Establishment question. In The Victorian Church,11 Chadwick describes grievances concerning the Establishment of the Church both within and without the Anglican community. Moreover, he outlines the party-political implications of the discontent. It is in the context of some of his observations that we can better understand a little of the role the Jewish relief campaign played in wider politics between Church and State, Dissenter and Anglican, Whig and Tory, even Lords and Commons. Chadwick writes: because the Church of England was established, the government thought nothing of playing dominoes with prelates and mulcting ecclesiastical incomes. To some parsons the danger was neither dissenting clamour, which they despised, nor disestablishment, which they could endure. They feared the state more than the dissenting deputies, a corrupt establishment more than disendowment . . . Disobedience hung in the air . . . it seemed unendurable that a Whig government, depending on Roman Catholic votes in Ireland and Presbyterian votes in Scotland and dissenting votes in England, should plan drastic change in the Church of England without asking the Church of England.18 It was the Whig party that offered the Dissenters hopes of religious equality before the law, and the opposition of Whig and Tory became in part identified with the struggle between Dissenter and Churchman. As Chadwick records, by the early months of 1834 'discomfort between Church and dissent . . . reached a bitterness without precedent in English history'.19 It is into such an atmosphere that the campaign for Jewish relief was to force itself for consideration. If Goldsmid is right to make the case strongly that the Jews are a numerically barely significant entity, the issue to which their grievances could be attached was of a very much larger significance. A further dimension to the, as it were, accidental involvement of the Jewish issue with the relations between Church and State are pointed out by Israel Finestein in his Anglo-Jewish Opinion During the Struggle for Emancipation (1828-1858)? Some Anglican supporters of Jewish relief felt it necessary to add as a ground for their advocacy of that cause their own misgivings over the relief of the Roman Catholics if that relief stood alone. To admit Catholics to Parliament might, they argued, smack of indifference as between Anglicanism and Romanism; whereas to admit the Jews as well would indicate that the whole question was considered on the general principle of reli? gious toleration, and not on the respective merits of various phases of Christianity. The connection between the Jewish issue and the hostility between Church and Dissent is nicely exemplified in the Bishop of St David's telling the House of Lords in May 1848: 'I should greatly prefer that it [any question affecting the Church of England] should be submitted to the decision of a Jew rather than 160</page><page sequence="9">F. H. Goldsmid and Archbishop Whately of Dublin that of a Dissenter'. But he was only saying what Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, had already effectively said in the debate in the Lords on i August 1833 on the occasion of the second reading of the Jews' Civil Disabilities Bill, notably: 'nor is it likely they [Jews] would attempt, in any way, to interfere with the doctrines or institutions of any description of Christians. Christians, on the contrary, of different persuasions, have often interfered in the most violent manner with each other's faith and worship.'21 A broad, but nonetheless reasonable, conclusion, can be drawn that Jewish relief could be seen as either strengthening the case for disestablishment or, at the very least, as contributing no greater anomaly to the, in principle, unsatis? factory situation, whereby Dissenters had a say in the affairs of the Church, than already existed after 1828 and 1829. For those bent on shoring up Establish? ment even at this late date, any relief of the Jews might be resisted, if only for the symbolic value of such resistance. In addition, disestablishment or anything that tended towards it had implications not simply for the relations between Parliament and Church, but reflected the evolution of a different kind of Parlia? ment altogether, in which the issue of individual rights took precedence over established organs of authority and ideology in the State. Simply stated, the right of a citizen to elect whomever he chose to represent him in Parliament was advanced another step. It will be useful now to turn to Richard Whately again and to examine in more detail his contributions to the Jewish Relief campaign. Richard Whately (1787-1863), Archbishop of Dublin, Fellow of Oriel, editor of Bacon's Essays (1856), voted for the repeal of religious tests from 1833 to 1853. A busy, learned and rather controversial figure in Church circles, he contributed to the Lords' debate of 1 August 1833 with an analytic and impassioned clarity which, for our present purposes, sheds considerable light on the relation of the relief question to that of disestablishment. Whately published his speech, however, along with a Preface and added the following: 'Also, A Petition to the House of Lords from the Clergy of the Diocese of Kildare, relative to Church Reform, with observa? tions made on the occasion of presenting it, August 7, 1833'.22 While the speech is naturally of interest in its context in the Lords' debate, there is a special interest in looking at it in the context of Whately's publication of it, since here he makes quite explicit some of the connections with which we are concerned. In the preface he starts by defending himself against the charge of indiffer? ence, with which we are familiar from Goldsmid's pamphlet above. He then makes the important point that he is in agreement with opponents of the Bill 'in considering the question, chiefly, as one of principle\ He further disregards the numbers case, departing from Goldsmid's emphasis, and instead enters the ground of the debate that Goldsmid (perhaps out of deference?) hesitated to enter, except insofar as broad principles of civil liberties were involved. He takes pains to claim that it is in the spirit of Christianity to grant relief to the Jews, 161</page><page sequence="10">Tony Hammond invoking the New Testament's 'render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's'. It is from this point, at which the virtue of the Jewish case is taken as read, that he raises the related point, which we may reasonably take as being even nearer to his heart: 'the anomalous situation in which our Church, considered, simply, as a Religious Society, is placed, in respect of the Legislature, constituted as that Legislature now is* (my emphasis).23 His preface places the whole argument from the outset in the context of Roman Catholic emancipation, and he states his belief that religion should not be a condition for civil rights, ('Neither . . . can the religious errors of our fellow-citizens impair their rights as citizens . . ,'24). In the body of the speech itself he declares that he wishes to address the House as little as possible on political questions, and so will confine himself to religious matters, thus expli? citly refusing to broach the question of the 'fitness' of the Jews for Parliamentary office. He clears the way, therefore, to a concentration on the rightness of Jews' having legislative influence on the Church of England, and he quite simply states that there is no greater objection to them on this ground, than to the Catholics, indeed possibly a lesser objection (as we saw above). Indeed, he makes the point emphatically that the present proposed legislation is not designed to entitle a certain number of Jews to seats in the House, but to 'remove the restriction which prohibits Christians from electing, if they think fit, a Jew for their repres? entative'. Lucidly, Whately disengages the question of the Christian 'character' of the legislature, which is to exercise the Lords extensively in a labyrinth of inevitably vague and inconsistent argument whenever it is propounded, by throwing into the ring his idea for a Commission: 'I think that everything relating to the spiritual concerns of the Church should be entrusted to a Commission . . . having power to regulate these concerns in such a manner as may be most conducive to the interests of religion and of the spiritual welfare of the people.' To resume, Whately is undertaking to address himself to the principle, which, in the very nature of things, the Jewish polemicist, such as Goldsmid, will sens? ibly avoid, since it points up an uncomfortable set of relations within the Chris? tian constituency and its legislature. Moreover, Whately's position has the addi? tional virtue of avoiding the slide into a real indifference in matters religious, which potentially is as disrespectful to the Jew as it is to the conscientious Christian. The Jew's status as fully entitled citizen, if Whately were to have his way, would in no way compromise him qua Jew, since the qualification, so to speak, of Christianity would not be implicitly necessary to legislators with the Jews as a minority simply 'not weighing anything' against the Christian majority. As he puts it: 'It appears evident therefore to me, ... the danger of being understood to proclaim indifference as to religious truth in the minds of our legislators, ... is a danger which exists in a much greater degree as the law now stands, than if we were to legislate throughout on a consistent and intelligible 162</page><page sequence="11">F. H. Goldsmid and Archbishop Whately of Dublin principle; and that to remove that last barrier is essential, - precisely because it is the last, - as a safeguard against that very danger.'25 As has been remarked, Whately published a petition from the clergy of Kildare together with his pre? sentation of that petition along with his Lords speech of i August 1833. The petition itself is short and essentially appeals to the Lords to enact 'such laws as may appear most calculated to promote the spiritual improvement of our Church, and to renovate and reform its government, so as to render it more suitable and better adapted to the altered circumstances of the Country'.26 This petition effectively clinches the case and virtually turns the publication into a pamphlet complementing Goldsmid's. Whately emphasizes that Parliament is reluctant to legislate on religious matters, but that no alternative authority exists to fill the vacuum. Among his concluding remarks we read: 'I address your Lordships as men fully sensible that the important questions relative to the Church, which have lately been, and which are likely to be, anxiously discussed in this House, derive nearly the whole of their interest from their connexion with the matters to which this petition relates; the utility, in a religious point of view, of the Church Establishment.'27 Whately it is who makes as explicit as can be the inter-relatedness of the issues of Jewish relief and the problem of Establishment, and nowhere more publicly and explicitly than here. There is of course an even wider and more complex ramification of this question spreading across two and a half decades, both Houses of Parliament and which is intimately connected with the whole politics of reform and conservatism. To conclude, there can be little doubt that the question of Jewish relief took on a significance for British politics that it is hard to ascribe to the specific nature of the Jewish claim for full emancipation alone. Indeed, coming as it did as the final stage in a process that began with the admission of the Protestant Dissenters, the Jewish question became, by the end, the symbol of a process that was transforming the legislature in response to economic and ideological change. I have not touched on the affective value of the fact that it was in the name of Jews that the latest of the reforms was to be enacted. Certainly we can detect at times, though remarkably rarely, it is true, an old prejudicial note creeping into debate. That the issue of the Jews should become the focus of a challenge to conservatism and protection, like so much else in the process, could be thought of as accidental, though undoubtedly some would see it as Providen? tial. Bentinck, at the time of his resignation of the leadership of the Tories, was to write to Croker: 'A party that can muster 140 on a Jew Bill, and cannot muster much above half those numbers on any question essentially connected with the great interests of the empire, can only be led by their antipathies, their hatreds, and their prejudices . . .'28 To Disraeli he wrote in more colourful terms, saying much the same: 'I am low-spirited at seeing the Party occupying itself about the admission or exclusion of an individual from Parliament at a moment when the greatest Commercial Empire of the World is engaged in a life and 163</page><page sequence="12">Tony Hammond death struggle for existence. It is tea table twaddling more becoming a pack of Old Maids than a great Party aspiring to govern an Empire on which the Sun never sets.'29 Yet as Salbstein shows,30 the emancipation of Catholics and Jews 'constituted a talismanic divide marking out old Whig from old Tory'and the divide was profoundly that between liberty and protection, each epitomizing conflicting views of mercantile, commercial, civil and religious policy. From the clamour of this larger politics, the voices of reasoned argument such as we hear from F. H. Goldsmid and Richard Whately cannot ultimately be distinguished, since they severally too take their positions within it. NOTES 1 Pamphlet, published by Colburn &amp; Bentley, London 1830. 2 Israel Finestein, Anglo-Jewish Opinion During the Struggle for Emancipation (1828 1858) in JHSE XX (1964) 116. 3 Goldsmid, Remarks (see n. 1) 1-2. 4 Ibid. 2. 5 Goldsmid, Remarks (see n. 1) note pp. 2 3 where he quotes from Peel's speech as reported in the Morning Chronicle 6 March 1829 and also the preamble to the Catholic Relief Bill itself: 'Whereas by various laws certain restraints and disabilities are imposed on Roman Catholic subjects of His Majesty, to which other subjects of His Majesty are not liable . . . .' (Goldsmid's emphasis). It is interesting to note the wording, which reveals at some level a failure to appreciate the status of Jews (and others?) as subjects. 6 Ibid. 37-69, Appendices I-IV. 7 Ibid. 8-9. 8 Edward Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff, claimed to have been unaware of the anti-Jewish implications when he had proposed the wording, 'on the true faith of a Christian', but agreed that even if he had, he would still have included it. See Hansard New Series, 19, 28 April 1828, reply to Holland. 9 See Goldsmid, Remarks (see n. 1) 71, Appendix VI and Appendices 1 and 2 to his pamphlet The Arguments advanced against the Enfranchisement of the Jews, considered in a series of Letters, Colburn and Bentley (London 1831), for his discussion of the freedoms and social advancement, mores and distinction of Jews in France, Holland and the United States. Some of this material is expanded and represented in the pamphlets of 1833 and 1848, see my Appendix below. 10 In the debate in the Lords of 1 August 1833 the Archbishop of Canterbury, in opposing the Bill, confines himself largely to this single point: 'That the professors of a religion which must cease to exist when these anti-Christian positions are abandoned, should be empowered to legislate for a Christian people, much more, for a Christian Church, is surely, my Lords, an absurdity; far worse, indeed, than absurdity, unless we regard the preservation of the national religion as a matter of no importance.' Debates in the House of Commons and ... in the House of Lords on . . . the motion for the second reading of the Bill for Removing the Civil Disabilities of the Jews, 1833 with list of Petitions etc, 'The Mirror of Parliament' (London 1834) 56. 11 W. Hazlitt, Emancipation of the Jews, in The Tatler, 28 March 1831. 12 The whole question of this kind of prejudicial argument can be disposed of quite briefly. In the public debate most parties were ready to concede the suitability of Jews as candidates for full citizenship in terms of their personal qualities, at worst considering their improvement dependent on their relief from disability. A Cobbett does not typify the kind of debate we find in, say, the debates of the Lords in 1833. Nevertheless we can perhaps detect a suavely concealed dislike in some of the blander protestations of the unseemliness of Jews making laws for Christians, and much can be felt in the bluntness of the Duke of Wellington's 'we do not wish the Jews to come and settle here', in his speech on that occasion (see n. 10) 88. 13 Robert Grant, who presented the bill to the Commons in 1830, was himself an active conversionist. There is not scope here for a full analysis, but there are some close echoes in his speeches of evidence and examples found also 164</page><page sequence="13">F. H. Goldsmid and Archbishop Whately of Dublin in Goldsmid's pamphlets, in particular, for example, his quotation of M. Merilhon, Ministre d'Instruction Publique's speech of 4 December 1830, also quoted in Goldsmid's Letters. 14 Robert Grant again: 'Oh, it is a hard task to forgive those whom we have injured!' Macaulay, also a conversionist, supported the resolution to present the Bill to the Lords in the same debate in the Commons in 1833 (see n. 10) 16 and 2off. 15 Ibid. 27. 16 In the Lords' debate of 1833 (ibid. 82 3) the Lord Chancellor, interpreting the law in answer to a question from Lord Clifford, a Roman Catholic, reminded the House that the oaths did not prevent Atheists and Deists from taking their seats, and cited Lords Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke who were 'just as much believers in the sublime truths of Christianity as any of those Jews whom you still exclude, with this difference, that [they] had an equal respect for both the Old Testament and the New, believing in neither the law of the one covenant nor of the other'. 17 Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church (2nd ed. London 1970). 18 Ibid. 64. 19 Ibid. 61. 20 See n. 2 above. 21 Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, Lords' debate 1833 (see n. 10) 63. 22 The Speeches with their prefaces and further observations were published under the following title: A speech in the House of Lords, August 1, 1833, on a Bill for the removal of certain disabilities from His Majesty's subjects of the Jewish persuasion, with additional remarks on some of the objections urged against that measure. Also, a Petition to the House of Lords from the Clergy of the Diocese of Kildare, relative to Church Reform, with observations made on the occasion of presenting it, August 7, 1833 (Fellowes, London 1833). 23 Richard Whately, ibid. 8. 24 Ibid. 6. 25 Ibid. 38. 26 Ibid. 42. 27 Ibid. 49. 28 L. J. Jennings (ed.) The Croker Papers III, pp. 158-9, Letter from Bentinck to Croker, 26 Dec. 1847. 29 Hughenden Papers Box 89: B/XX/Be 42 letter from Bentinck to Disraeli 14 Nov. 1847. 30 M. C. N. Salbstein, The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain, 164fr. Appendix Notes on the pamphlets of F. H. Goldsmid (see n. 9 above). 1 Remarks on the Civil Disabilities of British Jews (London, 1830) Text followed by six Appendices on the following subjects: 1 Jews not legally aliens; may possess land II 18th-century lawyers' opinions on Jews' rights as native-born subjects and to own land III Extract from letters of denization granted to foreign Jews IV Question if Jews are subject to some penalties from which Dissenters relieved by Toleration Act V Calculation of number of Jews in UK VI Table of numbers of Jewish criminals in Amsterdam 2 The Arguments advanced against the Enfranchisement of the Jews, considered in a series of Letters (London, 1831) These letters deal with the following subjects: I Need to continue effort to win relief 165</page><page sequence="14">Tony Hammond II (Dual-loyalty) Jews and return to Palestine III Jews not separate nation; can identify with interests of state IV Affirms utility of enfranchisement V Remarks on partial enfranchisement There follow two Appendices: I Letter of M. Merilhou (Minister of Public Instruction and Ecclesiastical Affairs, French Chamber of Deputies), 4 Dec. 1830 concerning proposal to grant Jewish religious teachers payment from public coffer II List of Jews holding or having held public office in the United States 3 A Few Words respecting the Enfranchisement of British Jews: addressed to the New Parliament (London 1833) This pamphlet reviews the status and achievements of Jews abroad, especially where they have enfranchisement, i.e. France, Holland, Denmark and the United States, to which are now added the British Dependencies of Canada and Jamaica. Suggests Britain now ranks with Russia, Turkey, Prussia, Spain and Portugal. Followed by Appendices variously listing Jewish public appointments etc. in Jamaica, Canada, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and the United States. 4 Reply to the Arguments advanced against the removal of the remaining disabilities of the Jews (London 1848) Contains two 'Replies to Objections', contents mainly reproduced from Pamph? let 2 above (Appendices II and III): I Jews and Palestine; State allegiance II Legislature Christian, Jews have no place there Here Goldsmid first has recourse to the numbers case, then he explores the historical evolution of English 'heresy law' and describes the gradual acceptance of Dissenters. Ends with appeal to Christian charity and shared moral imperat? ives. 166</page></plain_text>