Note 1 — Civil Disabilities of the Jews

The full title of the publication which forms the peg for Macaulay’s essay is Statement of the Civil Disabilities and Privations affecting natural born Subjects of His Majesty professing the Jewish Religion, commonly called Jews. It was printed in 1829 by G. Taylor, Printer, 7 Little James Street. In the article in the Westminster Review, April 1829, occasioned by this same pamphlet, the address of the printer, George Taylor, is given as Lamb’s Conduit Passage, Red Lion Square. The Statement must have appeared in two forms. Macaulay describes it as octavo, but the pages of the copy which Mr. Israel Solomons possesses measure 12½ by 7¾ inches. The margins in this copy have been cut for binding. It was meant to fold in four, as is shown by the manner in which the title is repeated on the fourth side. The title as there printed is exactly that cited by Macaulay. Probably the document was originally a Petition to the House of Commons.

The Statement is anonymous, but bears the clear hallmark of Francis Henry Goldsmid’s style. Cf. D. W. Marks and A. Löwy, Memoir of Sir Francis Henry Goldsmid, 1879, p. 23 [second edition, 1882, p. 27]. The author opens with the general assertion that no man ought to be deprived of civil or political right because of his religious opinions, “unless it can be shewn that, from the removal of their disabilities, injury is likely to result to the community at large.” The Statement goes on to argue that such removal would not injure the religion or threaten the government of England, for, on the one hand, Jews do not proselytise, and, on the other, they are noted for their “proverbial loyalty.” The experience of the happy effect of emancipation in France, America, and the Netherlands is next appealed to. This leads up to a short survey of the history of the Jews in England before the expulsion in 1290, and after the return in the time of Cromwell, and an able argument as to their legal status—including their right to hold land—follows. The whole concludes with an appeal for the “Omission in the Oath of Abjuration and Dissenters’ Declaration, when respectively taken, or made and subscribed, by persons professing the Jewish religion, of words obviously inconsistent with such profession.” It is altogether a moderate and able presentation of the case for the Jews, and fairly deserved the prominence given to it by Macaulay.