Note 271 — Chapter XIV

On this reproach, from a Jewish lady whom he esteemed, he had written two years before. "Fagin, in Oliver Twist, is a Jew, because it unfortunately was true, of the time to which that story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew. But surely no sensible man or woman of your persuasion can fail to observe—firstly, that all the rest of the wicked dramatis personæ are Christians; and, secondly, that he is called 'The Jew,' not because of his religion, but because of his race."