that was ever said, or anything that was ever done, or anything that was ever suffered, by the Divine Author of the Christian religion, who spoke the sermon upon the mountain-who said that the merciful should be blessed-and who, instead of rati for the dissemination of his disastrous | meek and humble men to whom the disbelief. Is it not, then, preposterous teaching of all nations was given in charge that a man by whom all revealed religion above all, you will not find it anything is repudiated who doubts the immortality of the soul-doubts a future state of rewards and punishments-doubts in a superintending Providence-believes in nothing, fears nothing, and hopes for nothing-without any incentive to virtue, and without any restraint upon depravity, ex-fying the anathema which the people of cepting such as a sense of conventional honour, or the promptings of a natural goodness, may have given him-is it not, I say, preposterous, and almost monstrous, that such a man, for whom a crown of deadly nightshade should be woven, should be enabled by playing the imposture of a moment, and uttering a valueless formula at the table of the House, to climb to the pinnacle of power; and that you should slap the doors of this House with indignity upon a conscientious man who adheres to the faith in which he was born and bred -who believes in the great facts that constitute the foundation of Christianity who believes in the perpetual existence of the nobler portion of our being who believes in future retribution, and in recompense to come-who believes that the world is taken care of by its almighty and everlasting Author-who believes in the mercy of God, and practises humanity to man-who fulfils the ten great injunctions in which all morality is comprised-whose ear was never deaf to the supplications of the suffering-whose hand is as open as day to charity-and whose life presents an exemplification of the precepts of the Gospel far more faithful than that of many a man by whom, in the name of the Gospel, his dishonouring and unchristian disabilities are most wantonly, most injuriously, and most opprobriously maintained? But where in the Scripturein what chapter, in what text, in what single phrase-will you find an authority for resorting to the infliction of temporal penalty, or of temporal privation of any kind, as a means of propagating heavenly truth? You may find an authority, indeed, in the writings of jurists, and of divines, and in the stern theology of those austere and haughty Churchmen by whom the Pharisaical succession, far better than the apostolical, is personally and demonstratively proved. But you will not find it in the New Testament-you will not find it in Matthew, nor in Mark, nor in Luke, nor in John, nor in the epistles of the Jerusalem had invoked upon themselves, in his heart. This is not strange: it would have been strange if it had been otherwise; but justice-even partial justice has already operated a salutary change. In the same measure in which we have relaxed the laws against the Jews, that patriot instinct by which we are taught to love the land of our birth, has been revived. British feeling has already taken root in the heart of the Jew, and for its perfect development nothing but perfect justice is required. To the fallacies of fanaticism, give no heed. Emancipate the Jew-from the Statutebook of England be the last remnant of intolerance erased for ever-abolish all civil discriminations between the Christian and the Jew-fill his whole heart with the consciousness of country: do this, and we dare be sworn that he will think, and feel, and fear, and hope, as you do his sorrow and his exultation will be the same: at the tidings of English glory his heart will beat with a kindred palpitation; and whenever there shall be need, in the defence of his Sovereign and of his country, his best blood, at your bidding, will be poured out with the same heroic prodigality as your own. mass of prejudice upon this question, which is, however, rapidly giving way. London, the point of imperial centralisation, has made a noble manifestation of its will. London has advisedly, deliberately, and with benevolence aforethought, selected the most prominent member of the Jewish community as its representative, and united him with the First Minister of the Crown. Is the Parliament prepared to fling back the Jew upon the people, in order that the people should fling back the Jew upon the Parliament ? That will be a dismal game, in the deprecation of whose folly and whose evils the Christian and the statesman should concur. But not only are the disabilities which it is the object of this measore to repeal, at variance with genuine Christianity, but I do not hesitate to assert that they operate as impediments to the conversion of the Jews, and are productive of consequences directly the reverse of those for which they were originally designed. Those disabilities are not sufficiently onerous to be compulsory, but they are sufficiently vexatious to make conversion a synonyme with apostacy, and to affix a stigma to an interested conformity with the religion of the State. We have relieved the Jew from the ponderous mass of MR. NEWDEGATE was most anxious fetters that bound him by the neck and by to meet the wishes of the House, and the feet; but the lines which we have should therefore, with the leave of the left, although apparently light, are strong House, withdraw his Amendment. enough to attach him to his creed, and had a deep impression upon the subject make it a point of honour that he should which was then under the consideration of not desert it. There exists in this coun- the House. A Christian nation was asked try a most laudable anxiety for the conver- to cast aside every religious consideration sion of the Jews; meetings are held, and every consideration of Christianity-in money is largely subscribed for the pur- order to admit the Jews, who repudiated pose, but all these creditable endeavours Christianity, to legislate for that Christian will be ineffectual unless we make a resti-nation. And he must express his surprise tution of his birthright to every English- that the right hon. Gentleman should have man who professes the Jewish religion. I compared the feeling against this measure know that there are those who think that to that which was excited against the meathere is no such thing as an English, or a sure of 1829. He could not but express his French, or a Spanish Jew; a Jew is nothing surprise at hearing a member of a Church but a Jew; his nationality, it is said, is en- professing to be the most exclusively grossed by the land of recollection and of Christian desiring to cast aside every hope, and the house of Jacob must remain consideration connected with Christiafor ever in a state of isolation among the nity, in order to admit those who were strange people by whom it is encompassed. the most opposed to that religion. There In answer to these sophistries, I appeal to was but one solution of this anomaly, human nature. It is not wonderful that and that had been given by the noble when the Jew was oppressed, and pillaged, Member for Arundel, in justification of and branded-in a captivity worse than his supporting the introduction of the meaBabylonian-he should have felt upon the sure before the House. The noble Lord banks of the Thames, or of the Seine, or declared that he was for breaking down all of the Danube, as his forefathers felt by the legal enactments which had been reared the waters of the Euphrates, and that the for the defence of the Church, well knowpsalm of exile should have found an echo ing that when these were removed, infi, He delity would rush in, and for a time cover | maintain the character of the representa(as he expressed it) large districts of the tive assembly in accordance with their recountry; but that in the end Christianity ligious opinions. He had heard some would triumph, and that, profiting by the recoil from infidelity, the Roman Church would gather the people of this country within her rigid fold. Now, these anticipations might in some degree account for the support given to this measure by the noble Lord, the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Sheil), and other Roman Catholics; but they certainly justified the opposition to it which he and other members of the Church of England persevered in. But another circumstance deserved to be marked. Roman Catholic Members, who had last addressed the House in support of this measure, the hon. Member for Ennis on a former occasion, the right hon. Master of the Mint on the present occasion, had in succession warned the House to yield this measure, lest it be compelled to do so hereafter by external force. Was it then the sweet recollection of the Clare election that caused the right hon. Gentleman to compare this measure to that of 1829 ? They had seen their table heaped with petitions in favour of the Jews; but did the House know how those petitions had originated? They had lately heard strange stories with regard to the City election; and it had lately come to his knowledge that the wealth of the hon. Gentleman who had been elected had been brought to bear even upon the framing of petitions to this House. It had come to his knowledge that individuals had been employed to obtain signatures in the suburbs of this metropolis; first, at the rate of 1s. 6d. per hundred signatures, but that would not do; next, at the rate of 3s. per hundred, still that would not do; till at last the petitions were filled up at the rate of 5s. per hundred. He would not willingly believe that such things could have occurred, even among the very lowest of our population; but he thought he was bound to mention them, in order to show that this transparent semblance of the popular feeling had been obtained at the rate of 5s. for 100 signatures. He begged to submit this consideration to hon. Members who professed popular principles, that it was an insult to the Christianity of the great majority of the people, if they attempted to remove the Christian character of the House. The great majority of the people of this country were Christians, and the great majority had a right to establish and vague anticipations expressed by the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, that he hoped by a closer contact with the Jews in this House they might be converted. It was passing strange that the right hon. Gentleman, himself a member of the most exclusive Church that the world had ever seen, should suppose that by admitting the Jews to this House any serious impression would be made upon them. What were the laws, what was the nature of the religious code, by which this people were governed? Why, they were as exclusive as the religion the right hon. Gentleman professed. These laws were embodied in the Mishna and the Talmud; the Mishna was the embodiment of the traditionary or oral law of the Jews, compiled by Rabbi Judah 200 years after the Christian era? Why, because at that time many Christians practised circumcision and other Jewish rites, so that by the law of Moses the Christian could not be distinguished from the Jews, and the Mishna was compiled to keep the Jews separate from Christians. The Talmud was written for the same purpose, when, in the days of Constantine, Christianity prevailed in the Roman empire; again the Jews adopted a code in the Talmud to keep themselves a separate people. Could it be wondered at that they wished to separate themselves, when we remember that they believe all to be promised to them exclusively by the decrees of Providence ? What were the facts in the modern history of the Jews? When they first appeared in this country after their banishment by Edward I., we find them in treaty with the Rump Parliament, about two years after the murder of the king, for the purchase of the Bodleian Library, and of St. Paul's, which they proposed to convert into a synagogue. They offered 500,000l.; the Parliament asked 800,000l., which the Jews would not or could not give; and so the negotiation was broken off. The National Assembly of France, in 1791, about two years before the execution of the King of France, considered their claims. The National Assembly granted their prayer, and allowed them the privileges of citizens on taking the oaths to the State. They received this with joy; but when Napoleon, some years afterwards, collected them together again, and allowed them to be governed by their own laws, and their own officers, they ac State, was struck down, and he wished to know where they were to end? To that question he had never heard an answer given. In answer to those who charged him with intolerance, he wished to show that the bounds of the constitution, as included in the term Christian, were not narrow. According to Hooker, the Church and the State were one; and, according to the principles which were now acted upon, all who were baptised were members of the visible Church; and according to the constitution as it stood, with the small exception of some few Jews and other infidels, the limits of the State were identical with those of the Church. Let them look to what constituted the visible Church. In the elaborate works of Hooker it was stated that— these virtues excludeth from salvation. So doth cepted this decree with exultation and delight. Who then should tell him that a feeling of nationality did not pervade the Jews-that they had forgotten that they were a separate nation? Were Members of that as yet Christian House to erase from their memories the whole history of the Jewish nation? Were they to forget that for 1,500 years the Jews were the chosen people of God, and that for 1,800 years they have been scattered over all the nations of the earth? Were they to be deaf to the decrees of Providence, that, because the Jews knew not the time of their visitation, they should be scattered throughout the nations of the earth; that, because they would not accept Christ as their true King, therefore God in his providence had decreed that they were unfit to legislate for themselves?— Were they, the representatives of a Christian people, to set at naught the truths of prophecy-were they to be blind to the fulfilment of the decrees of Providence-were they to pass by unnoticed those great manifestations of divine justice-were they in their weakness to call upon a people to legislate for them whom God had pronounced to be unfit to legislate for themselves—and, in defiance of every conviction which such considerations must produce in their minds, were they to adopt the doubtful system of a double conscience, holding that religion was to guide a man in his home, in his household, in his private actions, but that when he approached this House he should prepare himself to enter and act with an assembly which had cast off Christianity as its characteristic, and whose acts were supposed to coincide with that repudiation? Was this abandonment of principle in accordance with their general policy? From day to day they heard Members of the House extolling the principle of free imports; to that they yielded up their colonies, and now they were called upon to yield up Christianity as the principle which should avowedly guide the decisions of the Legislature; and in favour of what principle were they so to yield up the guidance of religion? What was the principle which required such sacrifices? Why, it was no principle at all, but merely a system which was called progress. He wished to ask Her Majesty's Government, who talked so much of progress, whither they were going? To what bourn they were tending? One, however, after He said, then, that unless there were to another of principles and institutions which be no limits at all-unless they were were formerly deemed essential to the to receive avowed infidels, he could not "As for those virtues that belong to moral righteousness and honesty of life, we do not mention them because they are not proper unto Christian men as they are Christian, but do concern them as they are men. True it is, the want of much more the absence of inward belief of heart; so doth despair and lack of hope; so emptiness of Christian love and charity. But we speak now of the mark one Lord, one faith, one baptism. the visible Church, whose children are signed with whomsoever these things are, the Church doth acknowledge them for her children-them only she holdeth for aliens and strangers in whom these things are not found. For want of these it is that Saracens, Jews, and infidels, are excluded out of the bounds of the Church. Others we may not deny to be of the visible Church as long as these things are not wanting in them. For apparent it is, all men are of necessity either Christians or not Christians. If by external profession they be Christians, then they are of the visible Church of Christ; and Christians by external profession they are all whose mark of recognisance hath in it those things which we have mentioned. Yea, although they be impious idolators, wicked heretics, persons excommunicable-yea, and cast out for notorious improbity. Such we deny not to be imps and limbs of Satan, even as long as they continue such. Is it possible, then, that the self-same men should belong both to the synagogue of Satan and to the Church of Jesus Christ ?unto that Church which is his mystical body? Not possible; because that body consisteth of none but only true Israelites-true sons of Abraham-true servants and saints of God. Howbeit. of the visible body and Church of Jesus Christ those may be, and oftentimes are, in respect of the main parts of their outward profession, who, in regard of their inward disposition of mindyea, of external conversation-yea, even of some part of their very profession, are most worthily hateful in the sight of God himself, and in the eyes of the sounder part of the visible Church most execrable." moving for these returns was to obtain information, showing how far these vessels could be made available for the public service in case of war. The United States could at any moment obtain the services of vessels of this kind in case of war, and he wished to know whether we were in the same position. It was stipulated that these vessels should be built of sufficient strength to carry guns. There were sixtythree of them of 100-horse power and upwards, and he wished to know whether they could be made available? He understood that there would be no objection to these returns; but he wished to have them laid before the House, as, from information which he had received, he believed that some of these vessels were not in a fit state for war if their services should be required. conceive a wider or more liberal definition | their capacity for carrying guns and being than was now allowed to constitute a title employed as vessels of war. His object in of admission to this House. Such were the soundest opinions of the soundest divine as to the bounds of the visible Church. If he understood the constitution, it was this-that the State had only the right to inquire who was, or who was not, of the visible Church, and that as in ecclesiastical matters the power of the State was limited to questions of outer discipline and appointment, so the religious qualifications of the State were confined to what he had shown to be the limitation of the visible Church, or as it was termed, the "forum exterius;" and, that, far from being in danger of following the Inquisition, as the right hon. Master of the Mint would have them apprehend, in its interference with matters of conscience and inward belief, the "forum interius," as it was termed, into questions which admittedly were not its province, the constitution limited itself to the wise acceptation of Christian profession. It was a dangerous and unfounded novelty this crying out that the constitution was founded on bigotry and intolerance, and he warned the House against yielding to it the best interests of the State and of Religion. Debate adjourned. The EARL of AUCKLAND said, that there could be no possible objection to the production of these returns. He could assure the noble Lord that the Admiralty had not been negligent in this respect; for a report on these vessels had been made to the Board of Admiralty at the end of the year 1846. He believed that these contract vessels would be ready to be placed House adjourned at half-past Twelve at the disposal of the Government in the o'clock. event of a war. HOUSE OF LORDS, Tuesday, February 8, 1848. MINUTES.] Took the Oaths.-Several Lords. PETITIONS PRESENTED. By the Bishop of Oxford, from Clergy and Laity of the City of Chichester, and various other places, against the Admission of Jews into Parlia ment. - From Inhabitants of Hitchin, complaining of the present Burden of Taxation, and against any Additional Expenses being Incurred by Increasing the Military Defences of the Country.-From Clerks, Masters, Matrons, and others connected with the Administration of the Poor Law, for a Superannuation Fund for all Meritorious Officers.-By Lord Stanley, from Inhabitants of the Parish of Vere, in the Island of Jamaica, complaining of the Sugar Duties Act, and praying for Relief.-By Lord Ashburton, from the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Provisions of the Benefit Societies Act may be Extended to them.--From Inhabitants of Worcester, and Ratepayers and others of the Parish of Ware, for the Manchester Unity, of Southampton and Devizes, that Enactment of Sanitary Measures. The EARL of ELLENBOROUGH said, he wished to know whether the stipulations which had been made with these steampacket companies had been carried out? It should be remembered that, in consequence of those stipulations, the Government and the East India Company paid 500,000l. a year to these companies, for the purpose of rendering the carriage of letters and passengers cheaper. Returns ordered. RELATIONS WITH ROME. The EARL of EGLINTOUN said, that he must thank the noble Marquess for his courtesy in acceding to the request made last night by his noble Friend near him (Lord Stanley) and by himself; but though the noble Marquess had consented to delay the second reading, yet he (the Earl of Eglintoun) could not allow the Bill to go to the country without stating what he beLORD COLCHESTER, pursuant to no-lieved was the opinion of those who were tice, rose to move for returns relating to the steam vessels belonging to the various parties who have entered into contracts for the conveyance of mails, in order to show NATIONAL DEFENCES. anxious for the integrity of the Protestant religion, in reference to this Bill. It was only within the last few minutes that he had been able to see the Bill; and he must |