Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/560

546 hereafter to be admitted to the church, it became us to endeavour to prepare them for that period by encouraging them to settle where they would see the truth preached and practised, and not to leave them amongst false teachers, papists, and idolaters, he had permitted them to build a synagogue in London, and to live and trade amongst us.

In the reign of queen Anne the Jews had offered lord Godolphin half a million to obtain permission for them to purchase the town of Brentford, where they might establish themselves and trade, and they represented that they should bring into the circulation more than twenty millions of money; lord Godolphin dared not, however, brave the prejudices of the time. Pelham now ventured on this hazardous experiment. The bill was introduced into the lords, and passed it with singular ease, scarcely exciting an objection from the whole bench of bishops; and lord Lyttleton declaring that "he who hated another man for not being a Christian was not a Christian himself." But in the commons it raised a fierce debate. On the 7th of May, on the second reading, it was assailed by loud assertions that to admit the Jews to such privileges was to dishonour the Christian faith; that it would deluge the kingdom with usurers, brokers, and beggars; that the Jews would buy up the advowsons, and thus destroy the church; that it was flying directly in the face of God and of prophecy, which had declared that they should be scattered over the face of the earth, without any country or fixed abode. Pelham ridiculed the fears about the church, showing that, by their own rigid tenets, the Jews could neither enter our church nor marry our women, and could therefore never touch our religion, or amalgamate with us as a people; that as to civil offices, unless they took the sacrament, they could not even be excisemen or custom-house officers. The bill passed by a majority of ninety-five to sixteen; but the storm was only