Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/97

Rh their habits made them in a peculiar degree objects of hatred and contempt to the warlike population of England and the other countries in which they took up their residence. Yet almost wherever commerce had taken any root, there were they to be found, pursuing perseveringly under obloquy, danger, and the cruellest oppression, their peculiar trade. To draw down upon them still more of the popular suspicion and dislike in a rude and ignorant age, that trade was not any species of industry by which produce of any kind was visibly created; it did not necessarily imply even the exertion of any peculiar powers or acquirements; it was labour neither of the hand nor of the head. Yet it was, in truth, a trade as essential to the creation of wealth as any labour. The Jews were the capitalists of those times; they were dealers in that other element, by a combination with which alone it is that labour itself can, in the creation of wealth, accomplish any extraordinary results. Even in that dark and turbulent age the inherent power of property was strikingly evinced in their case, by the protection which it long secured to them, notwithstanding all the hostility of the popular feeling, and the disregard of them by the law itself. It was early found necessary to support them in their rights over their debtors; and, while affairs went on in their ordinary course, it does not appear that a Jew ever had any greater difficulty in recovering the money owing to him than a Christian. The law, indeed, seems to have considered the Jews as the property of the king: and he oppressed and plundered them to any extent that he deemed prudent. But he did not usually allow them to be injured by others; and perhaps, indeed, they were more secure under the royal protection than they would have been under that of the law. Some of the kings, William Rufus in particular, excited much popular clamour by favouring them, as it was alleged, too much. Their wealth enabled them, at different times, to purchase charters from the crown. For one which they obtained from King John, and which is styled a confirmation of their charters, they are recorded to have paid four