Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/190

THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS Cardinal Caraffa relied upon necessity when he founded that celebrated tribunal whose practises are denounced by you, but upon whose maxims have a care lest you should unconsciously proceed. The sophistications of intolerance are refuted by their inconsistencies. If a Jew can choose, wherefore should he not be chosen? If a Jew can vote for a Christian, why should not a Christian vote for a Jew? Again, the Jew is admissable to the highest municipal employments; a Jew can be high sheriff—in other words, he can impanel the jury by which the first Christian commoner in England may be tried for his life.

But if necessity is to be pleaded as a justification for the exclusion of the Jew it must be founded on some great peril which would arise from his admission. What is it you fear? What is the origin of this Hebrewphobia? Do you tremble for the Church? The Church has something perhaps to fear from eight millions of Catholics and from three millions of Methodists and more than a million of Scotch seceders. The Church may have something to fear from the assault of sectaries from without, and still more to fear from a sort of spurious popery and the machinations of mitered mutiny from within; but from the synagog—the neutral, impartial, apathetic, and unproselytizing synagog—the Church has nothing to apprehend. But it is said that the House will become unchristianized. The Christianity of the Parliament depends on the Christianity of the country; and the Christianity 180