II. The ‘London Evening-Post’ and the Jew Bill of 1753

Extract

Over the so-called ‘Jew Bill’; of 1753, the Opposition press was to wage one of the most extraordinary propaganda campaigns in English history. The Bill itself was a comparatively minor measure introduced by the Pelham ministry t o relieve at least some of the disabilities under which the Jews then laboured. Although there was probably no country in Europe in which the Jews received better treatment, and Jewish merchants and financiers had attained positions of very considerable wealth and influence in England, a number of irksome restrictions remained. This was particularly the case in the matter of naturalization, which gave to aliens the rights of natural-born Englishmen, such as the right to own land and ships, and to trade with the colonies. The Jewish Naturalization Bill–to give it its proper title—was designed to remove this disability, by providing that individual Jews who had been resident i n Great Britain or Ireland for three years might be naturalized by Act of Parliament without taking the Sacrament. It was a very modest measure. It certainly did not confer on all Jews in the country the rights of British citizens, and would, in fact, have applied only to a very small number of extremely wealthy Jews, for a private Act of Parliament was a very expensive proceeding indeed. Nor did it relieve Jews of religious disabilities. Yet this Bill was to produce a quite remarkable clamour on the part of the Opposition press, in which it was to be denounced as a blasphemous attack upon Christianity, and the unfortunate Jews were to be accused of every imaginable vice and enormity. There were few political issues in the early eighteenth century to arouse the emotions of Englishmen: but the ‘Jew Bill’; was certainly one of them.