Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850
THE JEW BILL
The period at which this obnoxious measure has been brought forward, limits our present remarks to a few paragraphs. But we have so long fought for the Constitution, that We cannot suffer the month to pass without reprobating an intrigue, which we cannot but regard as most dangerous to the Empire. We are no bigots, – we demand no surrender of the rights of opinion, – we force no man to our altars, – we forbid no man's access to his own; but to avert public evil is a duty of every subject, – to strip hypocrisy is clearly an act of justice, – and to protect religion is only an act of supreme necessity. We solemnly believe, that to bring the Jew into the Parliament of England, would be at once injury to the Constitution, a peril to public principle, and an insult to Christianity.
The attempt was made last year, and was defeated. It is now to be renewed, without the slightest additional ground, and the battle will have to be fought over again. Must we not ask, is this experiment to be again made on public patience? Is it meant to tell the people of England, that what common sense rejects, is to be forced on general weariness; that what manly principle repels, is to be gained by vulgar perseverance; and that which public judgement denounces, is to be made law by the united effect of disgust and disdain producing indifference? We trust that the common sense of England will speak such a language to the Legislature, as to extinguish the prestige that obstinacy in the wrong is more effective than honesty in the right; that to be sickened of a struggle, is a legitimate reason for abandoning the contest; and that a great nation can be yawned out of the greatest interests in the world.
The first question of all is, Can this admission of the Jew into a Christian legislature be compatible with the character of a Christian constitution? If we live in bad times, with the evidence of bad practices in important positions, and with a powerful propensity among influential classes to sacrifice everything to the moment, this consciousness should only be a stronger claim on the vigilance of honest men. However strangely it may sound in some ears, England is still a Christian country: however some may doubt, the country still demands a Christian legislature; and, notwithstanding all opinions on the subject, we believe that to worship God and Mammon is still as impossible as it was pronounced to be eighteen hundred years ago. We believe that it is only by national virtue that nations can retain the divine protection; that zeal for the divine honour is the supreme source of virtue; and that to sacrifice the honour of God to any earthly purpose, is only to bring divine desertion on a people. Must we not ask, is there any national demand, national necessity, or religious principle, connected with giving legislative power, at this time, to the Jew?
Where is the national demand? If the Jew, in some instances, is rich, is mere money to be the qualification for giving legislative power? In the simplest point of view, must we not demand ability, personal honour, a personal interest in the country, and a personal evidence that the trustee will never betray or abandon his trust? But what is the Jew? He has no country. By being equally a member of all countries, he is equally an alien in all; beyond the casual connexion of trade, he has no connexion with any kingdom of earth: his only country is his counting-house, – his only city is the Exchange. His world consists in his traffic; and if any calamity should fall on one of those kingdoms where he keeps his counting-house, he transfers himself, like a Bill of Exchange, to the next; and in whatever land is equally at home. The Jew gives no pledge to any country; he is no possessor of land, no leader of science, no professor of the liberal pursuits, no manufacturer, no merchant, no sailor, no soldier; as if some irresistible destination prohibited him from ever finally settling in any land, his property is always ready to take wing. Must we not ask, Is this fugitive the man who has a right to share the privileges of the Englishman, bound, as we are, to the soil by nature, and bound to its defence and prosperity by the indissoluble obligation of nature?
In a political point of view, what security could we have for confiding in the Jew, – for intrusting our finances, our liberties, our councils, the guardianship of our country, to the Jew? The especial and perpetual object of his existence is money. Now, while every man knows that money is the great corrupter of the human mind, that, except in minds fully fortified by principle, it overwhelms all other objects, and that, in all the convulsions of the greatest war of Europe – the war of the French Revolution – the secrets of every Continental cabinet were at the mercy of the purse; do we desire to see this supremacy extended? Do we desire to see the principles of fraud and falsehood made a regular material in the market of public transactions, and lucre exalted into the sole object of existence?
As to the practical effect of bringing the tribe of the money-dealer into Parliament, would any man, in the exercise of his experience, wish to see the finances of England in the hands of any Jew in existence? And let no man pretend that this conception is imaginary. Place a Jew in Parliament, giving him the power of making a party; give him the opportunity of working on the impulses, habits, or necessities of men; and in twelve months you may see him anything he desires, – even Chancellor of the Exchequer. But he is a man of honour; he will not sell the secrets of Council; he will not copy a despatch for the benefit of his partners; he will not raise or sink the stocks, though every movement may add a million to the coffers of his partnership. We hope not; but can we run the risk? But the fact is, that he is a man not to be judged of by the feelings of any other in the world; he differs from all other men. What is patriotism to the Jew? He knows nothing of it. Who ever heard of the Jew taking any part in those noble struggles which have saved the honour or secured the rights of any nation on earth? His business is gain, and it is the only business that he ever follows; from the man with ten firms and five hundred clerks, with a counting-house in every village from the Rhine to the Neva, down to the seller of old clothes, and the pedlar in dilapidated slippers, who ever heard of a Jew thinking of anything but to make money?
But the view which must supersede all others, is the aspect of the measure as it relates to religion. Great Britain is certainly, on the whole, a religious country: it perhaps contains more true religion than all the earth besides; but its fault is, that, though reverent in the church, it does not sufficiently carry its reverence into the course of common life. If this were done, there would be no difficulties in public opinion. It is in no superstition that we say, the only question to be asked on any doubtful course of action is, "Will it please God? Is it for the honour of God?" This is what the Scripture calls "walking with God," and describes as the essential character of virtue. But the majority of mankind add to those questions, Will it benefit myself? The statesman asks, Shall I lose power by it? – the merchant, Shall I lose profit? – the tradesman, Shall I lose custom? And this question is the master-key to the diversities of opinion on points which, to the unbiassed mind, are as clear as the sun.
Let us put the matter in a more every-day point of view. Let us suppose the question asked, Would you take for your friend a man who denied your God, who scoffed at your religion, and who declared yourself a dupe or a deceiver? Yet all this the Jew does openly by the profession of his own creed. Can you conceive it for the honour of your Redeemer, to give this man your confidence in the highest form in which it can be given by a subject? Or can you bring yourself to believe that you are doing your duty to Christ in declaring by your conduct, that to be hostile to Him makes no imaginable difference in your estimate of the character of any man?
On those points it is wholly impossible that there can be any doubt whatever. The enemy of Christ cannot, without a crime, be favoured, still less patronised and promoted, by the friend of Christ. Now, this feeling is neither prejudice nor persecution: it merely takes the words of the Jew himself; and it would not force him, by the slightest personal injury, to change the slightest of his opinions. It is merely the conduct which all who were unbiassed by gain, or unperverted by personal objects, would follow in any common act of life. To give power to the Jew, from the motives of pelf, or party, or through indifference, is criminal; and it is against this crime that we protest, and that we desire to guard our fellow Christian.
We must now rapidly pass through the leading points of the question. The Jew is a "condemned man." More than three thousand years ago, Moses, in pronouncing the future history of the people, declared that a teacher should finally be sent to their nation, like himself, a man; and mingling as such among men, to give them a law, not in clouds and thunders as at Sinai, nor written in tables of stone, nor fixed in stern ordinances, but written in the heart, and acting by the understanding: and that, if they rejected him, they should be made nationally to answer the national crime to the Almighty. Him they rejected, and the rejection has been answered by national ruin. The prophecy is before the eye of the world; the fulfilment is also before the eye of the world.
The Jew is an undone being, if there be truth in the words of inspiration. "He that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." (John iii. 35, 36.) What right have we to dispense with such words? The declaration is unequivocal; and if there be a compassionate allowance for the barbarian, who has no Bible and whom the gospel has never reached, what allowance can there be for the Jew, possessing the Bible and living in the sound of the gospel? But this language is not alone. We have the declaration of ruin constantly expressed or implied, "Who is a liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father." (1 John ii. 22)
Are those deniers the men whom the Christian is to take into the very centre of his political favouritism? Are the brands of Scripture on the national forehead to be scorned by a people professing obedience to the Divine will? Can human conception supply a stronger proof of the reality of those brands than the condition of the Jews ever since their first fulfilment, in the fall of Jerusalem – the terrible reply to their own anathema, "His blood be on us, and on our children."
What is the state of the Jew himself with respect to sacred things? Nothing but ignorance can speak of the religion of the Jew. So far as belongs to worship, he has none. Sacrifice, the solemnisation of the three great festivals, the whole ceremonial of the temple, were essential to Judaism. The Jew cannot perform a single public ceremonial of his religion. Sacrifice was supremely essential for nearly the atonement of every fault of man; but it could be offered only in the Temple. The Temple is gone. What now becomes of his atonement?
A weak attempt is made to answer this tremendous question, by referring to the condition of the Jews in Babylon. But what comparison can exist between a captivity prophetically limited to years not exceeding a single life, passed under the protection of kings, and under the guardianship of the most illustrious man of Asia, the prophet Daniel, cheered by prophecy and miracle, and certain of return, and the eighteen hundred years' banishment of the Jew? What comparison between the temporary suspension of the national worship, and the undefined and hopeless duration which seems to lie before the Jewish exile; and which, when it shall close at last, will extinguish his Judiasm, will show him his folly only by stripping the superstition of the Rabbi and the Talmud from his eyes, and will awake him at once to the extent of his error, to the exercise of his understanding, and to the worship of Christianity?
After considerations of this order, all others must be almost trivial. But the common declamation on the natural right of the Jew to be represented in Parliament is verbiage. But the Jew is actually represented, as much as a multitude of other interests of superior importance are represented. Are the fifteen thousand clergy of the Church of England (a body worth all the Jews on the globe) personally represented? Are the millions of England under twenty-one represented? One might thus go through the great industrious classes of England, and find that, out of twenty millions, there are not one million electors. And what claim have a class – who come to this country only to make money, and who make nothing but money, and who, if they could make more money anywhere else on the earth, would go there to-morrow – to an equality of right with the manly, honest, and attached son of England, every day of whose life adds something to the comfort or the credit of the community?
The whole and sole claim of the Jew is, that some of his party are rich. How they have made their riches, or how they spend them, is beneath us to inquire. But what are their national evidences, even of wealth, it might be difficult to discover. They exhibit no fruits here, nor anywhere. It has been often asked, with genuine astonishment, what signs of national liberality have ever been given by Jewish wealth in the world? What contribution does it make, or has it ever made, to the arts that decorate life, to the literature that enlightens it, or to those bold and commanding services by which nations are raised or restored? Where are the picture galleries, or the great libraries, the great institutions, erected by the wealth of the Jew? As to the genius which endows mankind, for generations to come, with noble inventions, or leaves its name behind in a track of glory to posterity, who ever heard of it among the Jews? Shopkeepers of London have planted its vicinity with great establishments, castles of charity, magnificent monuments of practical religion, to which all the works of Jewish bounty are molehills. The Jews have an hospital and a few schools, – and there the efflux of liberality stops, the stream stagnates, the river becomes a pond, and the pond dries away.
It is remarkable, and may be a punitive consequence, that there is nothing so fugitive as the wealth of the Jew. There is perhaps no hereditary example of Jewish wealth in the world. In England we have seen opulent firms, but they have never had the principle of permanency. Supposed to be boundlessly wealthy, a blight came, and every leaf dropt off. One powerful firm now lords it over the loan-market of Europe. We have no desire to anticipate the future; but what has become of all its predecessors in this country? or what memorial have they all left, to make us regret their vanishing, or remember their existence?
Of the sudden passion with which Ministers have snatched the Israelite to their bosom, we shall leave the explanation until their day of penitence. As poverty makes man submit to strange companionship, political necessity may make a Whig Cabinet stoop to the embrace of the Jew. The resource is desperate, but the exigency must be equally so. We hail the omen, – the grasp at straws shows nothing but the exhaustion of the swimmer.
On one point more alone we shall touch. It is of a graver kind. It has been the source of a kind of ignorant consideration for the Jews, that prophecy speaks of their future restoration. But, as Jews they will never be restored. In the last days some powerful influence of the Holy Spirit will impel the surviving Jews to solicit an admission into Christianity. How many or how few will survive the predicted universal convulsion of these days, is not for man to tell; the terrible, or the splendid, catastrophes of those times are still hidden; but no Jew well ever dwell in the presence of the patriarchs, but as a "new creature" – a being cleared from the prejudices of his exiled fathers, and by supernatural interposition purified from the unbelief, to be rescued from the ruin, of his stiff-necked people.
The measure must be thrown out by the awakened power of public opinion. We must not indulge our indolence in relying on the House of Lords. They may do their duty, but we must do ours. The Jew must not enter the Christian Legislature.
THE PICTURES OF THE SEASON
The taste for pictorial art, if its progress may be measured by the opportunity afforded for its gratification, is decidedly upon the increase in this country. In London, especially, pictures of one class or other form, each successive year, a larger and more important item in the sum of public amusements. During the present season of 1850 there have been open, at one time, four exhibitions consisting chiefly of oil paintings, two numerous collections of water-colour drawings, and panoramas and dioramas in unprecedented number and of unusual excellence. These last, although pertaining to a lower walk of art, have strong claims on consideration for their scenic truthfulness and artistic skill, and are fairly to be included in an estimate of the state of public feeling for the pictorial. The four first exhibitions alone comprise upwards of three thousand works of art, now for the first time submitted to public inspection. As usual, the exhibition of the Royal Academy is the most important and deserving of attention. Numerically, the Society of British Artists claims the next place; but in point of interest it must yield precedence to the British Institution, now for some weeks closed, and also to the exhibition of an association of artists which has installed itself, upon a novel principle, and under the title of the National Institution, in a building constructed for its accommodation, and known as the Portland Gallery. It were for some reasons desirable – it certainly would be favourable to the comparative appreciation of merit – that, as at Paris, the whole of the annual harvest of pictures should be collected in one edifice, subject, of course, to such previous examination by a competent and impartial council, as should exclude those works unworthy of exhibition. But such a system, however pleasant it might be found by the public, could hardly be made agreeable to the artists. The most indulgent censorship, excluding none but the veriest daubs – nay, even the plan of open doors to all comers, which has lately clothed a portion of the walls of the Republican Louvre with canvass spoiled by ignorance and presumption, would fail to satisfy artists and their friends. In London, as in Paris under the old system, it is less the question of admission than the placing of the pictures that is the source of discontent. The excluded conceal their discomfiture; the misplaced grumble loudly, and not always without reason, especially as regards the Academy exhibition. The fault may be more in the rooms that contain, than in the men who place the pictures. Of course everybody whose work gets into the Octagon Room feels aggrieved, although it is evident that, as long as that ridiculous nook is used to contain pictures, some unlucky artists must fill it. The good places in the other rooms – limited as is the extent of these compared to the large number of pictures annually exhibited in them – cannot be very numerous, although they may be multiplied by the exercise of judgment, and by impartial attention to the requirements of each picture as regards light and elevation. The best possible arrangement, however, will fail to please everybody, and the persons to whom falls the difficult task of distributing a thousand or fifteen hundred pictures over the walls of a suite of rooms inadequate to their proper accommodation, must be prepared to endure some obloquy, and esteem themselves fortunate if the public acquit them of flagrant partiality or negligence. It is not our purpose to dilate on this oft-mooted and still vexed question. We have no polemical intention in the present paper, in which we shall not have too much space to note down a few of the thoughts that suggested themselves to us during our morning wanderings amongst the throng of pictures in four exhibitions.
The great event of the artist's year, the opening of the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, is of course the signal for a Babel of opinions. The question which on all sides is heard: What sort of Exhibition is this? obtains the most conflicting replies. People are too apt to trust to their first impressions, and to indulge in sweeping censure or excessive encomium. We have heard this year's exhibition set down by some as first-rate, by others as exceedingly poor. Our own opinion, after careful examination and consideration, is, that it has rather less than the average amount of merit. This we believe to be also the opinion of the majority of those most competent to judge. There is certainly an unusually small number of pictures of striking excellence; nor is this atoned for by any marked improvement in those artists whose works can claim but a second rank. One circumstance unfavourable to the interest of the exhibition is the uncommonly large number of portraits, the majority of which are not very admirable either in subject or execution. The impression, as one walks through the rooms, is, that an extraordinary number of ugly or uninteresting persons have got themselves painted by careless or indifferent artists. Of landscapes there seem to be fewer than usual – certainly fewer good ones. Some of the best of this class of painters have contributed to other exhibitions. On the other hand, historical, scriptural, and dramatic subjects are numerous, but not in many cases have they been treated with very great success. One of the foremost pictures in the Exhibition – certainly the one about which most curiosity has been excited – is Edwin Landseer's Dialogue at Waterloo. We are unfeigned admirers of Mr Landseer's genius, but we do not think this one of his happiest efforts. There is much fashion in these matters; people are very apt to be led away by a name, and to fall into ecstasies before a picture simply because it is by a great painter. We believe it impossible for Edwin Landseer to paint anything that shall not have great merit, but he is certainly most felicitous when confining himself to what is strictly speaking his own style. We do not think him successful as a portrait painter. His Marchioness of Douro does less than justice to the beautiful original. As to the Duke of Wellington, it is a failure; especially if, as we are assured, it is intended to be his portrait as he now is. We certainly cannot admire the burly figure and swarthy complexion of Mr Landseer's Duke, which gives us the idea of a younger and more robust man than him it is intended to represent. We should be disposed to object to the strained appearance of the downward-pointing hand; but the gesture is said to be one habitual to the original, and of course the painter was right to preserve character, even at the cost of grace. The less prominent portion of the picture is the most to our taste – the peasants and child, the dogs and game, and the plough horses with their old driver. We are not quite clear as to what it all means; some of the objects seeming rather to have been dragged in than naturally to have come thither; the tablecloth spread in the ploughed field appearing rather out of character, and the left-hand corner of the picture having altogether somewhat of a crowded aspect: but these are trifles not worth dwelling upon. The painting is evidently unfinished. The subject of Mr Landseer's second picture, a shepherd digging the stragglers from his flock out of a snow-drift, is of less interest than that of his larger work; but, in an artistic point of view, it claims higher praise. His snow is admirable, the tender gray tints are full of light, and distributed with surpassing skill; and the earnest laborious face of the delving peasant is very vigorous and characteristic. Mr Landseer is so accurate an observer of brute nature that it is with extreme caution we venture to criticise his animals, but we must say that the wool of his sheep in this painting has a hard and cork-like look. Upon the whole it is a question with us, when we revert to some of this artist's former productions, whether he is painting as carefully as he used to do. Looking at his Waterloo Dialogue, we say no; but an affirmative starts to our lips when we examine his last and smallest picture in this year's Exhibition, Lady Murchison's dog. With this the most fastidious would be troubled to find fault. It is a gem of admirable finish. If Mr Landseer's power of drawing, in the grander contours of his designs, were equal to the skill he displays in the details, he would leave nothing to desire.
Mr Maclise has two pictures in this exhibition. There is scarcely an English artist living concerning whom we are more embarrassed to make up our minds, than concerning the painter of The Spirit of Justice and The Gross of Green Spectacles. His merits and defects are alike very great, and unfortunately he delays to amend the latter – if indeed it be in his power so to do. His first-named and larger picture, whilst it contains much to admire, leaves a great deal to be desired. To us it is a vexatious performance. We cannot look at it without admitting it to be the work of no ordinary artist, and we feel the more annoyed at the mannerism that detracts from its merit. Mr Maclise has fertility of invention and power of design, but there is a deficiency of true artistical feeling in his execution. We cannot coincide, besides, with the notion which he, in common with many others, seems to entertain, that fresco painting precludes chiaroscuro. In The Spirit of Justice there are some good faces; but there are more that are unnecessarily ugly, and several of faulty expression. Justice has a fine countenance and altogether pleases us well. The widow's face is hard and unflesh-like; the accuser, who drags the murderer before the tribunal, and displays a bloody dagger as evidence of guilt, and the free citizen who unrolls the charter of liberty, are anything but admirable. The accuser looks more like an informer than an avenger. Nothing can be more unfavourable to the face than the sort of scrubby, colourless, thinly-sown stubble with which his chin is provided, as a contrast, we presume, with the dark hirsute countenance of the criminal, who, deducting the beard, might pass for a portrait of Mr Macready, of one of whose favourite attitudes the position of the head and shoulders particularly reminds us. With all its defects, however, this is by far the best of Mr Maclise's two pieces. The Gross of Spectacles we consider a failure. It is a gross of spectacles, and little besides. The first thing that catches the eye is Moses' unlucky bargain. There they are, the twelve dozen, in green cases and with plated rims. We submit that the first thing which should attract the eye is the countenances of the actors in the scene. Owing to their tameness of expression, these, which should be prominent, are almost subordinate to the inanimate details of the apartment. Unimportant as it is, we are inclined to prefer the recess, and the peep through the window, to any other part of the picture. There is an airiness and transparency in that corner of the canvass, which we in vain seek elsewhere. The general effect is very hard. The hair of Moses and the little boy is as unlike hair as it well can be: we remember to have seen something very like it upon a tea-tray. These are technical objections. But Mr Maclise may rely upon it that he lacks the keen perception of humour indispensable to the artist who would illustrate Goldsmith.
Amongst the scriptural and mythological paintings, those of Mr Patten and Mr F. R. Pickersgill attract at least as much notice as they deserve. Besides portraits, Mr Patten has contributed three pictures. His Susannah and the Elders is remarkable as being the most decidedly indecent picture exhibited this year. The subject is not a very pleasing one, and, to our thinking, has been painted quite often enough. But this is not the question. Mr Patten has put his version of it out of the pale of propriety by his mode of handling it. There is nothing classical in his treatment, nothing to redeem or elevate the nudity and associations of the subject. His Susannah is simply a naked English girl, with a pretty face, an immaculate cuticle, and something exceedingly voluptuous in the form and arrangement of her limbs. There is no novelty of conception in the picture, nor any particular merit except the colouring, which is good, but not equal to that in No. 446, Bacchus discovering the Use of the Grape. This is a pleasanter subject, cleverly treated, displaying more originality and much better taste. The flesh-tints are capital, and the picture altogether does credit to the painter. Venus and Cupid, by the same artist, is chiefly remarkable for a plaster-of-Paris dove of an extraordinarily brilliant and very unnatural effect. As to Mr F. R. Pickersgill, we should like his pictures better if he would not imitate poor Etty, whose memory, be it parenthetically observed, has been little regarded by those who have exhibited that most coarse and unpleasant picture, The Toilet, No. 276, a specimen of the deceased artist's worst manner. Mr Pickersgill's Samson Betrayed is, there is no denying it, a very unsatisfactory composition. His red-haired Dalilah is graceless and characterless. Samson, recumbent in an attitude in which no man ever slept soundly, seems prevented only by a miracle from slipping off her knees. Two girls, instead of getting to a safe distance, are hugging each other in terror within reach of the giant's arm. There is scarcely an attitude in the picture that is not strained. In the conception there is an utter want of novelty of circumstance. The whole picture is deficient in originality. The eye wanders over it, seeking some feature of special interest or striking beauty whereon to dwell, and finds none. Mr Pickersgill has good qualities, but the spark of fancy and genius which alone can complete the great painter, is, we fear, wanting in his composition.