able support. We refer to that upon the position of the Jews. Lord George Bentinck was a friend of civil and religious freedom; he could not be otherwise, reared as he had been in the school of Canning, as Canning had been trained in that of Pitt, and he accordingly supported, against the wishes of his political friends, the bill for the relief of the Jewish Disabilities. He not alone supported it by his vote, but spoke ably in its favour. We are not about to enter on the question, we have referred to it merely for the purpose of showing, that Bentinck was the friend of all who deserve friendship from good men. Every body knows that in "Coningby" Mr. Disraeli has written eloquently and brilliantly upon the old Hebrew race, but he has never written more eloquently or more truly than in the following passages. He is referring to the social and moral condition of the Jews, and writes,

"In all the great cities of Europe, and in some of the great cities of Asia, among the infamous classes therein existing, there will always be found Jews. They are not the only people who are usurers, gladiators, and followers of mean and scandalous occupations, nor are they anywhere a majority of such, but considering their general numbers, they contribute perhaps more than their propor tion to the aggregate of the vile. In this they obey the law which regulates the destiny of all persecuted races: the infamous is the business of the dishonoured; and as infamous pursuits are generally illegal pursuits, the persecuted race which has most ability will be most successful in combating the law. The Jews have never been so degraded as the Greeks were throughout the Levant before their emancipation, and the degradation of the Greeks was produced by a period of persecution, which, both in amount and suffering, cannot compare with that which has been endured by the children of Israel. This peculiarity, however, attends the Jews under the most unfavourable circumstances; the other degraded races wear out and disappear; the Jew remains, as determined, as expert, as persevering, as full of resource and resolution as ever. Viewed in this light, the degradation of the Jewish race is alone a striking evidence of its excellence, for none but one of the great races could have survived the trials which it has endured.

"But though a material organisation of the highest class may account for so strange a consequence, the persecuted Hebrew is supported by other means. He is sustained by a sublime religion. Obdurate, malignant, odious, and revolting as the lowest Jew appears to us, he is rarely demoralised. Beneath his own roof his heart opens to the influence of his beautiful Arabian traditions. All his ceremonies, his customs, and his festivals, are still to celebrate the bounty of nature and the favour of Jehovah. The patriarchal

feeling lingers about his hearth. A man, however fallen, who loves his home, is not wholly lost. The trumpet of Sinai still sounds in the Hebrew ear, and a Jew is never seen upon the scaffold, unless it be at an auto du fè."

Referring to the great superiority of the Jews of our day, in art, and music, and the drama, he writes

"It seems that the only means by which, in these modern times, we are permitted to develope the beautiful, is music. It would appear definitively settled that excellence in the plastic arts is the privilege of the earlier ages of the world. All that is now produced in this respect is mimetic, and, at the best, the skilful adaptation of traditional methods. The creative faculty of modern man seems, by an irresistible law at work on the virgin soil of science, daily increasing by its inventions our command over nature, and multiplying the material happiness of man. But the happiness of man is not merely material. Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the beautiful is dead. Music seems to be the only means of creating the beautiful, in which we not only equal but in all probability greatly excel the ancients. The music of modern Europe ranks with the transcendant creations of human genius; the poetry, the statues, the temples of Greece. It produces and represents as they did whatever is most beautiful in the spirit of man, and often expresses what is most profound. And who are the great composers who hereafter will rank with Homer, with Sophocles, with Praxiteles, or with Phidias? They are the descendants of those Arabian tribes who conquered Canaan, and who, by the favour of the Most High, have done more with less means even than the Athenians.

66

:

Forty years ago-not a longer period than the children of Israel were wandering in the desert-the two most dishonoured races in Europe were the Attic and the Hebrew, and they were the two races that had done most for mankind. Their fortunes had some similarity their countries were the two smallest in the world, equally barren and equally famous; they both divided themselves into tribes; both built a most famous temple on an acropolis; and both produced a literature which all European nations have accepted with reverence and admiration. Athens has been sacked oftener than Jerusalem, and oftener rased to the ground; but the Athenians have escaped expatriation, which is purely an oriental custom. The sufferings of the Jews, however, have been infinitely more prolonged and varied than those of the Athenians. The Greek, nevertheless, appears exhausted. The creative genius of Israel, on the contrary, never shown so bright; and when the Russian, the Frenchman, and the Anglo-Saxon, amid applauding theatres or the choral voices of solemn temples yield themselves to the full spell of a Mozart or a Mendelsohn, it seems difficult to comprehend how these races can reconcile it to their hearts to persecute a Jew."

We think that in arguing this question of Jewish right and Jewish wrong, Mr. Disraeli has dwelt too much upon the

æsthetic, or the sympathetic, phases of the subject. The very men who vote for the Jewish Emancipation will not agree with him in his estimate of the Jewish religion. They will vote for the admission of the Jews to Parliament as Bentinck did, solely on the ground of their being loyal Englishmen. The Jews have been in all ages oppressed, and we are only now discovering what that man, who, as he was beyond most men of his time in learning, so he was above all the bigotries and prejudices of his age, John Selden knew, more than two centuries ago, when he said, "Talk what you will of the Jews, that they are cursed, they thrive wherever they come; they are able to oblige the prince of their country by lending him money; none of them beg, they keep together, and for their being hated, my life for yours, Christians hate one another as

"*

much."

Mr. Disraeli thinks that the manner in which the Gospel of the New Testament has been presented to the Jews was not at all calculated to make them love it, or its followers, and there can be no doubt whatever, that where it has been attempted to sabre men into Christianity, or as it were, pitchfork them out of idolatry or misbelief, the result has been found any thing but satisfactory. Having stated the frightful cruelties inflicted on the Jews by all people of all nations, and by every ecclesiastical tribunal of every religion, Mr. Disraeli

writes

"Is it, therefore, wonderful, that a great portion of the Jewish race should not believe in the most important portion of the Jewish religion? As, however, the converted races become more humane in their behaviour to the Jews, and the latter have opportunity fully to comprehend and deeply to ponder over true Christianity, it is difficult to suppose that the result will not be very different. Whether presented by a Roman or Anglo-Catholic, or Geneveve, Divine, by Pope, Bishop, or Presbyter, there is nothing, one would suppose, very repugnant to the feelings of a Jew, when he learns that the redemption of the human race has been effected by the mediatorial agency of a child of Israel; if the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation be developed to him, he will remember that the blood of Jacob is a chosen and peculiar blood, and if so transcendant a consummation is to occur, he will scarcely deny that only one race could be deemed worthy of accomplishing it. There may be points of doctrine on which the northern and western races may perhaps never agree. The Jew, like them, may follow that path in those respects

which reason and feeling alike dictate; but nevertheless, it can hardly be maintained that there is anything revolting to a Jew to learn that a Jewess is the queen of heaven, or that the flower of the Jewish race are even now sitting on the right hand of the Lord God of Sabaoth.

66

Perhaps, too, in this enlightened age, as his mind expands and he takes a comprehensive view of this period of progress, the pupil of Moses may ask himself, whether all the princes of the house of David have done so much for the Jews as that prince who was crucified on Calvary? Had it not been for Him, the Jews would have been comparatively unknown, or known only as a high oriental caste which had lost its country. Has not He made their history the most famous in the world? Has not He hung up their laws in every temple? Has not He vindicated all their wrongs? Has not He avenged the victory of Titus and conquered the Cæsars? What successes did they anticipate from their Messiah? The wildest dreams of their rabbis have been far exceeded. Has not Jesus conquered Europe and changed its name into Christendom? All countries that refuse the cross wither, while the whole of the new world is devoted to the Semitic principle and its most glorious offspring the Jewish faith, and the time will come when the vast communities and countless myriads of America and Australia, looking upon Europe as Europe now looks upon Greece, and wondering how so small a space could have achieved such great deeds, will still find music in the songs of Sion and solace in the parables of Galilee.

"These may be dreams, but there is one fact which none can contest. Christianity may continue to persecute Jews, and Jews may persist in disbelieving Christians, but who can deny that Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnate Son of the Most High God, is the eternal glory of the Jewish race?"

We have dwelt at so great a length upon the portions of this Biography which relate to Ireland, that we fear to outwrite our space by entering into the history of Bentinck's efforts to protect the interests of the colonial sugar-growers, and to resist the repeal of the Navigation Laws. However, the facts are known to all who pay any attention to the political events of our time, and the returns we have given show how fearfully the repeal of the Navigation Laws has operated upon the shipping interests of the kingdom. We feel a deep anxiety for the name and honour of Lord George Bentinck. To know him was to admire him. True and honest, sincere and firm in heart and mind, he would have been a great man had God spared him. He was reared amongst statesmen, who believed honour and principle higher than place, or than the applause of brawling demagogues, purchased by shameless apostacy; who prized the glory of England above all other considerations, and who considered the

dignity of their country as a thing too holy to be sullied by a base alliance with an Austrian puppet, or a beggarly French adventurer. Chatham, and Pitt, and Burke, and Fox, and Huskisson, and Canning, were of this class. To follow in their steps was Bentinck's greatest anxiety; to leave a name and fame like to theirs was his most ardent hope.

"About to part probably for many months, and listening to him as he spoke according to his custom with so much fervour and sincerity, one could not refrain from musing over his singular and sudden career. It was not three years since he had in an instant occupied the minds of men. No series of parliamentary labours had ever prodnced so much influence in the country in so short a time. Never was a reputation so substantial built up in so brief a space. All the questions with which he had dealt were colossal questions : the laws that should regulate competition between native and foreign labour; the interference of the state in the development of the resources of Ireland; the social and commercial condition of our tropical colonies; the principles upon which our revenue should be raised; the laws that should regulate and protect our navigation. But it was not that he merely expressed opinions upon these subjects; he came forward with details in support of his principles and policy which it had been before believed none but a minister could command. Instead of experiencing the usual and almost inevitable doom of private members of Parliament, and having his statements shattered by official information, Lord George Bentinck, on the contrary, was the assailant, and the successful assailant of an administration on these very heads. He often did their work more effectually than all their artificial training enabled them to do it. His acute research and his peculiar sources of information roused the vigilance of all the public offices of the country. Since his time there has been more care in preparing official returns and in arranging the public correspondence placed on the table of the House of Commons."

This labour could not be continued, and yet Bentinck was not the man to pause in the race of life. He continued to work with all the unswerving determination of his nature— and at length that nature outwore its feebler frame.

"On the 21st of September, after breakfasting with his family, he retired to his dressing-room, where he employed himself with some papers, and then wrote three letters, one to Lord Enfield, another to the Duke of Richmond, and the third to the writer of these pages. That letter is now at hand; it is of considerable length, consisting of seven sheets of note paper, full of interesting details of men and things, and written not only in a cheerful but even a merry mood. Then, when his letters were sealed, about four o'clock he took his staff and went forth to walk to Thoresby, the