more
strictly orthodox. The outcome legally recognized that there was
nothing in Jewish law or faith which prevented its adherents from
being legitimate and full members of a modern State which, at that
time, practically recognized Catholicism as the State-Church. The
significance of the decision was far-reaching not alone for the Jews
but for the whole European State system; it was a practical
recognition that the Country, not the Faith, was the foundation of a
nation and thus gave the final blow to the conception of a
Church-Empire, which had upheld the contrary principle. It was not
without significance that simultaneously the Emperor of Austria agreed
to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire.

_Liberalism Draws the Jews to Its Ranks_

BUT though the Jews had had no influence on the French Revolution and
no share in Napoleon's revolutionary reorganization of West Europe,
the benefit they reaped from both movements was second only to that of
the serfs. For the Jews and the serfs were the two most oppressed
classes under the feudal system still surviving. And so the Jews
imbibed with enthusiasm the libertarian principles of the Revolution
and the "open career" administration of Napoleon. They threw off with
avidity most of the shackles which prevented their joining in general
European culture, and Jewish parents of means immediately began giving
their sons and, what is more, their daughters, the secular education
which would adapt them to the careers now seemingly open to them, as
publicists, lawyers, and civil servants. When the reaction came, under
the Holy Alliance, with its attempt to revive the Church-State and the
closed career of prerogative, Jews everywhere in Western Europe joined
the Liberal forces, from whose triumph alone they could hope for a
dispersal of the clouds which once more obscured the sun of liberty in
which they had basked for a few short years. Jews soon ranked among
the intellectual leaders of continental Liberalism, and from 1815 to
1848 exercised an appreciable influence on the course of public
opinion. In particular a brilliant band of Jewish litterateurs in
Germany helped to mediate between French Liberalism and German public
opinion, and practically led the movement known as Young Germany,
which opposed the cosmopolitan tendencies of the eighteenth century to
the narrow nationalism of the Reaction and advocated the Revolution
principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as aga