y John Leech and Gilbert Abbott a
Beckett alike against the Jewish community was to some extent shared not
only by kindly Thackeray himself, but even by Jerrold, and was
expressive no doubt of the general feeling of the day. Mark Lemon
certainly did nothing to temper the flood of merciless derision which
_Punch_ for a while poured upon the whole house of Israel, and some of
Brooks's verses are to this day quoted with keen relish in anti-Semitic
circles. In his campaign against the sweaters in the early 'Forties a
picture appeared in the Almanac for 1845 in which such an employer was
represented by Leech as a Jew of aldermanic proportions, rich and
bloated in appearance and of monstrous ostentation and vulgarity. Yet
_Punch's_ hatred was really only skin-deep, or, at least, was directed
against manners rather than against men; and this fact, curiously
enough, gave rise to one of those misunderstandings of which the paper
has from time to time been the subject. In the spring of 1844 the
"Morning Post" was vigorously denounced by _Punch_ for suggesting such a
possibility as a "gentleman Jew," and proposed that the "accursed dogs"
had more than their rights in being spoken of as "persons of the Hebrew
faith." Thereupon a Jewish reader, considering that _Punch's_ expression
bordered upon rudeness, and that the sufferance which was his tribal
badge need not under the circumstances seal his lips, wrote to protest
against the "malice and grossness of language"--for he had failed to
appreciate _Punch's_ robust irony and too carefully veiled championship.
Then, in one of those generous moods which often directed Jerrold's pen,
_Punch_ explained. (Vol. VI., 1844, p. 106.) He pointed out how his
article had been directed against the "bygone bigotry and present
uncharitableness" of the "Morning Post;" he quoted Defoe's "Short Way
with Dissenters," in which the author satirically advocated their social
rights, as an example of how one may be misunderstood by the men they
desire to serve; he reminded his readers how, when "Gulliver's Travels"
was published, a certain bishop publicly proclaimed that he didn't
believe a word of it; and he asked if he--_Punch_--should complain,
then, when his advocacy of common rights and liberties of the Hebrew is
"arraigned of malice, prejudice, and jealousy." But the Jewish
Disabilities Removal Bill had not at that time been introduced.

It was in 1847 that this measure was brought in, and _Punch_ was