he may not in the most trivial case grant a
new trial. He may rule the money market: he may influence the
exchanges: he may be summoned to congresses of Emperors and Kings. Great
potentates, instead of negotiating a loan with him by tying him in a
chair and pulling out his grinders, may treat with him as with a great
potentate, and may postpone the declaring of war or the signing of a
treaty till they have conferred with him. All this is as it should
be: but he must not be a Privy Councillor. He must not be called Right
Honourable, for that is political power. And who is it that we are
trying to cheat in this way? Even Omniscience. Yes, Sir; we have been
gravely told that the Jews are under the divine displeasure, and that if
we give them political power God will visit us in judgment. Do we then
think that God cannot distinguish between substance and form? Does not
He know that, while we withhold from the Jews the semblance and name
of political power, we suffer them to possess the substance? The plain
truth is that my honourable friend is drawn in one direction by his
opinions, and in a directly opposite direction by his excellent heart.
He halts between two opinions. He tries to make a compromise between
principles which admit of no compromise. He goes a certain way in
intolerance. Then he stops, without being able to give a reason for
stopping. But I know the reason. It is his humanity. Those who formerly
dragged the Jew at a horse's tail, and singed his beard with blazing
furzebushes, were much worse men than my honourable friend; but they
were more consistent than he.

It has been said that it would be monstrous to see a Jew judge try a man
for blasphemy. In my opinion it is monstrous to see any judge try a man
for blasphemy under the present law. But, if the law on that subject
were in a sound state, I do not see why a conscientious Jew might not
try a blasphemer. Every man, I think, ought to be at liberty to discuss
the evidences of religion; but no man ought to be at liberty to force on
the unwilling ears and eyes of others sounds and sights which must cause
annoyance and irritation. The distinction is clear. I think it wrong to
punish a man for selling Paine's Age of Reason in a back-shop to those
who choose to buy, or for delivering a Deistical lecture in a private
room to those who choose to listen. But if a man exhibits at a window
in the Strand a hideous caricature of that which is an object of awe
and ado