ration to nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of
people who pass up and down that great thoroughfare; if a man in a place
of public resort applies opprobrious epithets to names held in reverence
by all Christians; such a man ought, in my opinion, to be severely
punished, not for differing from us in opinion, but for committing a
nuisance which gives us pain and disgust. He is no more entitled to
outrage our feelings by obtruding his impiety on us, and to say that
he is exercising his right of discussion, than to establish a yard for
butchering horses close to our houses, and to say that he is exercising
his right of property, or to run naked up and down the public streets,
and to say that he is exercising his right of locomotion. He has a right
of discussion, no doubt, as he has a right of property and a right of
locomotion. But he must use all his rights so as not to infringe the
rights of others.

These, Sir, are the principles on which I would frame the law of
blasphemy; and if the law were so framed, I am at a loss to understand
why a Jew might not enforce it as well as a Christian. I am not a Roman
Catholic; but if I were a judge at Malta, I should have no scruple about
punishing a bigoted Protestant who should burn the Pope in effigy before
the eyes of thousands of Roman Catholics. I am not a Mussulman; but if
I were a judge in India, I should have no scruple about punishing a
Christian who should pollute a mosque. Why, then, should I doubt that
a Jew, raised by his ability, learning, and integrity to the judicial
bench, would deal properly with any person who, in a Christian country,
should insult the Christian religion?

But, says my honourable friend, it has been prophesied that the Jews are
to be wanderers on the face of the earth, and that they are not to mix
on terms of equality with the people of the countries in which they
sojourn. Now, Sir, I am confident that I can demonstrate that this is
not the sense of any prophecy which is part of Holy Writ. For it is an
undoubted fact that, in the United States of America, Jewish citizens do
possess all the privileges possessed by Christian citizens. Therefore,
if the prophecies mean that the Jews never shall, during their
wanderings, be admitted by other nations to equal participation of
political rights, the prophecies are false. But the prophecies are
certainly not false. Therefore their meaning cannot be that which is
attributed to them by my ho