The Debate in the House of Commons: Jewish Finance, the National Debt, and English Society

The main discussion in the House of Commons over the bill was held on 7 May and can be schematically analyzed as hinging on two interrelated issues: the effect of “Jewish finance” on the English economy (including its colonial network) and the wide-ranging impact of the national debt.Footnote ¹⁹ Both sides agreed on the assumption that Jews were mostly employed in commerce and finance, not in manufacture. What they disagreed about was the contribution, or damage, that naturalization of Jews—conceived to trigger the introduction of Jewish immigrants—would cause. The bill's supporter Lord Dupplin (Thomas Hay), a pivotal figure in the administrations of Walpole, Pelham, and Newcastle, argued that the Jews by their extensive global correspondence and their “great command of money,” promoted the commerce of every country in which they dwelt.Footnote ²⁰ All the bill's supporters argued for the profound contribution Jews had made to both commerce and government finance in England since their readmission to the country.Footnote ²¹ On the other hand, John Barnard, a merchant and former mayor of London and a fierce opponent of the bill, argued that because Jews were never “bred to be manufacturers or mechanics or indeed to any laborious employment,” their integration within English society would not result in a contribution to English commerce but rather a quick takeover of it. Jews were especially diligent in “recommending one another and in playing into the hands of one another,” and they would hinder any Christian from gaining profit from either foreign or domestic trade. They would become England's only merchants, leaving “the laborious part of all manufactures and mechanical trades to the poor Christian,” of whom they would be masters.Footnote ²² It is telling that the point debated was not Jews’ economic propensity but whether boosting the financial sector would enhance English productivity. Proponents of the bill encouraged bringing capital into the system as a means of augmenting commercial and productive capacities, while adversaries implied that the kernel of productivity was labor, and that finance was not included in that category.

Schematically, the conflicting stances promoted contradictory conceptions of economic dynamics. Barnard's view of Jewish monopolism relied upon a conception of the economy as a restricted and fixed system that could not be developed beyond given limits set by manufacture, finance, and commercial connections. Once all conditions were fulfilled to the maximum—as he believed was presently the case in England—bringing in additional economic agents would result in reduced profits to the English in favor of foreigners (Jews).Footnote ²³ In the other camp, Nicholas Hardinge, secretary to the Treasury and a Cambridge classical scholar, neo-Latin poet, and lawyer, argued conversely that the economic system was open, and that even in well-developed commercial countries such as England (perhaps especially in such countries), “new men will probably make new experiments, and by new experiments, new channels of trade may be discovered, through which new and additional quantities of our manufactures may flow to a foreign market.” Here the Jews entered the picture, for no people were supposed “more capable, or more ready than the Jews, to make these new experiments, because of their great propensity to trade, and because of the curse that attends them”—namely that Jews were deprived of a national land.Footnote ²⁴ Barnard and Hardinge, as representatives, may have held a similar view of Jewish commercial inclinations, yet the combination of that view with a contrary economic framework yielded contrary judgments.Footnote ²⁵

The other theme, which was debated more expansively, was the national debt and its link with Jews. Begun in the 1690s to support the expanding military expenditure, the debt was consistently growing with the almost constant warfare in which England (later Britain) was engaged. Although it was thought that there was no other means than debt of financing the military's needs, many believed that Britain would never be able to fully pay it off. The debt became a crucial frontline between the Whig government and the opposition, which saw it as a national disaster and a source of corruption by supplying the government with limitless funds. Moreover, it was argued that the government became dependent on its investors’ belief (or disbelief) regarding its capacity to pay back its debt, making the fluctuating value of public stock the index of the government's stability or instability. This speculative fantasy transformed government-citizen relations, and by implication those between all citizens, into relations between debtors and creditors.Footnote ²⁶ While opposition members perceived the debt as anti-patriotic, government-inclining members saw it as a responsible fiscal method and a true national scheme without which Britain would lose its power.

The opposition's anxiety over the national debt was well articulated in the speech in the Commons by the Tory member of Parliament for Preston, Nicholas Fazakerley. Concluding a long historical reflection on the Jews in England, Fazakerley identified the Glorious Revolution as a crucial moment of change. For although the Revolution freed the nation from bigotry and tyranny, it instilled a new form of subordination—the raising of governmental funds on interest. This new fiscal measure had been “so favourable for the Jews” but “a most unfortunate custom for the nation,” as it resulted in the setting up of stockjobbing—the contemporary term for fraudulent financial schemes. Jews and other foreigners “were invited by act of parliament to practise that trade of usury upon the state,” a trade particularly abused by the Jews who “by Edward the 1st's law … had been forbid to practise upon the subject.”Footnote ²⁷ The influence of the debt on the state was seen as destructive. Since its introduction, England has been “like a young extravagant heir, who proportions his expence not to his income, but to his credit, without plaguing himself with the troublesome thought how the money he borrows is to be repaid.”Footnote ²⁸ Public credit had not only ruined national responsibility but also “encouraged and enabled our ministers to engage us in needless wars upon the continent, or to continue those wars longer than the interest of this nation required.”Footnote ²⁹

To this main claim, other arguments were added. William Northey maintained that as Britain was not in a state of war that demanded a large budget, there was no sense in offering naturalization at that moment. Even in such a case, he added, “we should not, I think, part with our birthright for nothing.” Barnard claimed that Jewish investors would adhere not to the public interest but merely to their own profit, and hence would lend money to the state without the necessity of naturalization.Footnote ³⁰ The question of the nature of the loyalty to the state and society would recur throughout much of the debate. However, not only the loyalty of the Jews was in question but also the loyalty and interests of investors in public debt in general, both English and foreign.

The association between the economic nature of the Jews and Britain's destructive debt reached a peak in the third reading of the bill in the Commons on 22 May. After the four petitions were presented, the opposition presented a motion to postpone the debate for a month. That timing would slide into parliamentary recess, meaning the bill would be killed. The only contribution to the discussion that we know of was by opposition member John Perceval, the earl of Egmont. His powerful speech conflated Anglo-Jewish history, economic anti-Jewish views, and criticism of current fiscal policy:

Lord Egmont identified the Jews’ economic persona as potentially devastating for the nation. One instance of such an affliction, his speech implied, was the establishment of the national debt through a Jewish conspiracy. Jews could never be incorporated in the nation on an economic basis, for they were not capable of “real” and “honest” commerce. This was proved, he argued, by the history of Jews in England since their readmission, where in spite of their wealth and the greatest commercial opportunities, they did not carry on any substantial trade. All the fortunes made by Jews in England had been acquired through “contracts, subscriptions, commissions, and correspondencies, and all kinds of jobbing with the necessities of the public in the late war.” Their proposed naturalization therefore would lead to “no important addition of property to this kingdom; to no possible increase of strength; to no improvement in manufactures; to no extension of commerce.”Footnote ³²

The supporters of the bill painted a contrary picture of the Jews, the debt, and governmental policy. Robert Nugent, a canny, Irish-born politician having lately reconciled with the Pelham ministry, claimed that, since the Glorious Revolution, the Jews had been extremely useful to the state “by supplying our government with large sums of money for carrying on expensive wars we have been necessarily engaged in.”Footnote ³³ He specifically emphasized Jewish financial aid in preserving of the public credit during the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 as an indication of their loyalty and contribution. Advocates of the Jewish cause not only argued for the legitimacy of the Jews’ contributions but for the legitimacy of the means itself: the service to the state by maintaining its debt.

Advocates also argued that the Jew Bill would allow the domestic economy to benefit from much of the annual dividends paid on the debt, currently spent abroad, sometimes “among our most avowed enemies.” Pelham contended that Britain was losing £1–2 million of dividends annually sent abroad to investors who would prefer to live in Britain.Footnote ³⁴ The clearest expression of the issues at stake was given by Nicholas Hardinge, who emphasized not only the Jews’ financial and commercial contribution but also the national and constitutional importance of the debt. For it was the public credit, much advanced by Jews, “to which we in a great measure owe the preservation both of our religion and liberties.”

Tellingly, just as some opponents of the bill attributed the establishment of the national debt, not only their current investment in it, to the Jews, so did proponents, including Hardinge.Footnote ³⁵ This was an anachronistic projection of the relative prominence of Jewish stockholders of government loans from the early and mid-eighteenth century back to the period of its establishment in the 1690s.Footnote ³⁶ It is a handy illustration of the dynamic of the parliamentary debate in its political-economic perspective: adversaries agreed upon the “facts,” even the fabricated ones, yet disagreed about their significance. The disagreement derived to a great degree from their wider perception of economic dynamics and the role of finance in the modern political economy of a commercial state. These contrasting perceptions entailed distinct notions of loyalty and productivity, for where one side saw a benefit, the other identified deterioration. These lines of engagement in the Commons debates provided the contours for the public polemic that soon spread and took on new life.

Religion and Political Economy in the Public Opposition Discourse

As noted, the public debate was ignited by the City's petition coinciding with the third reading of the bill. While the religious rhetoric indeed became prevalent from that point onward, political-economic concerns were not discarded but rather incorporated. This convergence took several forms. Opposition writers often linked religious decline with economic misconduct and luxury. This well-established theme, commonly employed by critics of both the political system and society at large, was enhanced around mid-century, as Kathleen Wilson aptly illustrates.Footnote ³⁷ Yet its use in the context of the Jew Bill was not merely a reiteration.

The notion of religious decline prompted by the material lure of financial economy was promoted by writers across the opposition spectrum and most blatantly expressed by the London Evening Post, the leading organ opposing the bill. “Old England,” a frequent letter-writer to the paper, asserted that the bill sought to further subordinate the nation to “the baneful Power of Money,” inciting ministers to rely on the power of money for gaining political influence and to bypass the constitutional power of the Commons and the sentiments of the people. The result would be not only the subordination of the English to the Jews and the corruption of the political system but also damage to religion—“Religion, Conscience, Honour, and Publick Good, laugh'd at as Cant and Foible.” The letter concluded with a call to fellow “Britons, Christians and Protestants” to wake up, for the Jews were at the gates, “coming for the Keys of your Church doors.”Footnote ³⁸ Likewise, “Timothy Freeman” stated that Jews would buy with their money the “very souls” of English people.Footnote ³⁹ Other writers conflated blasphemy and extortion, depicting advocates of the bill as favoring pecuniary profit even when the implication was the undermining of religion: “Jew-like, we are to mind nothing in this Bill but Trade. Our God and our Religion Are to be quite out of the Question, and Money, ALMIGHTY Money, is to be the Basis of our State.”Footnote ⁴⁰ The power of money as opposed to religion was expressed in recurring allegations that Jews intended to overtake Christianity with their money. One writer imagined a dialogue between two Jews, Zimri and Shylock:

By this view, the prospective Jewish takeover evolved from the spread of luxury and its impact on English society, which had enabled the presenting of the Jew Bill in the first place. The Zimri-Shylock column in London Evening Post, for instance, was followed by a comment on a “Deluge of Luxury overspreading all Ranks, Sexes and Ages, [which] raises the Indignation of the Few that remain still on firm Ground.”Footnote ⁴² A month later, another London Evening Post writer, identified as “a Dissenter,” argued with “a religious horror” that the Jews took advantage of the “Luxury and Corruption of the Times [in order to] purchase to themselves such Privileges as have hitherto been constantly denied to as good Subjects as any in the Nation.”Footnote ⁴³ “John Christian” related religious decline to a general corruption of manners and claimed that the Jews had an extensive destructive influence on the minds of many by their immoral economic practices.Footnote ⁴⁴ Accordingly, adversaries concluded, the present base economic conduct would provoke godly wrath on Britain. The signs were already apparent: an earthquake in Cheshire was attributed to the bill's enactment.Footnote ⁴⁵ Set on this course, English society was doomed to share in the Jewish curse of landlessness; hence it should be every Englishman's wish that godly punishment of the Jews would not be delayed before they obtained too much power. “John Christian” closed his letter, “Let G[ideon]’s Gold, and old sly Shylock's Purse, Instead of Blessing, prove to them a Curse.”Footnote ⁴⁶

The connection between Jews’ corrupting economic conduct and their conflict with Christianity was promoted in opposition pamphleteering as well. Reverend William Romaine, the most prominent clerical writer against the Jew Bill, summarized Anglo-Jewish history: what a “prevailing Engine the Jews Money was, and how successful they have been in trusting their Cause to its Influence.” That money, he argued, explained not only the introduction of Jews into England by both William the Conqueror and Cromwell but the whole of Jewish history, enduring “by the self same Money-Engine—preferred by too many, who call themselves Christians, even to Christ himself and Christianity.”Footnote ⁴⁷ The claim that Jews did not endeavor to convert others, Romaine said, did not take into account that Jews’ first priority was making money, which had become their worshipped idol. Economic conduct was profoundly interwoven in the religious life of the Jews and hence would similarly affect England at both economic and religious levels.Footnote ⁴⁸

The conflation of the religious and the economic was reinforced by frequent use of a biblical style, images, and history. An illustrative example is a piece published in Read's Weekly Journal, under the title “The 1753rd Chapter of the JEWS,” which recounted the history of the Jews in England in a pseudo-biblical manner. The Jews were depicted as hard-hearted vagabonds, worshipping the Devil in the form of money. They found England suitable for their purposes, as its people were “given to foolish Bargaining.” “Peradventure,” the Jews understood, “they will want our Silver and Go'd; then shall we have their Lands, and become their Lords to rule over them.” Consequently, they “trafficked greatly, and supplied the Wants of the Extravagant and Proud, and increased in Riches and Power.” At that point a leader was erected among the Jews—Shylock—who promised them to accomplish the overtaking of England, and the Jews deposited their wealth in his hands for that end. The story stopped there, to be continued (though it never was), implying the unclear future of the Anglo-Jewish conflict.Footnote ⁴⁹

A recurrent motif was the association of the Jewish cause with the Golden Calf. “Britannicus” asserted that courting the Jews for their riches was worship of the Golden Calf, and “Civis Londinesis” stated that there were few people who had “not yet fallen down and worshipped the GOLDEN IMAGE” set in place by the Pelham faction.Footnote ⁵⁰ In another mock-biblical account, the London Evening Post stated that only a few people “had not kissed the Golden Calf, nor bowed their Knees to the Idol of the Times.”Footnote ⁵¹ The Connoisseur, a satirical London weekly produced by George Colman and Bonnell Thornton and inaugurated just as the Jew Bill was repealed, expressed much concern in its first issues regarding the bill and the Jews. In a letter allegedly written by a Jewish man of taste buying pieces of art on a trip to the Continent, the writer recounted his acquisition of a picture titled The Elevation of the Golden Calf, which he intended to set up in the Royal Exchange “as a typical representation of myself, to be worshipp'd by all Brokers, Insurers, Scriveners and the whole fraternity of Stock-jobbers.”Footnote ⁵²

Perhaps the most pervasive religious motif in the opposition discourse was that of circumcision. The opposition propagated the threat that the Jew Bill would result in the Jews taking over England and forcing the circumsizing of all males. In one sarcastic remark, the bill was referred to as “the Law in favour of the Circumcision.”Footnote ⁵³ One could dismiss this obsession as whimsical, as Perry argues; yet broadening the perspective to the long-term historical occurrence of the theme reveals an early modern English preoccupation.Footnote ⁵⁴ That this motif was employed for political aims by opposition polemicists does not exclude its prevalent cultural significance. Consequently, several scholars have explored its meaning in the polemic, emphasizing the conflation of masculinity, dignity, and power as the fundamentals of a consolidating British identity against which Jewish identity was posed as a foil.Footnote ⁵⁵ Following this approach, I argue that an important aspect of the cultural work done by that concept was achieved by an association between circumcision and finance, which was part of the more general conflation of religion and economy. Circumcision was a compelling image to depict the danger of the Jew Bill, I suggest, because the eighteenth-century image of the man of finance was of a feminized economic creature controlled by his passions and fantasies—very different from the image of the conquering man of finance of the modern era.Footnote ⁵⁶ The circumcised Jew epitomized not only physical unmanliness but also economic effeminacy. What lent it its force was the co-occurrence of the polemic within a tense nationalistic atmosphere in which perceived threats to the nation—political, military, and economic—were often imagined as both the result and the reflection of “feminization.”Footnote ⁵⁷ While the fear of physical circumcision by the Jews was apparently absurd, its symbolic aspect—economic circumcision—could be seen as an imaginary manifestation of existing socioeconomic anxieties. The long-lived prejudice against Jewish circumcision intersected with an uneasy and highly gendered social discourse on socioeconomic matters, producing accordingly effective propaganda.

Opposition texts frequently depicted circumcision as a Jewish demand in exchange for financial support. “Timothy Freeman” in the London Evening Post remarked that “for Money shal [they] circumshise us, if they plese,”Footnote ⁵⁸ and MPs supporting the bill were mocked as being on their way to circumcision by seeking Jewish financial support.Footnote ⁵⁹ Coin clipping, a crime Jews were traditionally accused of, was also associated with circumcision,Footnote ⁶⁰ and opposition polemists made keen use of it. Thus, in the satirical song “The Pork of Old Engand,” Jews of the day were compared to their medieval ancestors: “In brave Edward's days they were caught in a gin, / For clipping our coin, now to add sin to sin, / As they've got all our pelf, they'd be clipping our skin. / Those foes to the pork of Old England.”Footnote ⁶¹ As by this time Jews were no longer blamed for coin clipping, the writer created an alternative continuity between past and present: having already commandeered all English money and in no need of clipping coins, Jews were turning to clipping other objects.

Notably, circumcision played a part in the polemic in the frequent use of the biblical story of Dinah and Shechem (Genesis 34) as epitomizing the threat to English society. The most elaborate adaptation of the story is found in a London Evening Post column, “The 34th Chapter of Genesis,” which conflated the biblical story with current events. English girls triggered the affair when they visited Jewish girls in their synagogue. There they were seen by the “Sons of Gid[eon], of Shylock, of Mend[ez], Fran[co], and Salv[ador],” who lay with them by force and defiled them. Consequently, the Jewish financiers, the boys’ fathers, approached “the Pelh[ami]tes,” and asked them for “your Virgins for Wives” in exchange for “so many Bank Notes and Gifts.” Up to this point, Britons were equated with the biblical Jews, and the Jews took the role of the Canaanites. The roles inverted at the point when the Jewish magnates demanded that the Britons be circumcised in order to marry Jewish girls. If not, they threatened to withdraw their money from the funds, and be gone. The Pelhamites ordered all subjects “to be circumcised, to depart the Land, or to be deliver'd over as a Prey to the Israelites.” Gideon and Shylock gathered the Jews at the Exchange and announced the agreement. And on the third day, “whilst [the Britons’] Private Parts were sore,” the Jews “took their Swords, and slew every Male of the Britons,” including the Pelhamites.Footnote ⁶²

The opposition's conflation of religion and the economy paralleled the broad theological division of Judaism and Christianity with the conflict between the apparently corrupting contemporary speculation-based economy and the traditional stable commercial economy. This pattern is illustrated in a letter by “Britannicus,” a writer previously mentioned, who was a leading voice in the London Evening Post in the 1750s and has been identified by Bob Harris as Paul Whitehead, a satirist and poet strongly connected to opposition politicians.Footnote ⁶³ Presuming that states should adopt religious structures compatible with their political-economic structures, “Britannicus” maintained ironically that only Judaism could fit England as a religion. As “Gold is the sole Mover of our grand political Machine,” with no regard to the future of society nor tradition, “would not therefore the Naturalization of the Hebrew Race greatly strengthen and confirm our political System?” While the present political-economic conduct was perfectly in accord with Jewish views, gold being “all that the Jews expect or desire of God,” as evident in the Old Testament, “the Christian Religion is very inconvenient for a commercial People; it so cramps Men in Pursuit of their worldly Interests, and raises within their Breasts that frightful Chimera call'd Conscience.” Appealing for replacing the national religion, “Britannicus” assured his audience that the shift would not be very noticeable, as “every Man, who calls himself a Christian, but acts only upon the Principles of worldly Interest, is indeed, tho’ uncircumcised, already a Jew.”Footnote ⁶⁴ “Honestus,” in Read's Weekly Journal, contended that commerce depended upon Scripture, which regulated all personal and social practices. As Scripture itself highlighted the unbridgeable breach between Jews and Christians, both in conduct and beliefs, it strictly forbade communication between Jews and Christians in matters of commerce and commercial norms.Footnote ⁶⁵ An anonymous pamphleteer argued that the basic notion behind the bill contradicted the political economy of Christianity; hence in no way could it be seen as a measure for promoting the conversion of Jews to Christianity, as proponents of the bill repeatedly claimed:

Another anonymous column in the London Evening Post claimed, again ironically, that naturalizing rich Jews could do England no harm. The bill “cannot hurt Trade in general, because the Jews are not general Traders; and what they do in the City is not Trade, nor any thing like it.” Rich Jews were “entirely in the Money Way, concerned in the Stocks, as State-Brokers and Jobbers,” an economic arena that excluded Christians, who had “some strange scruples about the Lawfulness of this Possession.” This incommensurability of Jewish and Christian trade, the writer comically argued, made the Christian trade immune to Jewish damage. The rich Jews traded only in stockjobbing, and stockjobbing was the plundering of the public; but because a Christian could not plunder the public, consequently he could not trade in stocks.Footnote ⁶⁷ The piece was whimsical, yet to achieve its point it both conveyed and assumed that the audience would conceive a distinction between Jewish and Christian economies, equating trade in credit with Jews.

The conflation of economy and religion, as exemplified in these excerpts, sought to depict Judaism and Christianity as not only distinct religions but also as two contradicting economic ethics. This important and powerful thrust of the oppositional discourse was not pursued by all opposition writers, however. Some, with whom I do not deal here, did not focus on economic matters at all but only on religious issues. Still others who did focus on the economic aspect expressed a profoundly different attitude to the relation between economy and the Jews, and between economy and religion. It would thus be wrong to depict the two camps solely in binary terms of liberalism and tolerance versus conservatism, stagnation, and narrow-mindedness. Certainly, the prevailing tone in opposition propaganda was vehemently prejudicial, relying heavily on traditional anti-Jewish libels. However, few opposition voices expressed a complex set of socioeconomic assumptions and perceptions of Jewishness. Although all connected the Jews intrinsically to the question of the financial system's functioning, some expressed qualified approval of the system and only denounced Jews’ influence upon it.

A central point of division regarding Jewish economic behavior was the question of its historicity. Was the Jewish propensity to finance, and the Jewish economic nature in general, innate or changeable? While adversaries commonly depicted an essential link between Jews and finance, and the new financial system as Jewish in nature, advocates argued that it was through external circumstances that Jews came to occupy typical trades in what can be termed the circumstantial explanation of the “economic Jew.”Footnote ⁶⁸ This dimension of the polemic was part of a broader context of changing conceptions in the eighteenth century of difference and a developing preoccupation with classification. Are there innate differences between peoples or races, and what are the elements that constitute them? With the decline of the explanatory force of scriptures from the latter part of the seventeenth century in engaging with these questions, secular racial explanations took their place. The Jew Bill polemic was an effective platform for developing images of both bodily traits and inherent social features of Jewishness.Footnote ⁶⁹

Tellingly, some opponents employed the pro-Jewish circumstantial reasoning to attack the bill. For if the socioeconomic limits on Jews were removed, they claimed, Jewish economic uniqueness would diminish, and hence their expected contribution hailed by advocates would never materialize.Footnote ⁷⁰ Moreover, some opposition writers accepted, at least outwardly, the importance of the national debt for consolidating British power, and they used the advocates’ own arguments to illustrate the bill's futility. A writer in Read's Weekly Journal, for example, argued that Jews must be excluded from investing in land (as the bill allowed), so that “upon any Emergency” their money would be liquid for backing the state.Footnote ⁷¹ In contrast, other opposition writers disputed there could be any favorable outcome of an influx of foreign (Jewish) capital. A letter to the Public Advertiser in mid-November argued that the whole polemic had been conducted wrongly; had the opponents focused seriously on economic questions, they would have easily brought about the repeal of the bill. Enticing rich Jews to settle in England with their capital would create an external and artificial injection of money into the market. Far from enhancing the economy, it would harm it, causing a general rise in prices. Money by itself, detached from production, could not extend the commerce of any state nor weaken its rivals, as envisioned by the traditional mercantilist theories on which advocates of the bill relied. Moreover, an injection of money would encourage both the government and individuals to run further into debt, unbalancing the system. Rich immigrants were merely consumers with no productive benefit, and British policy should prioritize industrious working people.Footnote ⁷²

A similar emphasis was offered by Jonas Hanway, a merchant and philanthropist and a leading adversary pamphleteer who sought to differentiate between industrious and idle financial activities. It was not the system of public finance itself that was to blame, Hanway argued in contrast to other opponents to the bill, but the manner in which Jews employed it for gain—“the injurious practice of jobbing in stocks, and the supplying national demands by our submitting to the means of extortion.” As public credit was meant to strengthen the state at moments of hardship, support of the debt should depend on “our own merchants and money-holders,” who should take it as their national responsibility. Jews, as outsiders to the nation, could not be counted on in such moments, as was evident during the suppression of the Jacobite rebellion in 1745, when the intervention of English merchants prevented the execution of a “Jewish project” that “must have involved this nation much deeper in debt.”Footnote ⁷³ Here again the notion of loyalty was central in the conception of the public credit system. Reliance on debt was not an anti-patriotic scheme, yet in order to secure its legitimate use, one had to ensure that only truly loyal citizens took part in it. Jews, though basically not disloyal,Footnote ⁷⁴ lacked a genuine commitment to society and state; this lack rendered their involvement in public credit suspicious and imperiling to national liberty, for they inclined to private interests rather than to communal ones. This difference in inclination had the power to “raise or depress us as a free nation.”Footnote ⁷⁵

According to Hanway, the essential reason for the rejection of the Jew Bill lay in Jews’ incapacity to integrate into the English patriarchal social system, for they could never adopt the required social responsibility. Integration was a precondition for being a trustworthy investor in public finance and evidently also for holding land. Consequently, Jews’ liberties should be restricted to the commercial sphere.Footnote ⁷⁶ Hanway tendentiously interpreted in this vein the opposition posture that, “so far from depressing the Jews, their opponents never meant to deprive them of any weight in their commercial capacity; but rather to keep from them every temptation which might divert them from so useful a pursuit.”Footnote ⁷⁷

The distinction between Jewish productive commercialism and Jewish stockjobbing was reiterated in the London Evening Post the following year several months after the general elections, triggered by news that Prussia was encouraging immigration of traders of all nations and religions. It was assumed that such news might reignite the push for Jewish naturalization. The writer warned that one should attend to differences in the constitution of the two countries: Jews’ usefulness in Prussia relied on the government of a “Philosopher” who would “take care that they shall never have there no Stock-Jobbing, no Funds, no publick Debts, to exercise the Industry of the Children of Israel; so that their Talents must be turned to Commerce.” Echoing Barnard's arguments in the Commons, the writer argued that “where Trade is but in its Infancy, [Jews] may be made very useful under a wise Governor.” However, as people in general were not as wise as their governors, the English “might in less than Half a Century be jostled or wheedled out of Religion, Liberty and Property, by the Introduction of a Swarm of rich Hebrews.”Footnote ⁷⁸

The emphasis upon industriousness articulated by adversaries to the bill was not far from the emphasis made by the most important political-economic defender of the bill, the Reverend Josiah Tucker. Tucker perceived naturalization schemes in general and the Jewish naturalization in particular as efficient means for engaging monopolies and privileges, which he saw as remains of the tyrannic “Gothic” past.Footnote ⁷⁹ These obstacles hindered economic growth, which could be sustained only by free competition that would boost industriousness. Yet Tucker differed from adversaries such as Hanway in his notion of industry in two important aspects, as Jonathan Karp has demonstrated. First, Tucker regarded population increase as a substantial and crucial factor; and second, he regarded the Jews as adaptive people, not inherently inclined to unproductive financial schemes.Footnote ⁸⁰

The Jew Bill in the Context of Eighteenth-Century Naturalization Debates

To return to the basic question regarding the Jew Bill: how unique was the episode in its wider political context? Was it only another Whig attempt in a string of naturalization bills? An apt example of partisan propaganda? Does it deserve examination as a distinct event? The common assessment, promoted by Perry, is that the polemic was simply a handy topic for rallying both parliamentary and public opposition against a Whig ministry in view of upcoming general elections. Such an understanding emphasizes the correlation of the Jew Bill with preceding naturalization bills, the most recent of which had been proposed, in vain, in 1746, 1747–48, and 1751.Footnote ⁸¹ The Jew Bill, it was noted, was advocated by the same figures who promoted these earlier bills, and mostly it was opposed by similar parliamentarians—notably, apart from John Barnard who supported Protestant naturalization.

The Jew Bill, however, differed in significant points from the other bills of this type. It was the only bill designated solely for non-Christians; it was a bill with little practical significance; and it generated an unprecedented public clamor, undoubtedly one of the most forceful mobilizations of public opinion up to that point in the century. Other naturalization bills also received fierce parliamentary and public opposition, yet the rhetoric that characterized the Jew Bill polemic was profoundly different. While opposition to previous naturalization schemes relied on political-economic arguments, antagonism to the Jew Bill hinged upon religious reasoning—at times, as demonstrated, conflating the two into a political-economic perspective of religious identity and difference.Footnote ⁸² These distinctions lent the discussion a social and cultural vigor that did not derive from partisan interests themselves and had independent life and influence. Another reason why the controversy resonated so strongly in the public sphere, I suggest, was the interrelation of the subject matter and concerns about public finance. Jews were good tools for thinking about economic matters, and in this particular case they emblematized the question of public finance. Unlike previous general naturalization attempts, the Jew Bill was aimed exclusively at wealthy Jews, and it was acknowledged that it arose solely in return of favor for Jewish magnates who had backed the government financially during the Jacobite rebellion. The recurrent argument for the measure was that it would provide capital for public funds. Consequently, the Jew Bill intersected central axes that preoccupied mid-eighteenth-century English society: the scope of religious toleration, economic improvement, the valuation of the post–financial-revolution market and its social effects, and the nature of citizenship. All these issues became intensified in the period between the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Year's War.Footnote ⁸³

The Jew Bill's relationship with public finance introduced a new element into the series of controversies around naturalization bills and focused a spotlight on the nature of the new financial culture and its instruments. These questions were important to the way that Jews themselves were perceived, the polemic firmly linking them with the undecided social status of finance. The polemic was interwoven with common questions that had preoccupied the public in previous debates, but this time they were reshaped to reflect concerns around finance.

The first concern was that of economic productivity. While earlier naturalization debates considered the demographic and occupational aspects of the question broadly, the current debate focused the discussion on the economic productivity of trade in credit. This question hovered above the polemic and over the assessment of the productivity of the Jews and their potential contribution to English commerce. A writer in the Westminster Journal claimed that the Jewish money the bill would bring into England would improve nothing, for “money, or credit, circulating through a nation, from hand to hand, without producing labour and industry in the inhabitants, is direct gaming; and what else can be expected from the Jews, upon their naturalization.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Another London Evening Post column, following a discussion of the Jew Bill, stated that “Men may be very active and busy, without being at all industrious; that the Labour of the Hands or Brain must be well directed to merit this Appellation; and that Dealing of Cards, or Shuffling of Stocks from Morning to Night, tho’ it may be a gainful, is not an industrious, Employment.”Footnote ⁸⁵ Some adversaries emphasized the futility of trade in finance and claimed that Jews were preoccupied with such enterprise. “Britannicus” in the London Evening Post maintained that a Jewish economic contribution would be negligible, for Jews’ commercial capability “is chiefly in the Stocks, and their arts of Merchandize are exerted principally in Exchange-Alley.” Britannicus portrayed Jewish society as having a common economic characteristic: while the poor among them might cheat the public peddling counterfeit commodities, the wealthy grew rich not by trade in real commodities but by “State Jobbs, Lotteries, and other iniquitous Arts of Exchange-Alley,” themselves forms of counterfeit commerce.Footnote ⁸⁶ Similarly, another writer argued that Jews “deal largely in the Mysteries and Iniquities of Stock-Jobbing, and get vast Estates by plundering the Publick.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Their professionalization in the dodgy arena of stock trade substituted for a total lack of productive abilities, or “real commerce,” as Lord Egmont phrased it in the third reading of the bill, for Jews could neither toil the land nor engage in manufacture. As we have seen, these were recurrent themes in all opposition media: parliamentary polemic, the press, and pamphleteering.Footnote ⁸⁸ Advocates of the bill, on the other hand, emphasized the contribution of the public debt to national power and hence also to the growth of national economy, and the contribution of the Jews to the public fund. Yet the advocates too drew a line between a productive trade in credit and a harmful one, castigating the practice of speculative stockjobbing. Consequently, they sought to exonerate the Jews from this association repeatedly made by the bill's opponents.Footnote ⁸⁹

A second central theme in naturalization debates was political liberty. During the eighteenth century, the notion of liberty came to be profoundly related to commerce. Polemicists argued as to whether liberty was a precondition for free and thriving commerce or vice versa, yet all accepted the pivotal role of both in the growth and wellbeing of societies. By mid-century, the ideology of liberty reached an apotheosis, becoming the fulcrum of British identification by both Britons and foreigners.Footnote ⁹⁰ Predictably, it was a prevalent theme in the Jew Bill polemic, as it had been around previous naturalization schemes. The opposition repeatedly depicted the bill as a scheme that would lead to the enslavement of Britons by the Jews, and to the disintegration of all social and political institutions. This aspect has been extensively discussed in all accounts of the episode, and there is no need for reiteration here. Advocates of the bill replied with the same coin. The central obstruction of commerce, they argued, was superstitious intolerance; hence it was also a major impediment in the progress of liberty. Contra the opposition, they had to prove that Jews were capable of the civil qualities of liberty and so had to exonerate them from accusations of anti-national and anti-social economic conduct. Jewish economic conduct, they often claimed, was not essentialist: Jews were not bound to specific economic activities and tended to adopt the manners characterizing their host countries. In England, these would include the “Love of Liberty and their Country.”Footnote ⁹¹ But the form of liberty promoted by advocates was inherently different from that employed by opponents. While opponents insisted on the intrinsic relation between British liberty and Christianity—a confessional liberty, as Justin Champion calls it—advocates of the bill promoted a notion of civil, non-confessional liberty.Footnote ⁹² What mattered was not the denomination of a group but the civil implications of its doctrines; to a great degree, advocates argued, Judaism was closer to Protestantism and enhanced loyalty to the state more than did Catholicism and Dissent.Footnote ⁹³ Consequently, the attack on the Jews was an attack on British liberty that would encroach eventually on Christians’ liberties.Footnote ⁹⁴

However, for opponents of the bill it was not only the Jews’ religion that made them illegitimate as free citizens. As discussed above, most opponents claimed that public credit endangered political liberty by placing unlimited power in the hands of the government and by degrading social institutions. Jews, they argued, gained from this system of credit, enhanced it, and had an interest in its endurance. Like the Jews of old, who were employed by kings for financial backing while bypassing Parliament, thus forming a unit against the people—as elaborated by antiquarians who were commonly referred to by opponentsFootnote ⁹⁵—the employment of public credit by contemporary Jews had the same anti-civil and corruptive effect.

Eighteenth-century naturalization bills were as a rule unsuccessful,Footnote ⁹⁶ and the fate of the 1753 Jew Bill was thus not exceptional. One piece of legislation, however, stood apart in this series of attempts and can serve as a foil for the 1753 polemic. The Plantation Act of 1740 allowed foreigners who had resided for seven years in the American colonies to naturalize without a parliamentary bill, and exempted Quakers and Jews from Christian oaths. This measure was designed to enhance British colonial trade in the Americas, especially against the nation's prospering Dutch rivals (who had already taken similar measures of naturalization in their colonies). Why did that bill pass without any agitation, in spite of the provisions it offered Jews, while the 1753 bill aroused unprecedented clamor? The difference, I suggest, resulted in part from the inner conflict embedded in a national empire relying on commerce. Distribution of citizenship enhanced the commercial networks essential for imperial expansion, yet it also entailed the sharing of national identity. Jews, like other marginalized sectors with commercial influence, posed a dilemma: by mid-eighteenth century, it was commonly acknowledged that Jews loomed large in the global commercial matrix of Britain and were valuable in its expansion,Footnote ⁹⁷ yet they were perceived as essentially alien. The option for naturalizing Jews in the colonies potentially allowed legislators to benefit from their commercial advantage while keeping the tension around questions of national identity at a distance.Footnote ⁹⁸ In contrast, it is plausible that the failure of the 1753 attempt to allow naturalization in the motherland owed much to its bringing the problem of national identity into the metropole. However, as this paper has sought to demonstrate, the 1753 polemic had another important feature that discussions on colonial naturalization in 1740 did not involve: concern over public credit. This issue related to the metropole rather to the colonies. Moreover, the 1740 legislation took place at an earlier stage of the consolidation of the association of Jews with public credit, while the events of 1753 occurred in a changed setting.