maiden speech, delivered in the House of Commons in 1830, was in favour of Grant's Bill for the Removal of Jewish Disabilities. 'On every principle of moral obligation', he said, 'the Jew has a right to political power.' His famous essay on the 'Civil Disabilities of the Jews' appeared in the Edinburgh Review of January 1831. His argument against the idea that Jewish Nationalism unfits the Jews for complete civil rights outside Palestine is worth quoting.
But it is said, the Scriptures declare that the Jews are to be restored to their own country; and the whole nation looks forward to that restoration. They are therefore not so deeply interested as others in the prosperity of England. It is not their home, but merely the place of their sojourn, the house of their bondage. This argument, which first appeared in The Times newspaper[1] ... belongs to a class of sophisms by which the most hateful persecutions may easily be justified. To charge men with practical consequences which they themselves deny is disingenuous in controversy; it is atrocious in government.... People are now reasoning about the Jews as our fathers reasoned about the Papists.... The Christian believes, as well as the Jew, that at some future period the present order of things will come to an end. Nay, many Christians believe that the Messiah will shortly establish a kingdom on the earth.... Now wherein does this doctrine differ, as far as its political tendency is concerned, from the doctrine of the Jew? If a Jew is unfit to legislate for us because he believes that he or his remote descendants will be removed to Palestine, can we safely open the House of Commons to a fifth monarchy man, who expects that before this generation shall pass away, all the kingdoms of the earth will be swallowed up in one divine empire?
Nearly thirty years elapsed before Jewish emancipation in England was accomplished,[2] but during that period Macaulay's essay undoubtedly played a great part in converting public opinion. In 1847 the Quarterly Review published an article setting forth the case against the Jewish claim, but the whole argument is directed towards rebutting that of the essay. The
