Quite a Step Forward

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QUITE A STEP FORWARD.

“The world does move, though,” said Gallileo¹, after his forced retraction of the heresies, as they were called in his time, in astronomy and religious doctrine. In view of a modern event in England, we may repeat the same saying. We refer to the admission of a Jew to be a member of the British Parliament². This great event—a success not quite to be compared with that of the oceanic telegraph, and yet a very marked one—took place some three weeks since, at the session of the National Legislature in London.

Our readers are probably aware that there has been a great struggle in this matter for many years in England—one party contending violently for a greater latitude of admission to Parliament, and all the conservatives and orthodox, backed by the Bishops and a majority of the Peers, opposing the throwing open of the doors any wider. Many times a Jew has been elected to the House, but when it came his turn to take the oath, he of course always stuck at the words promising to perform his official devoirs, on the faith of a Christian,” and this has hitherto had the effect of excluding him, and renders his election null.

But now a new bill, after bitter and angry opposition has been passed by the Parliament, intending to obviate the necessity of taking this oath—allowing the House of Commons to admit a member by simple resolution; and under it the Baron Rothschild, one of the firm of world-celebrated Bankers, was lately accepted by Parliament from the city of London—from a district—which, we believe, has returned him several times before,—though previously rejected from his seat for the reason before stated.

This time, however, under the new bill, he was triumphantly admitted, and holds his position in that “assemblage of the first gentlemen of Europe”—a Jew, yet equal with the best of them.

Is not this indeed a proof that the world moves? We pronounce it a signal one. In itself nothing, yet when viewed as one of the numerous evidences of the general toleration of one sect by all the rest, and of recognizing that no creed has the right to lord it over another, we repeat, we look upon this Jew business in England as a huge stride forward in the right direction.

Nor is it only the case itself, confined to its own limits. It carries so much with it. If a Jew be fit to associate on equal terms with the first persons in the kingdom, fit to make the laws, fit to counsel the Queen, just the same as the brightest light in the Episcopal Church, what then is the real use of all these vaunted distinctions between those two, or any two? Why is the recognized religionist, as far as his more orthodox forms are concerned, any better than any one else?

These are puzzling questions which, however seem to be officially answered in England, by the admission of Baron Rothschild—and answered in a way which must cover with confusion all bigots and exclusives.

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