The Sun.
London, England, 1830-03-23 00:00:00

to be neither dangerous nor impolitic. Their ina-
bility to possess land is a mere relic of the h.:rly;rons
ages. From the time of Edward the Confessor,
when it was declared by law that " the Jews and all
they possess belong to the King," to the period of
their banishment from England under Edward 1.,
they were considered and treated as mere villeins of
the CrOwn. Their feudal Lord assumed arbitrary
power over their persons and property ; and while
that state of things subjected them to the most
monstrous oppression, it at the same time tended to
increase the power of the King to an alarming ex-
tent. It was this great and threatening danger that
led, in the reign of henry 111., to the Act of Parlia-
ment by which Jews were incapacitated in futuro
from acquiring landed property. Upon this subject
we take the following passage from an able-written
work,* which has just reached us, by Mr. John
Elijah Blunt. It sets forth thus clearly and cads-
factorily the origin of the disqualification we have al-
luded to :
" It was the custom of the Jews, instead of advancing
money on mortgage, to purchase certain rent-charges
on annuities secured upon the landed estates of the
debtor. These rent-charges had increased to a very large
extent : and by becoming vested in the King, were pro-
bably found to give the Crown a dangerous hold upon
the landed proprietors of the country. As a further con-
sequence also of the title claimed by the King to the pro-
perty and estates of the Jews, an encroachment was made
upon the accustomed rights of tenure. When a Jew be-
came entitled to any landed property, the fruits and pri-
vileges of the lord of the fee became immediately endan-
gered or suspended ; for, besides that the land was liable,
at any time, to be seized into the hands of the King, who,
upon feudal principles, could not hold of any inferior,
the lord was deprived at once of his chance of escheat, and
the advantages of reliefs, as the King claimed, in all cases,
to succeed to the lands of a Jew, upon his death ; and the
heir, for permission to take the land of his ancestor, paid
his relief to the I:41g. In cases of outlawry, moreover,
the King stept in and deprived the lord of his escheat.
" In consequence of this state of circumstances, the
King was constrained, towards the conclusion of his reign,

to give his consent to two s;veral ordinances. By the first
of these it was provided, that all the debts of the Jews,
secured as rent•charges upon the lands of the debtor should
be void ; and that in future it should be unlawful to create
any such charge, under pain of death in the Jew, and for-
feiture of land to the Christian. By the second ordinance,

it was enacted, that no Jew should from thenceforth have
a freehold in any manors, lands, or tenements whatever,
excepting that they might, as heretofore, hold houses for
their habitations in the towns and boroughs where they
resided ; that all feoffments and grants, by which any Jew
then held land, should be annulled, and the lands revert to

the Christian Irons whom they had passed, upon payment
Kick of the money given for them ; and that if, at any
time hereafter, a Jew should take any lands or tenements,
the same should be immediately taken by the King, till
the Christian should redeem the same. It is singular, that
in this latter ordinance is contained a clause, by which it
is expressly forbidden to any Christian to serve a Jew, in
the capacity of baker, or brewer, or as a nurse."

There needs no more than this simple statement
to skew the utter absurdity of the law as it at pre-
sent exists. On this point at least no question can
arise; and with regard to the remaining disabilities
we cannot but deem them unjust, anomalous, and
unnecessary. We repeat our belief that the Bill
will pass without opposition ; that the principle at
least will be unanimously adopted.
* The title of this work is " A History of the Resi-
dence and Establishment of the Jews in England, with an
Inquiry into their Civil Disabilities."—lt reviews the
History of the Jews in England from their earliest esta-
blishment to their expulsion ; and from their gradual re-
turn.under Charles 11. to the present time. The Author
has carefully investigated the numerous ancient authorities
upon which he grounds his history, and has altogether
bestowed much Isbour upon the work, which will be read
with interest at the present epoch.—Aturning Post.
In the House of Lords last night the Lord Chan-
cellor spoke at great length on the subject of " the
improvement of the law," as directed by his Majesty
at the commencement of this Session. " He felt it
is duty," he said, " to state generally the nature of
those measures which his Majesty's Government
had determined to lay before Parliament." After
speaking in a complimentary manner of Mr. Peel,
for his improvements in the Criminal Code, his
Lordship proceeded to mention the labours of the
Commissioners of Inquiry in the superior Courts of
Westminster Hall, not including the Court of
Chancery, with a view of assimulating the practice
of those Courts. The first object of the Com-
missioners, his Lordship stated, had been to strip
the law of those unnecessary technicalities with
which it is encumbered. The second object of
attention with the Commissioners was the science
of special pleadings, and abolishing some part of it,
but not to the extent that many had suggested ;
for, under proper restrictions, it was of service in
obtainingjustice. The causes in Equity have been
exasing, but not much more than had been usual
of late years. The Welch Judicature, he said was
to be placed on the same footing as that of England.
In Scotland, trial by Jury is to be introduced in
civil cases in the Court of Session ; the Judges of
those Courts to be diminished. An improvement
in the mode of conveyancing is also meditated. The
improvements in the Chancery proceedings are pretty
much the same as those stated in the Bill intro-
duced by the Lord Chancellor last Session, but
which did not pass the Commons, there not being
time then for it. He also proposed io settle the re-
muneration of the Masters in Chancery at about
3,0001. a-year each, not entirely as a fixed salary, but
to proceed partly out of a fee payable on the com-
pletion of each report, to act as a stimulus to dili-
gence. The salary of the additional Judge
he proposed to provide from a fund existing
in the Court for the last hundred years, and
which, after the payment of part of the Vice-
Chancellor's salary and the immediate expenses,
yielded a clear surplus of 30,0001. per annum. Also
two more Registrars to be appointed. The fees
at present received by four to be distributed amongst
the six Registrars. A return to be made to the
Lord Chancellor, from the Masters' Office, of all
cases in which no report has been made. In cases
of lunacy, Commissions to be issued, when neces-
sary, to Judges of the superior Courts, in order to
diminish the expences. With regard to bank-
ruptcy, the jurisdiction of the present Commis-
sioners is to be extended to eighty miles from the
metropolis, and the expences to be reduced by some
means, of which he gave no explanation. Commis-
sioners to be established in some of the leading
commercial towns, as in Lord Rosslyn's Bill, but
those Commissioners should only consist of the
same number of persons, as at present, arid to be
appointed in the usual way. In the House of Com-
mons it will be found that Mr. O'Connell presented
a petition praying for a repeal of the Union between
this country and Ireland. Its fate, perhaps, will be
best known front the words of Mr. Ilume, who, in
defending the Honourable Member from the attacks
of almost all who spoke on the question, said,
" it was his duty to present it, but be had not
given a single opinion on the object at which
the petition aimed." Some discussion took place
as to whether the petition ought to be received, Sir
C. Wetherell and Mr. Trant giving it as their
opinion that it was unconstitutional. Mr. Peel de-
precated the idea of repealing the Union as absurd
and mad in the extreme; but he doubted whether
the House would do right to depart from its usual
practice with respect to the petition ; and again he
said, " He had in view not the petition, but its pur-
pose; and from that he could not find language
strong enough to express his dissent or his repro•
bation of it." Mr. O'Connell himself gave no
opinion, but said he merely did his duty in present-
ing the petition ! So much for the repeated pledges
he made to his countrymen on this important sub-
ning
The prorogation of the French Chamber is cer-
tainly a bold step, but is it a judicious one ? It is
not indeed, so energetic a measure as that adopted
by Louis XVI., when he had the Members of the
Parliament of Paris suddenly arrested and banished
to a certain distance farm the metropolis. That art
was considered by the courtiers of the day a de-
cisive stroke of policy, but the re-action was still
more decisive. The King, it is trite, had not that
moral intrepidity of character which would have led