The Sun.
London, England, 1857-05-28 00:00:00

rHE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 28, 1857

debts, and legacies, and all deeds and instruments
relating to or evidencing the title or right to any
property, or giving a right to recover or receive any
money or goods ; and such word " property" shall
also denote and include not only such real and per-
sonal property as may have been the original sub-
ject of a trust, but also any real or personal pro-
perty into which the same may have been convert-
ed or exchanged, and the proceeds thereof respec-
tively, and anything acquired by such proceeds.
With this very extensive interpretation, the
first clause would alone be sufficient to meet
almost every possible cm e ; but in order to make
assurance doubly sure, there are a series of provi-
sions applying to bankers, merchants, brokers,
attorneys, and agents (s. 2); persons entrusted
with powers of attorney for the sale or transfer
of property (s. 3) ; bailees of any property
(s. 4) ; and directors, members, or public
officers of any company (s. 5) ; the words
in each section are applicable to the nature of the
fiduciary relationship, and in every case will be
found sufficient for the purpose indicated. They
will, if duly sanctioned by the Legislature, pre-
vent the multifarious quibbles that have hereto-
fore been raised, and which in too many instances
have led to the failure of justice, and the virtual
impunity of parties who have been far more guilty
than any thief or pickpocket who has preyed on
society. Thieves of the ordinary class may be
regarded as Ishmaslitea, whose hands are against
every man, as every man's hand is against them.
They are waging constant war against society,
and are subjected to very stringent enactments,
but heretofore the genteel swindlers—the Auctus-
TIIS TOMLINSONS—have too frequently evaded the
consequences of their crimes, and that simply
because they have added the deepest treachery,
worming themselves into the confidence of their
victims, and taking unfair advantage for their
own vile purposes of the position they have thus
unfairly obtained.
In addition to section 5, which deals with a
fraudulent taking or application of the money or
other property of any body corporate or public
company, there are three other very important
clauses (6th, 7th, and Bth) which create new
offences, and subject the parties—directors, public
officers, managers, members—to the penalties pro-
vided by the bill. These include (sec. 6) receiving or
possessing any of the money or other property of
such company, otherwise than in payment of a
just debt or demand, and shall wilfully omit to
make, or cause, or direct to be made, a full and
true entry thereof in the books and accounts, or
who (s. 7) shall destroy, alter, mutilate, or falsify
any of the books, papers, writings, or securities,
or make, or be privy to making, any false or
fruduleut entry, or any fraudulent omission in
any book of account, or other document, with
intent to defraud shareholders, creditors, or
other persons interested in the property or
effects, or who (s. 8) shall wilfully make, circu-
late, or publish, or concur in wilfully making,
circulating, or publishing any written statement
or account which he shall know to be false in any
material particular, with intent to deceive
or defraud any member, shareholder, or
creditor, or to induce any person to become a
shareholder or partner, or to entrust or advance
money or property, or to become security, or to
advance any money, may be liable to the penal-
ties provided by the 9th section, that is to say,
may be kept in penal servitude for not more than
seven years, or to fine or imprisonment within the
discretion of the Cuurt.

Nor shall any person by reason of anything
contained in this Act, be enabled to refuse (s. 10),
to make a full and complete discovery or answer,
but the same shall not be admitted in evidence
against him. Nor shall it prevent any remedy at
law or in equity that he might have independent
of the Criminal proceeding. Expenses of prose-
cution may also be allowed, but cases under the
Act shall not be tried at general or quarter
Sessions.

We have thus pointed out the leading provi-
sions of the Act, which we hope, and believe, will
have the intended effect. We cannot, of course,
yet say what questions may be raised respecting
its operation, but it will certainly require no
ordinary ingenuity to draw a coach-and-six
through its provisions, or to practise frauds
similar to those that have created such painful
excitement as in the cases of the Tipperary and
Royal British Banks.

If political gratitude be " gratitude for future
favours," the Jews can ask little of our Legisla-
ture on that score. We cannot gain much from
them in legislation now, for the simple reason that
we have got almost all they could give us. We
are indebted to them for so large a proportion of
our laws, that what more we should borrow from
Moses, if we did avowedly give him a seat in
our House of Commons, it is hard to say. In all
our legislation which touches at all upon religion
or scripture, our motto seems to be " Moses,
not Christ." Divorce has been tha almost
solitary exception, but—even in that—the
rich always contrived, as "Moses commanded, to
get a Bill of Divorce (passed), and to send her
away." We seem likely, however, now to come
nearer the law of Moses on that point, and so
much the better.

Why, the very ground of the Jews' present ex-
clusion from Parliament, though Christian ix form,
is rather Jewish in fact. Oaths belong much less to
Christianity than to Judaism. There have never
been wanting honest and intelligent Christians, as
well as over-scrupulous ones, who have inter-
preted literally Our Lord's prohibition,
" Swear not at all." If we do not
personally object to an oath, we can-
not fairly ridicule the man who thinks it
better to take his Master's words in their more
obvious meaning, than to make things easy to
himself by adopting what he thinks a " non-
natural sense." Indeed, we do not see what fairer
sense can be put upon the prohibtion than that a
Christian's word ought to be sufficient without his
oath—a principle which ought not to seem strange
in England, where for so long the usages of society
required a gentleman to defend his veracity by stak-
ing his life upun it. We look upon this, indeed, very
much as a perverted result of the doctrine that a
Christian's word should be equivalent to his oath.
Before the existence of Christianity it would be
impossible to find veracity rated so highly as an
essential of a gentleman. In any case, swearing
is commanded in the Old Testament, but forbidden
in the New, and we have kept out Jews by requir-
ing an oath which they cannot take—au oath
" on the faith of a Christ-ian," when CIIRIST says,
" Swear not at all." Let the fact go for what it
is worth ; it is at least a singular one.
Then, as to that scandalous business, "forbid-
ding to maTry" the sister of a deceased wife, it is
defended by purely Jewish reasons. The rotten
nonsens'a of Church authority would go for nothing,
if it could not appeal to MOSES. True, the ablest
Hebrew scholars, the best commentators, and Jews
themselves at present, all deny that the law of
MOSES, in the passage referred to, did prohibit
the marriages in question ; and we are confident
t hat our ever-in-the-way Bishops merely hoax us
with the name of MOSES, on behalf of their own
trumpery rubrics. Still, but for their solemn

dnst - raising over an abused text from
MOSES, they could not have blinded Chris-
tians so long. The New Testament knows
nothing of these " prohibitions to marry," except
to class those who create them with the predicted
" scoffers of the latter days." All reason, and
common sense, and regard for one's bereaved
children, nay, frequently the wish of the de-
ceased wife, commend a marriage, when practica-
ble and suitable, with the aunt of the bereaved
children ; no consanguinity interferes ; but Ju-
daism is appealed to by our Legislators while Jews
are denied a place among Them 1

As to our Sabbath legislation, for that of course
we are wholly indebted to the Jews. Not a trace
of it can we find in the book which contains the
distinctive " faith of a Christian." Not a hint
even can be extracted by any ingenuity from the
New Testament that it is wrong to do on the first
day of the week, or on any day of the week, what
it is right to do on another. The very notion of
sacred days is scouted by PAUL as Jewish.
We take a Sabbath, however, from the
Jews ; clap it upon the first day of the
week, as mathematicians tell us to do with
the two triangles in the fourth proposition
of "Euclid," and then pronounce the days
" every way equal." We marry by Jewish
laws, we keep Sabbath, and Easter too, we be-
hove, by Jewish laws. HEA.YEN grant that we
may not at last be born and circumcised by
Jewish laws !

We beg our friends of the lawn sleeves—that
modern substitute of the Ephod— to notice, too,
that their titles, and, indeed, their whole Church
establishment are confessedly Jewish things.
What part of the " faith of a Christian" is it to
pay tithes ?—that it was an essential of the
faith of a Jew we know ; a very marked injunction
of -the law of Moms ; but we remember not a word
about tithe-paying in the New Testament, except
from the lips of a certain well-known Pharisee ;
he was certainly a first-rate tithe-payer. The ex-
emplary are, however, now chiefly to be found
amongst those who "take tithes," and take also
Church-rates, Easter offerings, or anything else
they can get, "of all that others possess." In
this, too, they are hard again on poor MOSES ;
he, so far as we know, only enjoined the paying
of tithes, not the taking of them. If Jews would
not pay them, we do not remember that
the incumbents of Jerusalem, or of any
other place, had any means of making
them pay. We read of no proceedings
for recovery of tithes, or of church rates, in the
Mosaic ecclesiastical courts.

And then our venerable establishment—why is
it so venerable? Not, surely, because HENRY
TIIL brought it into being some three hundred
years ago ; and, certainly, we venerate nothing
which it inherited from Popery. No, it is
Judaism again that we are tirown back upon.
Our GREAT MASTER and his Apostles—unworldly,
living on free-will offerings, rejecting secu-
lar rank and authority, confining themselves to
"ministering the word and prayer," never saying
one syllable about a Christian hierarchy, but
saying a great many things whica every hierarchy
would like to expunge from the records they have
left us—make the New Testament a sad docu-
ment for the Lords Spiritual and the various
grades beneath them. But turn to Judaism, as
the old advocates of establishments always did,
and as modern apologists are often compelled to
do, and a High Priest and Levites, and all the
hierarchy, according to MosEs, will quite set up
an Archbishop and a bench of Bishops ; while
again, Kings at the head of the Church, fre-
quently paying it well, sometimes like SOLOMON
and HERoD, putting Priests and High Priests into
office, or (but the less said about that the better)
turning them out of office, are the natural prece-
dent for our modern Defeiders of the Faith, and
for their issuing their conga d' elire.
Enough, however. We wish only to remind
Churchmen of their indebtedness to Judaism, and
to suggest that the modern Jews are the natural
heirs of those to whom the debt was due. Can-
terbury, Oxford, and Exeter would get on slowly
enough without Judaism. Let Baron ROTHSCHILD
be the recipient of their gratitude.

ROYAL SALARIES.