The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-09-14

treated with toleratiea and favor by
the Portuguese kings. This wealthy and
industrious class of citizens Emmanuel
banished from his dominions. which had
been their home for centuries, to please the
bigotry of Ferdinand and Isabella, whose
daughter he was anxious 10 marry. These
Jews were given but six months IN which
TO prepare for Punishment; they sold their
business at a loss. and some of them rather
than leave their homes preferred TO be
baptized. These new converts were so
frightfully prosecuted by the Inquisition
that number of them went TO Brazil.
Many of the greatest families of Brazil
trace their descent to these Jew colonists,
who gave a great impulse to the trade and
industrial development of the colony.
These Jews introduced the sugar cane. the
greatest source of Brazilian wealth, into
the colony from Madeira in 1913. The
refugee Jews from Spain and Portugal
found an asylum in France and helped
greatly to increase her commercial and
trading wealth, and to these Jews many
Of the ablest men in France trace their
were obliged under law 10 wear a dis
tinctlve dress. When Disraeli entered
parliament, had he been a Jew
in faith as he was In blood, he
would have been denied his seat. 1t is
noteworthy fact that when Macaulay was
battling for the removal Of the civil disab-
llities of the Jews, Gladstone, then the
rising young hope of the Tories. vigorously
opposed his efforts, and yet Gladstone has
lived TO denounce the policy Of Russia as
the survival of the barbarism of the middle
ages. 1t was not till 1857 that Jew could
sit in the House of Commons, and it was
not until 1885 that Jew peer, Baron Roths-
child, ever sat in the House of Lords.
During all the years of persecution the
Jew was not only the best man of bust
ness. but the physician, the scholar. the
student and the man of science. The ex-
traordinary intellectual versatility of the
Jew race has been displayed in the highest
walks of art, music, medicine, the dra-
matte stage, philology, law, literature
and finance. The Jew was not originally
a universal money-maker. banker, money
lender and man OF business, but it was the
only opportunity left open to him to Sc
cure power for self-protection; he could
not legally hold land; he was shut out
from all callings, political, civil and mill
tary, and thus the money pursuit and
money power of the Jews were not born of
natural avarice, but born of grim neces-
sity to place themselves In a posi-
ton where bankrupt kings and
needy mobiles would grant the
prosecuted, attainted Jew that per-
sonal protection, because of his purse
that was denied his simple appeal for just
ice as a man and a brother. The Jew has
had, however, a humane revenge for his
cruel past by proving his ability to sit at
the head of all the great departments of
human effort, whether of pure thought or
outdoor action. Russia comedies the in
tellectual superiority of the jew; but
hates him and expels him because he will
not change his faith and become true
Slav. Every land that has protected
the Jew has been blessed and helped by
his ability and thrift. and every land that
has abused him has, like the fig tree cursed
by Christ, withered away.