of Norfolk, who is recognised as the mouthpiece and leader
of English Roman Catholic laymen, is endeavour- ing to remove the boycott which has been proclaimed against the Jews of Limerick. That boycott, though it seems a small affair, a local squabble in a town not of the first significance, may have important political con- sequences, and is in any case one of those incidents which occasionally make Englishmen despair of ever understanding Irish feelings, or ever reconciling their own social and political aspirations with those which dominate the majority in the neighbouring island. There are, it appear!, some thirty Jewish families in Limerick who maintain themselves, as the majority of Jews do every- where, by diligence in the management of the humbler trades. Nobody accuses them of lawbreaking of any kind, or of forestalling, or, in fact, of doing anything which calls attention to themselves beyond maintaining the exclusiveness which they have kept up for centuries, and which those who detest their race simply as a race ought to consider a protection against their influence. They do not even lend money except in the smallest way, for they are too poor. They are, no doubt, strangers, for till within a very few years the Jews avoided Ireland, and there were practically none in the island ; but their arrival does no harm, and might even be taken, if we were all quite reasonable, as a sign of growing prosperity in Ireland. Roman Catholics, however, have almost every- where a latent dislike of Jews, founded either on tradition, or on a belief that they represent a hostile religious ideal; a priest preached a sermon or two expressing that view in excited language, and suddenly the majority in Limerick passed a popular decree boycotting the intrusive strangers. The unhappy Jews were ruined at once. Nobody would trade with them, or buy anything of them, and families which were earning a decent living found themselves reduced to such poverty that Protestants have been asked by the Jewish Maxim for subscriptions to prevent their suffering the last extremes of misery. Moreover, the Jews, who were formerly as safe as other taxpaying citizens, now find themselves hooted by boys in the streets, and one at least, the Rabbi, has been compelled to ask for police protection.
It is, in fact, a bad form of persecution, inflicted by the people instead of by any Government, and it ought to be stopped at once by the higher Roman Catholic clergy and the leaders of the popular Irish party. The former seek, we presume, like all their brethren, the conversion of English- men and Americans to "the only true Church," and they must know that one of the hundred obstacles in their way is the belief, the almost immovable belief, that Roman Catholics would persecute if they had the power. How is it possible to remove that belief, or mitigate the deep dis- trust it produces, while such scenes are reported from towns within the United Kingdom, and while it is so impossible to induce average Irish Roman Catholics to be just towards fellow-citizens of another faith, or to show them the kind- ness which they would display towards any other guests ? It is said, of course, that popular effervescence is respon- sible for the trouble in Limerick ; but the trouble did not manifest itself till a priest denounced the Jews, and the Protestants neither approve of nor support the boycott. If Jews are by mere nature, by their gripingness, their hard- ness, and their historic relation to the Crucifixion so un- acceptable to Irishmen, how is it that the Protestants of Limerick not only do not share the intolerance of their fellow-citizens, but are anxious to protect the victims of oppression? That the Bishops could atop the persecution in a moment by threatening to remove its authors we do not doubt; and we hope the Duke of Norfolk will convince them that they would be wise to do it, while the popular political leaders would be wiser still to exert their influence in a similar direction. It is difficult enough for them, With their Church's views on education, to keep on terms with the Liberal party; but if they are to protect
We have often wondered that Roman Catholics and members of the Greek Church are not more afraid to persecute Jews than they are. The unenlightened at least among them have a proclivity towards superstition ; and if there is a superstition which seems to be justified by historic facts, it is the one in which many Jews find occasional consolation. The children of Israel, they say, are doomed by Almighty wisdom to wander for a time, and have only to submit to the decree; but God reserves their punishment to Himself, and the nations which persecute Jews do not prosper. The Spaniards, who expelled them and sent them to the stake, have lost their eminence among the peoples, while the British abolition of all Jewish disabilities has been followed by a period of unprecedented prosperity and success. The treatment of a single Jewish officer, being treatment which involved a whole theory of persecution, shook all confidence in France ; while the swiftness of the retribution for the massacre at Kiahineff is at this moment attracting the eyes of all the world. Justice had no sooner been refused to the Jews than a tsetse-fly fastened on the mighty bulk of the oppressor, and ho is rolling now in an agony which extorts pity even from his foes. We ourselves distrust all such rash interpreta- tions of a divine Will which we cannot know, and think Jewish separateness, in part at least, explained by the stiffneckedneas which the race had manifested before Titus, the " delight of mankind," broke up the only subjugated nation that ever found the courage to defy Rome to the death. Those, however, who believe everything the older Churches teach might well be excused if they feared meddling with a race which they regard as so obviously set apart, or if they confined their ill-treatment of them to the indifferent contempt which induces so many Jews to merge themselves in the population around them. It is, however, from Roman Catholics and Greek Christians that the Jews suffer persecutions such as make them occasion. ally cry out that the " quality of mercy " is to be found in every creed excepting Christianity. The cry is an un- reasonable one, but as one reads of the treatment they even now receive over half the civilised world one can hardly wonder at the bitterness which extorts it.
MR. BALFOITR'S FISCAL POLICY.
POLITPOLITICIANS owe much to the writer of the article ICIANS " Retaliation and Scientific Taxation " in the new number of the Quarterly Review. The precise nature of the debt would hardly be inferred from the title of the article. For the politician, as such, is somewhat weary of the fiscal controversy. It is too full of unpleasant incidents and falsified predictions to make it at all an agreeable subject. What interests him is not so much the economic argument for or against a particular fiscal policy, as the effect which its adoption or rejection will have upon the Parliamentary situation. His object is to calculate the chances of the rival parties at the polls, and to do this he must know what are the programmes they are going to bring forward. As regards the Oppo- sition he is in no doubt. However divided they may be on subordinate questions, they are agreed upon the great issue which will decide the Election. His uncertainties begin when he turns to the Unionists. He makes short
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