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cannot be if these are stifled by an overmastering Judaism. We wish to have no Roman Empire of the German nation, but neither do we desire a Jewish Empire of the German nation. What we want is a German Empire of the German nation, and that we can only get when the German becomes and remains the bearer and disseminator of wealth and culture.

The meaning of this is that the Anti-Semites regard the intellectual activity of the Jews with as much discontent as their depravity a statement of a somewhat contradictory nature, but still soberly put forward. Wherever they look they complain that they see their country weighted with Jewish influence. Their universities are deeply tinged with Jewish teachings, their foremost philosophers and their most popular journalists are Jews. German aspirations and opinions are thus, they say, asphyxiated by a predominance which cannot be acceptable to the nation because it is Jewish. Granted that these aspirations and opinions have proved their weakness and stupidity by their inability to cope with the dominating influence, still this weakness and stupidity represent the legitimate pulsations of the German people, and they therefore crave for their ascendancy. But, it may be asked, why should not Jews, born and bred in Germany, be as capable of representing the patriotism of the nation as votaries of any other creed? The Anti-Semites simply reply, because they are Jews.' Now this is no new argument, no such novel evolution of modern philosophy, as the Judenfressern seem to think it. Close upon a century ago the very same point was publicly discussed and logically answered. Talleyrand observed in the Assemblée Nationale in 1791 :

There can be no difference between these men (the Jews) and ourselves but in the exercise of their religious worship; take that away, what can we see in them but fellow-citizens and brothers? Were it otherwise, it would be religion that gives civil and political rights; but it is birth, domicile, or landed property that confers them. If we reject the Israelites as Jews, we punish them for being born in one religion rather than in another; this is a manifest infraction of all laws, humane or civil.

On the same ground it may be said that if the argument of the Anti-Semites is followed to its logical conclusion, it is religion, and religion alone, which can evoke the patriotic instinct, and consequently that a man's patriotism should be under the direction of his religious opinions. There might be some reason for taking up this charge against the Jews if it could be shown that they have, at the dictates of religious prejudice, ever been unfaithful to the land of their adoption or birth. The very contrary is the case. The Jews have ever been amongst the most orderly and attached of citizens, and when they have risen to position and responsibility in the State their duties have been discharged with conspicuous zeal and impartiality. There are some who have the assurance to assert that the tendency of Judaism itself is to subjugate the interests of the Gentile neighbour and fellow-countryman to tribal interest. As, however, there is not

the shadow of a foundation for this statement, and no attempt at its justification has ever been made, let me merely ask whether the rôle played by Judaism throughout the long period that its votaries were persecuted, was ever of so immoral a character as to warrant this charge?

The answer is emphatically, No! Whilst the demoniacal attitude of Christianity was outwardly transforming the Jew into a cringing, spiritless, and narrow-minded chiffonnier, in his heart of hearts a spark of his former self was kept alive by his ancient faith, and prevented that complete demoralisation from which, had it really taken place, there would have been no returning.

The Jew was never so demoralised but he had a sympathy for his brethren; he never fell so low that he forgot his God; and that his manhood never entirely deserted him is proved by the many occasions when, having to choose between dishonour and death, he heroically decided to die. This question of the patriotism of the Jew has been so exhaustively dealt with by other writers, and so triumphantly settled in his favour, that it were a work of supererogation for me to dwell upon it. On the other hand, the conviction of the prejudiced that the Jew cannot be a patriot, is so shifty and unsettled, so nervously ready with new objections, and so desirous to avail itself of every flimsy weapon that sophistry and superstition can invent, that I feel bound to state. that I cannot believe that it ever really had any logical birth. It is evidently only one of those proverbial suspicions which haunt the minds of the guilty, very naturally put forward, now that we are rising in the world, by Christians who, in homely parlance, have a tendency measure other people's corn by their own bushel.'

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I could say much more in defence of my co-religionists against the charges of the Anti-Semites, but having, I hope, conclusively demonstrated the commonplace vulgarity of the whole agitation, and the artificiality and clumsiness of its gospel, I will be satisfied. It may be imagined that as a Jew I have followed the progress of this new attempt to revive against my people the prejudices of mediævalism with an all-consuming indignation, and that it is under the influence. of strong passion that I have penned the foregoing pages. For this I make no apology, and none I think will be expected of me. I know so well by my own feelings, and by a thorough appreciation of the unwarped sympathies of my co-religionists, that a more gratuitous revival of rancour never was attempted; and when I remember the persecutions to which my race have been subjected in the past, the splendid spirit of conciliation and forgiveness which they have ever manifested, and that in spite of all this the tendency of modern Christianity is to foster, if not the hatred, at any rate the contempt and suspicion, with which the Jew is regarded, I cannot repress my indignation. In face of the general culture of the Jews, their remarkable capacity for progress and the high distinction which they have earned for themselves, it is more than a disgrace that by noisy

missions and by the explicit lessons of the Christian prayer-books the general public should be taught to believe that the Jews stand upon an inferior moral level to themselves. Now, however, that this agitation has broken out, and that the whole of the enlightened world has been startled by this proof that religious hatred still exists, the philosophic teachings of the day must, for the credit of civilisation, combine for its extinction. I look forward, with, I hope, not too much sanguineness, to a period when Jew and Christian will appreciate one another—when, in the words of Lessing's monk, the Christian will say to the Jew, Ihr seid ein Christ! Bei Gott, Ihr seid ein Christ! Ein beszrer Christ war nie,' and like the immortal Nathan, the Jew shall reply, Was mich Euch zum Christen macht, das macht Euch mir zum Juden.'

6

LUCIEN WOLF.

IRISH EMIGRATION.

IN laying before the public last spring the result of my inquiries into the distress in Ireland, I ventured to express the opinion that for the poorest class in certain tracts in the West-poor from the inherent poverty of the soil-the only remedy was systematic and organised emigration. For these people,' I wrote,' the dwellers at Camus, or Carraroe with its five-and-twenty miles of alternate huts and boulders, neither peasant proprietary nor fixity of tenure can be expected to be remedial measures, and if it be objected that these are exceptional cases, it would not be difficult to bring forward many other localities of which, in varying degrees, the same might be said.' For these I urged that emigration, in the absence of local employment, seemed a remedy much to be preferred to scattering them over waste lands in Ireland, which needed the tardy and costly operation of reclamation; adding, 'whatever may be the merits of "scattering," I cannot think that its claims can compete with emigration.' And in reply to the argument that the natural forces at work, now drawing thousands to seek a livelihood in other lands, are sufficiently powerful without any legislative interference,' I pointed out that, as a matter of fact, these forces rarely touched the very poorest, who were unable to help themselves; further adding: "That what seems to me to be needed is that families should be assisted to emigrate from overcrowded parts of Ireland under careful and systematic supervision, and that this oversight should not end in Ireland, but should be continued under the charge of properly qualified agents in Canada or elsewhere, whose object it should be to give assistance in the selection of land or in obtaining employment for the emigrants.'

A more influential pen than mine writes in the same strain. In a paper recently laid by Lord Dufferin before the Irish Land Commission, after enumerating the measures which he recommends for adoption, he adds (see Times, January 4):

But for the extreme west of Ireland, what hope is there from any of the foregoing devices? Along that region there extends a broad riband of hopeless misery which no change in the present relations of landlord and tenant is likely to alleviate,

Irish Distress and its Remedies, 5th edition, pp. 109-10. Ridgway & Co.

Perennial destitution accentuated by periodical seasons of famine has been the sole experience of its inhabitants during the present century. To convert these poor people into peasant proprietors would be impracticable. To make them copy-holders under a quit-rent would be scarcely more to the purpose. Even to give them the land for nothing would not prove a permanent alleviation. Many of them, indeed, have no land at all. What then is to be done? Manifestly the only remedy is emigration. At this moment emigration is being much discredited, but to anyone who, like myself, has seen its effects, such an outcry has no meaning. In my opinion it is simply inhuman to perpetuate from generation to generation a state of things which has been deplored by every traveller who has visited those parts during the last eighty years. Within the compass of little more than a week, after a pleasant voyage, a proportion of these unhappy multitudes might be landed on the wharves of Quebec, the women healthier, the children rosier, the men in better heart and spirits than ever they have been since the day they were born. Four or five days more would plant them without fatigue or inconvenience on a soil so rich that it has only to be scratched to grow the best wheat and barley that can be raised on the Continent of America.

With the object of seeing for myself these future harvest fields of the world, and of inquiring how far they could be peopled with advantage by the poor people of the west of Ireland, I paid a visit to America last autumn, and returned a few weeks ago. I paid particular attention to the rising and important States of Iowa and Minnesota, and to our own Province of Manitoba in the great North-Western Territory, meeting with a large number both of older residents and of newly-arrived emigrants from Europe, Canada, and the more easterly States of America. From these gentlemen I invariably received the greatest courtesy in the prosecution of my inquiries, and from them as well as from other sources I received very explicit information which enables me to corroborate all that has been said of the fertility of these vast tracts. In Minnesota, the Catholic Colonisation Association,' directed by the splendid energy of Bishop Ireland, is providing a home and an honourable future for many a poor Irishman or others from the eastern States; while in Manitoba the Canadian Government is holding out the most liberal inducements to any who will come to till the soil. Without wishing to recommend the Canadian territory as a more suitable field for Irish emigration than that offered by the United States, I shall refer to it chiefly in the following remarks; for if there is to be, as I uphold, organised emigration (gradually carried out) on a scale to be termed national, it is manifestly more natural and convenient to deal with our own colony of Canada than with a foreign Government, even although it be as friendly as that of the United States. There is also the additional reason for doing so that the Canadian lands are offered free, whilst those in the States must now be purchased at a cost of 10s. to 308. per acre. But anything that I have to say in favour of western Canada as a field for Irish industry may be considered to apply with equal or greater force to the States of Minnesota and Iowa.

The great prairie region of north-western Canada consists of a