i 
 
 ^ 
 
 The 
 
 Scattered 
 
 Nation 
 
 By 
 ZEBULON BAIRD VANCE 
 
 Late 
 
 United States Senator 
 
 1916 
 
^ 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DS 119.V22 1916 
 
 Scattered naton, 
 
 3 1924 028 61 
 
 all 
 
iVA 
 
 %/ 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028615098 
 
To the Memory 
 
 of 
 
 ABRAM S. HEWITT 
 
 Representative in Congress 
 Mayor of New York City 
 
 Patriotic, Aggressive, Fearless 
 Seeking Fulfillment of the Right 
 
 in the 
 Expression of True Philanthropy 
 Who Bequeathed to the World 
 A Son of Scientific Achievements 
 
 The Pu.blisher, who bears him 
 In Appreciative Remembrance 
 
 DEDICATES THIS VOLUME 
 
• /^. ^^ 
 
THE 
 SCATTERED NATION 
 
 ■\i' 
 
 By 
 
 ZEBULON BAIRD VANCE 
 
 Late United States Senator from North Carolina 
 
 MARCUS SCHNITZER 
 
 publisher .- \ 
 i 280 BfoadT^^ay New York 
 
 \^' ' 1916 
 
 \ ( 
 
CopyrlBht, 1904, by Willis Bruce Dowd 
 Copyright, 1916, by Mircua Schnltzer 
 
 The Wolfer Press 
 New York 
 
THE SCATTEKBD NATION. 
 
 Introduction to the Edition 
 
 of 1916 
 
 At no time, perhaps, since the beginning of 
 the modern era of civilization has the attention 
 of the United States been centered so largely 
 upon the sufferings of the Jewish people as in 
 these days of the Great War. 
 
 Compared with their condition today in war- 
 devastated Poland, Galieia, Lithuania, and else- 
 where in Europe where the destruction of battle 
 is as a scourge, the lot of the Jews xmder the 
 savage Russian regime, with its barbarous 
 "pogroms", was one that approached a degree 
 of toleration, if not of contentment, albeit under 
 sporadic persecution. 
 
 For Poland, Galieia and Lithuania, with their 
 millions of Jews, are today the destined victims 
 of starvation in a ^'war for civilization", unless, 
 perchance, American means and American 
 methods succeed in forcing a wedge into these 
 lands of almost unprecedented misery, and in 
 rendering prompt and efficacious relief. 
 
 Now that humanitarians throughout the 
 world, even in the belligerent countries, regard- 
 less of creedal or religious differences, are 
 
6 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 stirred to helpful activity in works of ameliora- 
 tion — ^works that are already expressed by 
 Americans in figures of millions and in terms of 
 world-reach — it is both just and important that 
 adequate reference should be made to the debt 
 which religion (so unhappily, so mercilessly, 
 prostituted by the malign agents of Jewish per- 
 secution), which fimdamental law and govern- 
 ment, which statesmanship and science, com- 
 merce and trade, even democracy itself, owes to 
 the Jews. 
 
 Eminent men of many lands, professing al- 
 legiance to many ecclesiastical institutions, have 
 paid tribute, in past years, to the essential worth 
 of the Jewish people. Some such tributes have 
 been evoked by the salient, and at times even the 
 unique, service which has been rendered to the 
 State, to science or literature, or to humanity, 
 by the Jews. Many others have been brought 
 forth because of the horrors of Jewish persecu- 
 tions, with which the records of the Nineteenth 
 and Twentieth centuries have been so often and 
 so indelibly stained. 
 
 None of these tributes, however, presents a 
 finer sense of the worth of the Jew, or displays 
 more valid or indubitable evidence of the wealth 
 of his contributions to civilization; none evinces 
 a more thorough appreciation of the Jewish peo- 
 
THE SCATTEEED NATION. 7 
 
 pie, historically considered; or manifests a more 
 intelligent study of and research into the Jewish 
 fundamentals — so many of which project them- 
 selves forcefully into the civilization of today — 
 than that of Zebulon Baird Vance, who sat for 
 two decades in the legislative councils of the 
 United States, as Representative and Senator, 
 after having thrice served his own State as Gov- 
 ernor, 
 
 Just why it was that Senator Vance, this 
 product of the North Carolina mountains, this 
 offspring of rugged, rigidly righteous parents, 
 whose family roots extend to Ireland and Nor- 
 mandy, should have arisen, when at the very 
 zenith of his power and in the fulness of his 
 statesmanship, as the champion of the Jewish 
 people, is explained only through a knowledge 
 of his keen sense of justice, of his love for hu- 
 manity, and perhaps by his own recollections of 
 the days of his early struggles. 
 
 Born near Asheville, Buncombe County, 
 North Carolina, May 13th, 1830, the son of 
 David Vance and Mira Margaret Baird, 
 daughter of Zebulon Baird, once a State Sena- 
 tor from Buncombe County, Zebulon Vance had 
 few of the advantages which today are supposed 
 to make for one's material progress through life. 
 At the age of six, it is true, he attended a board- 
 
8 THE SCATTERED NATION* 
 
 ing school; but it was a boarding school in the 
 North Carolina mountains, with all that that 
 suggests. 
 
 At twelve years of age he was sent to Wash- 
 ington College, in Tennessee, which establish- 
 ment then, academically considered, would hard- 
 ly compare favorably with the average second- 
 ary school of today. Notwithstanding, fate 
 willed that he should not be permitted to finish 
 his course, even in that college, for he was called 
 home upon the death of his father in January, 
 1844, and did not return. 
 
 Later, having borrowed three hundred dol- 
 lars — a rather large amount for a youth in those 
 days — from the president of the University of 
 North Carolina, Vance invested the money in 
 that institution, where he matriculated, not for 
 the full academic course, but as a special stud- 
 ent in the Law School. There he met Clement 
 Dowd, "a farmer's boy from the sand ridges and 
 pines of Moore County, who, like himself, aspir- 
 ing to a larger life, had borrowed money on 
 which to begin an education", but who, mote for- 
 tunate than Vance, was able to secure a full 
 diploma in the academic course of the university. 
 This meeting yielded a life-long friendship, 
 which grew into intimacy. Dowd became 
 Vance's law partner, and also a member of the 
 
THE 8CATTEBED NATION, 9 
 
 House of Representatives. This friendship end- 
 ed only with the death of Vance, who had been 
 the great War Governor of his State, at Wash- 
 ington in April of 1894. Dowd became his biog- 
 rapher, and prepared the record which so fitly 
 commemorates the distinguished life and achieve- 
 ments of Vance. 
 
 Dr. Kemp P. Battle, for many years the head 
 of the University of North Carolina, tells of his 
 impressions of Vance, when he first met him, as 
 follows : 
 
 "In the Simimer of 1848, I visited Asheville 
 in company with my father, who, as Superior 
 Court Judge, was holding a special term for the 
 county of Buncombe, The old court house had 
 been burned. Timbers had been hauled for the 
 erection of a more handsome structure. I was 
 sitting on these timbers • . . talking to a young 
 lawyer. . . He called to a young man passing 
 by and introduced him to me as *Zeb* Vance. 
 My new acquaintance impressed me at once as 
 a youth of peculiar attractiveness of manner and 
 gifts of mind. I thought I knew something of 
 Shakespeare, but his familiarity with the char- 
 acters and words of the Titan poet put me to 
 shame. I claimed to be in a measure intimate 
 with the personages of the romances of my fav- 
 orite, Scott, but he had evidently lived with them 
 
10 THE SCATTEEED NATION, 
 
 as with home folks. I had been from childhood 
 not always a willing, but certainly a regular at- 
 tendant on Sunday-school and church services, 
 and I thought I had at least amateur familiarity 
 with the Bible, but his mind seemed to be stored 
 with Scriptural texts as fully as a theological 
 student preparing for his examination. Candor 
 compels me to admit, however, that his applica- 
 tion of these texts conduced of tener to risibility 
 than to the conversion of souls. His wit spark- 
 led like the wavelets of the 'ever laughing ocean'. 
 His humor had no acridity, and was distin- 
 guished by the extraordinary power not only of 
 perennial pleasantness, but of gently forcing his 
 companions to feel that they had known and 
 loved him from boyhood." 
 
 "Here, then," says Willis Bruce Dowd, "we 
 have a complete revelation of the influences of 
 heredity and environment which produced a 
 mind capable of understanding the history and 
 portent of the Jewish race. Here we see a scion 
 of oppressed French and Irish people, whose 
 blood was warm with resentment of wrong, in 
 advocacy of justice; whose mind was stored with 
 knowledge of Biblical and profane literature; 
 whose fancy was lively, and whose career was to 
 be made by the use of his tongue and pen — and 
 thus it was but the fruit of a process of evolution 
 
THE SCATTEEED NATION. 11 
 
 that our author gave us *The Scattered Nation,' 
 . . . . which, under the spell of his person- 
 ality, captivated and delighted hosts of hearers." 
 Senator Vance was a man of massive build, 
 having a leonine head, crowned with abundant 
 hair. His blue eyes were ever sparkling as his 
 clarion voice gave forth in pleasing succession 
 the thoughts, the conceits of wisdom, humor and 
 wit, that animated him. 
 
 His political career was phenomenal. He was 
 elected State Senator, then Congressman, before 
 he was thirty years of age. He was Governor 
 of North Carolina at the age of thirty-two, and 
 was twice re-elected — in 1864 and 1876. He 
 served his State as United States Senator for 
 two full terms, and was serving a third term 
 when death removed him from the field of his 
 fruitful labors while he was in the full maturity 
 of his powers. 
 
 His fimeral was held in the Capitol at Wash- 
 ington. It was attended by the President, mem- 
 bers of the Cabinet, diplomats, members of Con- 
 gress, and officers of the Army and Navy. His 
 body was borne by a special escort of distin- 
 guished men to his native State, and there 
 interred in that highland county which gave him 
 birth. ■'■'■ 
 
 In Capitol Square, at Raleigh, is a bronze 
 
 '^; 
 
12 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 statue of the Governor and Senator. It is a noble 
 reminder of the labors and accomplishments of 
 a great son of North Carolina. But bronze is 
 perishable. The greatest memorial to Senator 
 Vance is fovmd in his contributions to the legis- 
 lation and the literature that make for the prog- 
 ress of the humanities. Such is his lecture on 
 the Jewish people. It abides, continuing "as a 
 stream of pleasant water, running through the 
 earth, making glad the hearts of men, and help- 
 ing to bring in that real brotherhood of which he 
 spoke and for which he so ardently longed." 
 
 "The Scattered Nation," like Lincoln's ad- 
 dress at Gettysburg, is a living document. That 
 is because it deals with what has been so aptly 
 termed the vrcdes Veritas — the true truth. It is, 
 therefore, imperishable. 
 
 And the soul of the man lives in the lecture. 
 
 MARCUS SCHNITZER. 
 
 New York City, August, 1916. 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 13 
 
 The Scattered Nation 
 
 Says Prof. Maury: "There is a river in the 
 ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, 
 and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. 
 The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its 
 mouth is in the Arctic seas* It is the Gulf Stream. 
 There is in the world no other such majestic flow 
 of waters. Its current is more rapid than the 
 Mississippi or the Amazon, and its volume more 
 than a thousand times greater. Its waters, as 
 far out from the Gulf as the Carolina coasts, are 
 of indigo blue; they are so distinctly marked that 
 their line of junction with the common sea- water 
 may be traced by the eye. Often one-half of a 
 vessel may be perceived floating in Gulf Stream 
 water, while the other half is in common water 
 of the sea, so sharp is the line and such the want 
 of g^ffinity between those waters, and such too the 
 reluctance, so to speak, on the part of those of 
 the Gulf Stream to mingle with the common 
 water of the sea." 
 
 This curious phenomenon in the physical 
 world has its counterpart in the moral. There is 
 a lonely river in the midst of the ocean of man- 
 kind. The mightiest floods of human tempta- 
 tion have never caused it to overflpw and the 
 
14 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 fiercest fires of human cruelty, though seven 
 times heated in the furnace of religious bigotry, 
 have never caused it to dry up, although its waves 
 for two thousand years have rolled crimson with 
 the blood of its martyrs. Its fountain is in the 
 gray dawn of the world's history, and its mouth 
 is somewhere in the shadows of eternity. It, 
 too„ refuses to mingle with the surrounding 
 waves, and the line which divides its restless 
 billows from the common waters of humanity is 
 also plainly visible to the eye. It is the Jewish 
 race. 
 
 The Jew is beyond doubt the most remarkable 
 man of this world — past or present. Of all the 
 stories of the son of men there is none so wild, so 
 wonderful, so full of extreme mutation, so re- 
 plete with suffering and horror, so abounding in 
 extraordinary providences, so overflowing with 
 scenic romance. There is no man who ap- 
 proaches him in the extent and character of the 
 influence which he has exercised oyer the human 
 family. His history is the history of our civil- 
 ization and progress in this world, and our faith 
 and hope in that which is to come. From him 
 have we derived the form and pattern of all that 
 is excellent on earth or in heaven. If, as De 
 Quincey says, the Roman emperors, as the great 
 accountants for the happiness of more men and 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 15 
 
 men more cultivated than ever before, were en- 
 trusted to the motions of a single will and had a 
 special, singular and mysterious relation to the 
 secret councils of heaven — thrice truly may it be 
 said of the Jew. Palestine, his home, was the 
 central chamber of God's administration. He 
 was at once the grand usher to these glorious 
 courts, the repository of the councils of the Al- 
 mighty and the envoy of the divine mandates to 
 the consciences of men. He was the priest and 
 faith-giver to mankind, and as such, in spite of 
 the gibe and jeer, he must ever be considered as 
 occupying a peculiar and sacred relation to all 
 other peoples of this world. Even now, though 
 the Jews have long since ceased to exist as a 
 consolidated nation, inhabiting a common coun- 
 try, and for eighteen hundred years have been 
 scattered far and near over the wide earth, their 
 strange customs, their distinct features, per- 
 sonal peculiarities and their scattered unity, 
 make them still a wonder and an astonishment. 
 Though dead as a nation — as we speak of na- 
 tions — they yet live. Their ideas fill the world 
 and move the wheels of its progress, even as the 
 sun, when he sinks behind the western hills, yet 
 fills the heavens with the remnants of his glory. 
 As the destruction of matter in one form is made 
 necessary to its resurrection in another, so it 
 
16 y THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 WQidd seem that the perishing of the Jewish 
 nationality was in order to the universal accept- 
 ance and the everlasting establishment of Jew- 
 ish ideas. Never before was there an instance 
 of such a general rejection of the person and 
 character, and acceptance of the doctrines and 
 dogmas of a people. 
 
 We regard with imlimited admiration the 
 Greek and Roman, but reject with contempt his 
 crude and beastly divinities. We affect to de- 
 spise the Jew, but accept and adore the pure con- 
 ception of a God which he taught us, and whose 
 real existence the history of the Jew more than 
 all else establishes. When the court chaplain of 
 Frederick the Great was asked by that bluff 
 monarch for a brief and concise smnmary of the 
 argument in support of the truth of Scripture, 
 he instantly replied, with force to which nothing 
 could be added, "The Jews, Your Majesty, the 
 Jews." 
 
 I propose briefly to glance at their history, 
 origin and civilization, peculiarities, present con- 
 dition and probable destiny. 
 
 "A people of Semitic race," says the encyclo- 
 paedia, "whose ancestors appear at the very dawn 
 of the history of mankind, on the banks of the 
 Euphrates, the Jordan and the Nile, their frag- 
 ments are now to be seen in larger or smaller 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 17 
 
 numbers, in almost all of the cities of the globe, 
 from Batavia to New Orleans, from Stockholm 
 to Cape Town. When little more numerous 
 than a family, they had their language, customs 
 and peculiar observances, treated with princes 
 and in every respect acted as a nation. Though 
 broken, as if into atoms, and scattered through 
 all climes, among the rudest and the most civil- 
 ized nations, they have preserved, through thou- 
 sands of years, common features and observ- 
 ances, a common religion, literature and sacred 
 language. ^ Without any political union, with- 
 out any common head or centre, they are gen- 
 erally regarded and regard themselves as a na- 
 tion. They began as nomads, emigrating from 
 country to country; their law made them agri- 
 culturists for fifteen centuries; their exile trans- 
 formed them into a mercantile people. They 
 have struggled for their national existence 
 against the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, 
 Syrians and Romans ; have been conquered and 
 nearly exterminated by each of these powers and 
 have survived them all. They have been op- 
 pressed and persecuted by emperors and repub- 
 lics, by sultans and by popes. Moors and inquisi- 
 tors; they were proscribed in Catholic Spain, 
 Protestant Norway and Greek Muscovy, while 
 their persecutors sang the hymns of their psal- 
 
18 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 mody, revered their books, believed in their 
 prophets and even persecuted them in the name 
 of their God. They have numbered philosophers 
 among the Greeks of Alexandria, and the Sara- 
 cens of Cordova; have transplanted the wisdom 
 of the East beyond the Pyrenees and the Rhine, 
 and have been treated as pariahs among Pagans, 
 Mahommedans and Christians. They have 
 fought for liberty under Kosciusko and Blucher, 
 and popular assemblies among the Sclavi and 
 Germans still withheld from them the right of 
 living in certain towns, villages and streets/' 
 
 Whilst no people can claim such an unmixed 
 purity of blood, certainly none can establish 
 such antiquity of origin, such unbroken genera- 
 tions of descent. That splendid passage of 
 Macaulay so often quoted, in reference to the 
 Roman Pontiffs, loses its force in sight of He- 
 brew history. "No other institution," says he, 
 "is left standing which carries the mind back to 
 the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from 
 the Pantheon, and when camels, leopards and 
 tigers bounded in the Iberian amphitheatre. The 
 proudest royal houses are but of yesterday as 
 compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs ; 
 that line we trace back in unbroken links, from 
 the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nine- 
 teenth century, to the Pope who crowned Pepin 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 19 
 
 in the eighth, and far beyond Pepin, the august 
 dynasty extends until it is lost in the twilight of 
 fable. The Republic of Venice came next in 
 antiquity, but the Republic of Venice is modern 
 compared with the Papacy, and the Republic of 
 Venice is gone and the Papacy remains. The 
 Catholic Church was great and respected before 
 the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the 
 Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian elo- 
 quence still flourished at Antioch, when idols 
 were still worshipped in the Temple at Mecca; 
 and she may still exist, in undiminished vigor, 
 when some traveller from New Zealand in the 
 midst of a vast solitude shall take his stand on 
 a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the 
 ruins of St. Paul." This is justly esteemed one 
 of the most eloquent passages in our literature, 
 but I submit it is not history. 
 
 The Jewish people's church and institutions 
 are still left standing, though the stones of the 
 temple remain no longer one upon the other, 
 though its sacrificial fires are forever extin- 
 guished, and though the tribes, whose glory it 
 was, wander with weary feet throughout the 
 earth. And what is the line of Roman Pontiffs 
 compared to that splendid dynasty of the suc- 
 cessors of Aaron and Levi? "The twilight of 
 fable," in which the line of Pontiffs began, was 
 
20 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 but the noonday brightness of the Jewish priest- 
 hood. Their institution carries the mind back 
 to the age when the prophet, in rapt mood, stood 
 over Babylon and uttered God's wrath against 
 that grand and wondrous mistress of the Eu- 
 phratean plains — when the Memphian chivalry 
 still gave precedence to the chariots and horse- 
 men who each morning poured forth from the 
 brazen gates of the abode of Anmaon ; when Tyre 
 and Sidon were yet building their palaces by the 
 sea, and Carthage, their greatest daughter, was 
 yet unborn. That dynasty of prophetic priests 
 existed even before Clio's pen had learned to 
 record the deeds of men ; and when that splendid, 
 entombed civilization once lighted the shores of 
 the Erythrean Sea, the banks of the Euphrates 
 and the plains of Shinar, with a glory inconceiv- 
 able, of which there is nought now to tell, except 
 the dumb eloquence of ruined temples and bur- 
 ied cities. 
 
 Then, too, it must be remembered that these 
 Pontiffs were but Gentiles in the garb of Jews, 
 imitating their whole routine. All Christian 
 churches are but off-shoots from or grafts upon 
 the old Jewish stock. Strike out all of Judaism 
 from the Christian church and there remains 
 nothing but an immeaning superstition. 
 
 The Christian is simply the successor of the 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 21 
 
 Jew — the glory of the one is likewise the glory 
 of the other. The Saviour of the world was, 
 after the flesh, a Jew — ^born of a Jewish maiden ; 
 so likewise were all of the apostles and the first 
 propagators of Christianity. The Christian re- 
 ligion is equally Jewish with that of Moses and 
 the prophets. 
 
 I am not unaware of the fact that other peo- 
 ple besides the Semites had a conception of the 
 true God long before He was revealed to Abra- 
 ham. The Hebrew Scriptures themselves 
 testify this, and so likewise do the books of the 
 very oldest of written records. The fathers of 
 the great Aryan race, the shepherds of Iran, had 
 so vivid a conception of the unity of God as to 
 give rise to the opinion that they too had once 
 had a direct revelation. It is more likely, how- 
 ever, that traditions of this God had descended 
 among them from the Deluge, which ultimately 
 became adulterated by polytheistic imaginings. 
 It seems natural that these people of highly 
 sensitive intellects, dwelling beneath the serene 
 skies that impend over the plains and mountains 
 of Southwestern Asia, thickly studded with the 
 calm and glorious stars, should mistake these 
 most majestic emblems of the Creator for the 
 Creator himself. Hence, no doubt, arose the 
 worship of light and fire by Iranians and Saboe- 
 
22 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 anism, or star worship, by the Chaldeans. But 
 the better opinion of learned Orientalists is that 
 while the outward or exoteric doctrine taught the 
 worship of the symbols, the esoteric or secret 
 doctrines of Zoroaster, his predecessors and dis- 
 ciples, taught, in fact, the worship of the Prin- 
 ciple, the First Cause, the Great Unknowrij the 
 Universal Intelligence, Magdam, or God. There 
 can be no doubt that Abraham brought this 
 monotheistic conception with him from Chaldea ; 
 but notwithstanding this dim traditional light, 
 which was abroad outside of the race of Shem, 
 perhaps over the entire breadth of that splendid 
 prehistoric civilization of the Arabian Cushite, 
 yet for the more perfect light, which revealed to 
 us God and His attributes, we are unquestion- 
 ably indebted to the Jew, 
 
 We owe to him, if not the conception, at least 
 the preservation of pure monotheism. For 
 whether this knowledge was original with these 
 eastern people or traditional merely, it was 
 speedily lost by all of them except the Jews. 
 Whilst an unintelligent use of symbolism en- 
 veloped the central figure with a cloud of idola- 
 try and led the Magi to the worship of light and 
 fire, the Sabean to the adoration of the heavenly 
 host, the Egyptian to bowing down before Isis 
 and Osiris, the Carthagenian to the propitiation 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 23 
 
 of Baal and Astarte by human sacrifice and the 
 subtle Greek to the deification of the varied laws 
 of nature; the bearded Prophets of Israel were 
 ever thundering forth, "Know, O Israel, that 
 the Lord thy God is one God, and Him only 
 shalt thou serve." 
 
 Even his half-brother Ishmael, after an idola- 
 trous sleep of centuries, awoke with a sharp and 
 bloody protest against polytheism, and estab- 
 lished the unity of God as the cornerstone of his 
 faith. In this respect the influence which the 
 Jew has exercised over the destinies of mankind 
 places him before all the men of this world. For 
 in this idea of God, all of the faith and creeds of 
 the dominant peoples of the earth centre. It di- 
 vides like a great mountain range the civiliza- 
 tions of the ancient and modern worlds. Many 
 enlightened men of antiquity acknowledged the 
 beauty of this conception, though they did not 
 embrace it. Socrates did homage to it, and 
 Josephus declares that he derived his sublime 
 ideal from the Jewish Scriptures. The accom- 
 plished Tacitus seemed to grasp it, as the fol- 
 lowing passage will show. In speaking of the 
 Jews and in contrasting them with the Egyp- 
 tians, he says: "With regard to the Deity, their 
 creed is different. The Egyptians worship vari- 
 ous animals and also certain symbolical repre- 
 
24 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 sentatives which are the work of man. The Jews 
 acknowledge one God only, and Him they see 
 in the mind's eye, and Him they adore in con- 
 templation, condemning as impious idolators all 
 who with perishable materials wrought into the 
 human form attempt to give a representation 
 of the Deity. The God of the Jews is the great 
 governing mind that directs and guides the 
 whole frame of nature — eternal, infinite and 
 neither capable of change nor subject to decay." 
 This matchless and eloquent definition of the 
 Deity has never been improved upon, but it 
 seems that it made slight impression upon the 
 philosophical historian's mind. And yet what a 
 contrast it is with his own coarse, material gods 1 
 Indeed the rejection or ignorance of this pure 
 conception by the acute and refined intellects of 
 the mediseval ancients strikes us with wonder, 
 and illustrates the truth that no man by search- 
 ing can find out God. I am not unaware that 
 the Arabian idea of Deity received many modi- 
 fications from the conceptions of adjoining and 
 contemporary nations — ^by cross-fertilization of 
 ideas, as the process has been called. From the 
 Egyptians and Assyrians were received many of 
 these modifications, but the chief impression was 
 from the Greeks. The general effect was to 
 broaden and enlarge the original idea, whose 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 25 
 
 tendency was to regard the Supreme Being as a 
 tribal deity, into the grander, universal God, or 
 Father of all. If time permitted it would be a 
 most interesting study to trace the action and 
 reaction of Semitic upon Hellenistic thought. 
 How Hellenistic philosophy produced Pharisa- 
 ism, or the progressive party of the Hebrew 
 Theists ; how Pharisaism in turn produced Stoic- 
 ism, which again prepared the way for Chris- 
 tianity itself. 
 
 The whole polity of the Jews was originally 
 favorable to agriculture ; and though they ad- 
 hered to it closely for many centuries, yet the 
 peculiar facilities of their country ultimately 
 forced them largely into commerce. The great 
 caravan routes from the rich countries of the 
 East, Mesopotamia, Shinar, Babylonia, Medea, 
 Assyria and Persia, to the ports of the Mediter- 
 ranean, lay through Palestine, whilst Spain, 
 Italy, Gaul, Asia Minor, Northern Africa, 
 Egypt, and all the riches that then clustered 
 around the shores of the Great Sea and upon the 
 islands in its bosom had easy access to its harbors. 
 In fact, the wealth of the New World, its civiliza- 
 tion, refinement and art lay in concentric circles 
 around Jerusalem as a focal point. The Jewish 
 people grew rich in spite of themselves and 
 gradually forsook their agricultural simplicity. 
 
26 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 But more than all things else their institutions 
 interest mankind. Their laws for the protection 
 of property, the enforcement of industry and the 
 upholding of the State were such as afforded the 
 strongest impulse to personal freedom and na- 
 tional vigor. The great principle of their real 
 estate laws was the inalienability of the land. 
 Houses, in walled towns might be sold in per- 
 petuity, if unredeemed within the year ; land only 
 for a limited period. At the year of Jubilee every 
 estate reverted without repurchase to the original 
 owners, and even during this period it might be 
 redeemed by paying the value of the purchase 
 of the years which intervened until the Jubilee. 
 Little as we may now be disposed to value this 
 remarkable Agrarian law, says Dean Milman, 
 it secured the political equality of the people 
 and anticipated all the mischiefs so fatal to the 
 early Republics of Greece and Italy, the appro- 
 priation of the whole territory of the State by a 
 rich and powerful landed oligarchy, with the con- 
 sequent convulsing of the community from the 
 deadly struggles between the patrician and the 
 plebeian orders. In the Hebrew state the im- 
 provident man might indeed reduce himself and 
 his family to penury or servitude, but he could 
 not perpetuate a race of slaves or paupers. Every 
 fifty years God, the king and lord of the soil, as 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 27 
 
 it were, resumed the whole territory and granted 
 it back in the same portions to the descendants 
 of the original possessors. 
 
 It is curious to observe, continues the same 
 author, in this earliest practicable Utopia, the 
 realization of Machiavelli's great maxim, the 
 constant renovation of a state, according to the 
 first principles of its constitution, a maxim recog- 
 nized by our own statesmen, which they desig- 
 nate as a "frequent recurrence to the first prin- 
 ciples." How little we learn that is new. The 
 civil polity of the Jews is so ultimately blended 
 historically with the ecclesiastical that the former 
 is not easily comprehended by the ordinary 
 student. Their scriptures relate principally to 
 the latter, and to obtain a knowledge of the other 
 resort must be had to the Talmud and the Rab- 
 binical expositions, a task that few men will lend 
 themselves to, who hope to do anything else in 
 this world. Yet a little study will repay richly 
 the political student, by showing him the origin 
 of many excellent seminal principles which we 
 regard as modern. Their government was in 
 form a theocratic democracy. God was not only 
 their spiritual but their temporal sovereign also, 
 who promulgated His laws by the mouths of His 
 inspired prophets. Hence their terrible and un- 
 flagging denunciations of all forms of idolatry 
 
28 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 — it was not only a sin against pure religion, but 
 it was treason also. In most other particulars 
 there was a democracy far purer than that of 
 Athens. The very important principle of the 
 separation of the functions of government was 
 recognized. The civil and ecclesiastical depart- 
 ments were kept apart. The civil ruler exercised 
 no ecclesiastical functions and vice versa. When, 
 as sometimes happened, the two functions rested 
 in the same man, they were yet exercised differ- 
 ently, as was not long since our custom in the 
 administration of equity as contra-distinguished 
 from law. 
 
 Their organic law containing the elements of 
 their polity, though given by God Himself, was 
 yet required to be solemnly ratified by the whole 
 people. This was done on Ebal and Gerizim, 
 and was perhaps the first, as it was certainly the 
 grandest, constitutional convention ever held 
 among men. On these two lofty mountains, 
 separated by a deep and narrow ravine, all Israel, 
 comprising three millions of souls, were as- 
 sembled; elders, prophets, priests, women and 
 children, and 600,000 warriors, led by the spears 
 of Judah and supported by the archers of Ben- 
 jamin. In this mighty presence, surrounded by 
 the sublime accessions to the grandeur of the 
 scene, the law was read by the Levites, line by 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION 29 
 
 line, item by item, whilst the tribes on either 
 height signified their acceptance thereof by re- 
 sponsive amens, which pierced the heavens. Of 
 all the great principles established for the happi- 
 ness and good government of our race, though 
 hallowed by the blood of the bravest and the best, 
 and approved by centuries of trial, no one had a 
 grander origin, or a more glorious exemplifica- 
 tion than this one, that all governments derive 
 their just powers from the consent of the 
 governed. 
 
 So much for their organic law. Their legis- 
 lation upon the daily exigencies and develop- 
 ment of their society was also provided for on the 
 most radically democratic basis, with the prac- 
 tical element of representation. The Sanhedrim 
 legislated , for all ecclesiastical affairs, and had 
 also original judicial powers and jurisdiction over 
 all offences against the religious law, and appel- 
 late jurisdiction of many other offences. It was 
 the principal body of their polity, as religion was 
 the principal object of their constitution. It was 
 thoroughly representative. Local and municipal 
 government was fully recognized. The legis- 
 lation for a city was done by the elders thereof, 
 the prototypes in name and character of our 
 eldermen or aldermen. 
 
 They were the keystone of the whole social 
 
30 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 fabric,, and so directly represented the people that 
 the terms "elders" and "people" are often used 
 as synonymous. The legislation for a tribe was 
 done by the princes of that tribe, and the heads 
 of families thereof; whilst the elders of all the 
 cities, heads of all the families and princes of all 
 the tribes, when assembled, constituted the Na- 
 tional Legislature, or congregation. The func- 
 tions of this representative body, however, were 
 gradually usurped and absorbed by the Sanhe- 
 drim. 
 
 So thoroughly recognized was the principle of 
 representation that no man exercised any politi- 
 cal rights in his individual capacity, but only as 
 a member of the house, which was the basis of the 
 Hebrew polity. The ascending scale was the 
 family or collection of houses, the tribe or collec- 
 tion of families and the congregation or collec- 
 tion of tribes. 
 
 The kingdom thus composed was in fact a 
 confederation, and exemplified both its strength 
 and its weakness. The tribes were equal and 
 sovereign within the sphere of their individual 
 concerns. A tribe could convene its own legis- 
 lative body at pleasure ; so could any number of 
 tribes convene a joint body whose enactments 
 were binding only upon the tribes represented 
 therein. A single tribe or any number combined 
 
; THE SCATTERED NATION. 31 
 
 could make treaties, form alliances and wage 
 war, whilst the others remained at peace with the 
 enemy of their brethren. They were to all intents 
 and purposes independent States, joined to- 
 gether for common objects on the principle of 
 federal republics, with a general government of 
 delegated and limited powers. Within their 
 tribal boundaries their sovereignty was absolute, 
 minus only the powers granted to the central 
 agent. They elected their chiefs, generals and 
 kings. Next to the imperative necessity of com- 
 mon defense their bond of union was their divine 
 constitution, one religion and one blood. Jus- 
 tice was made simple and was administered 
 cheaply. Among no people in this world did the 
 law so recognize the dignity and sacred nature 
 of man made in the image of God and the crea- 
 ture of his especial covenanting care. 
 
 The constitution of their criminal courts and 
 their code of criminal laws was most remarkable. 
 The researches of the learned have failed to dis- 
 cover in all antiquity anything so explicit, so hu- 
 mane, and embracing so many of what are now 
 considered the essential elements of enlightened 
 jurisprudence. Only four offenses were pun-- 
 ished by death. By English law, no longer ago 
 than the reign of George I., more than one hun- 
 dred and fifty offenses were so punishable ! The 
 
32 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 court for the trial of these capital offenders was 
 the local Sanhedrim, composed of twenty-three 
 members, who were both judges and jurors, 
 prosecuting attorneys and counsel for the ac- 
 cused. 
 
 The tests applied both to them and the ac- 
 cusing witnesses, as to capacity and impartiality, 
 were more rigid than those known to exist any- 
 where else in the world. The whole procedure 
 was so guarded as to convey the idea that the 
 first object was to save the criminal. 
 
 From the first step of the accusation to the 
 last moment preceding final execution, no cau- 
 tion was neglected, no solemnity was omitted, 
 that might aid the prisoner's acquittal. No man 
 in any way interested in the result, no gamester 
 of any kind, no usurer, no store dealer, no rela- 
 tive of accused or accuser, no seducer or adul- 
 terer, no man without a fixed trade or business, 
 could sit on that court. Nor could any aged 
 man whose infirmities might make him harsh, 
 nor any childless man or bastard, as being in- 
 sensible to the relations of parent and child. 
 
 Throughout the whole system of the Jewish 
 government there ran a broad, genuine and re- 
 freshing stream of democracy, such as the world 
 then knew little of, and has since but little im- 
 proved. For of course the political student will 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 33 
 
 not be deceived by names. It matters not what 
 their chief magistrates and legislators were 
 called, if in fact and in substance their forms 
 were eminently democratic. Masters of political 
 philosophy tell us— and tell us with truth — that 
 power in a State must and will reside with those 
 who own the soil. If the land belongs to a king 
 the government is a despotism, though every 
 man in it vote ; if the land belongs to a select few, 
 it is an aristocracy ; but if it belongs to the many, 
 it is a democracy, for here is the division of 
 power. Now, where, either in the ancient or 
 modern world, will you find such a democracy as 
 that of Israel? For where was there ever such 
 a perfect and continuing division of the land 
 among the people? It was impossible for this 
 power ever to be concentrated in the hands of 
 one or a select few. The lands belonged to God 
 as the head of the Jewish nation — the right of 
 eminent domain, so to speak, was in Him — and 
 the people were His tenants. 
 
 The year of Jubilee, as we have seen, came 
 ever in time to blast the schemes of the ambitious 
 and designing. 
 
 Their law provided for no standing army, the 
 common defense was intrusted to the patriotism 
 of the people, who kept and bore arms at will, 
 and believing that their hills and valleys would 
 
 
34 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 be best defended by footmen, the use of cavalry 
 was forbidden, lest it should tend to feed the 
 passion for foreign conquest. 
 
 The ecclesiastical Sanhedrim, as before ob- 
 served, was the principal body of their polity; 
 its members were composed of the wisest and 
 most learned of their people, who expounded and 
 enforced the law and supervised all the inferior 
 courts. This exposition upon actual cases aris- 
 ing did not suflSice the learned doctors, who made 
 the great mistake, which modern courts have 
 learned to avoid, of uttering their dicta in antici- 
 pated cases. These decisions and dicta consti- 
 tute the groundwork of the Talmuds, of which 
 there are two copies extant. They constitute 
 the most remarkable collection of oriental wis- 
 dom, abstruse learning, piety, blasphemy and 
 obscenity ever got together in the world; and 
 bear the same relation to the Jewish law which 
 our judicial decisions do to our statute law. 
 Could they be disentombed from the mass of 
 rubbish by which they are covered — said to be 
 so great as to deter all students who are not 
 willing to devote a life-time to the task from 
 entering upon their study — they would no doubt 
 be of inestimable value to theologians, by fur- 
 nishing all the aids which cotemporaneous con- 
 struction must ever impart. 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 35 
 
 Time would not permit me, if I had the power, 
 to describe the chief city of the Jews, their relig- 
 ious and political capital — "Jerusalem the Holy'* 
 — "the dwelling of peace." In the days of Jew- 
 ish prosperity it was in all things a fair type of 
 tliis strange country and people. Enthroned 
 upon the hills of Judah, overflowing with riches, 
 the free-will offerings of a devoted people — 
 decked with the barbaric splendor of Eastern 
 taste, it was the rival in power and wondrous 
 beauty of the most magnificent cities of antiquity. 
 Nearly every one of her great competitors have 
 mouldered into dust. The bat and the owl in- 
 habit their towers, and the fox litters her young 
 in the corridors of their palaces, but Jerusalem 
 still sits in solitary grandeur upon the lonely 
 hills, and though faded, feeble and ruinous still 
 towers in moral splendor above all the spires and 
 domes and pinnacles ever created by human 
 hands. Nor can I dwell, tempting as is the 
 theme, upon the scenery, the glowing landscapes, 
 the cultivated fields, gardens and vineyards and 
 gurgling fountains of that pleasant land. Many 
 high summits and even one of the towers in the 
 walls of the city of Jerusalem were said to have 
 afforded a perfect view of the whole land from 
 border to border. I must be content with asking 
 you to imagine what a divine prospect would 
 
36 THE SCATTEKED NATION. 
 
 burst upon the vision from the summit of that 
 stately tower ; and picture the burning sands of 
 the desert far beyond the mysterious waters of 
 the Dead Sea on the one hand, and the shining 
 waves of the Great Sea on the other, flecked 
 with the white sails of the Tyrian ships, whilst 
 hoary Lebanon, crowned with its diadem of per- ' 
 petual snow, glittered in the morning light like 
 a dome of fire tempered with the emerald of its 
 cedars — a fillet of glory around its brow. The 
 beauty of that band of God's people, the charm 
 of their songs, the comeliness of their maidens, 
 the celestial peace of their homes, the romance 
 of their national history and the sublimity of 
 their faith, so entice me that I would not know 
 when to cease should I once enter upon their 
 story. I must leave behind, too, the blood- 
 stained record of their last great siege, illus- 
 trated by their splendid but unavailing courage ; 
 their fatal dissensions and final destruction, with 
 all its incredible horrors; of their exile and sla- 
 very, of their dispersion in all lands and king- 
 doms, of their persecutions, sufferings, wander- 
 ings and despair, for eighteen hundred years. 
 Indeed, it is a story that puts to shame not only 
 our Christianity, but our common humanity. It 
 staggers belief to be told not only that suqh 
 things could be done at all, by blinded heathen or 
 
THE SCATTEEED NATION. 37 
 
 ferocious pagan, but done by Christian people 
 and in the name of Him, the meek and lowly, 
 who was called the Prince of Peace, and the har- 
 binger of good will to men. Still it is an instruc- 
 tive story; it seems to mark, in colors never to 
 be forgotten, both the wickedness and the folly 
 of intolerance. Truly, it serves to show that 
 the wrath of a religious bigot is more fearful 
 and ingenious than the crudest of tortures 
 hatched in the councils of hell. It is not my pur- 
 pose to comment upon the religion of the Jews, 
 nor shall I undertake to say that they gave no 
 cause in the earlier ages of Christianity for the 
 hatred of their opponents. Undoubtedly they 
 gave much cause, and exhibited themselves much 
 bitterness and ferocity towards the followers of 
 the Nazarene; which, however it may be an ex- 
 cuse, is far from being a justification of the cen- 
 turies of horror which followed. But if con- 
 stancy, faithfulness and devotion to principle 
 under the most trying circumstances to which 
 the children of men were ever subjected be con- 
 sidered virtues, then indeed are the Jews to be 
 admired. They may safely defy the rest of man- 
 kind to show such undying adherence to accepted 
 faith, such wholesale sacrifice for conscience sake. 
 For it they have in all ages given up home and 
 country, wives and children, gold and goods, 
 
38 THE SCATTEilED NATION, 
 
 ease and shelter and life ; for it they endured all 
 the evils of an infernal wrath for eighteen cen- 
 turies; for it they have endured, and — say what 
 you will — endured with an inexpressible man- 
 hood that which no other portion of the human 
 family ever have, or, in my opinion, ever would 
 have endured. For sixty generations the heri- 
 tage which the father left the son was misery, 
 suffering, shame and despair; and that son pre- 
 served and handed down to his son, that black 
 heritage as a golden heirloom, for the sake of 
 God. 
 
 A few remarks upon their numbers and pres- 
 ent status in the world, their peculiarities and 
 probable destiny, and my task will be done. 
 
 Originally, as we have seen, the Jews were an 
 agricultural people, and their civil polity was 
 framed specially for this state of things. Indeed 
 the race of Shem originally seemed not to have 
 been endowed with the great commercial in- 
 stincts which characterize the descendants of 
 Ham and Japheth. Their cities for the most 
 part were built in the interior, remote from the 
 channels of trade, whilst the race of Ham and 
 Japheth built upon the seashore and the banks 
 of great rivers. But the exile of the Jews con- 
 verted them necessarily into merchants. Denied 
 as a general rule citizenship in the land of their 
 
I 
 THE SCATTERED NATION. 39 
 
 refuge, subject at any moment to spoliation and 
 expulsion, their only sure means of living was 
 in traffic, in which they soon became skilled on 
 the principles of a specialty in labor. 
 
 They naturally, therefore, followed in their 
 dispersion, as they have ever since done, the 
 great channels of commerce throughout the 
 world, with such deflections here and there as 
 persecution rendered necessary. But notwith- 
 standing the many impulses to which their wan- 
 derings have been subjected, they have in the 
 main obeyed the general laws of migration by 
 moving east and west upon nearly the same par- 
 allels of latitude. Their numbers in spite of 
 losses by all causes, including religious defection, 
 which, everything considered, has been remarka- 
 bly small, have steadily increased and are now 
 variously estimated at seven to nine millions. 
 They may be divided, says Dr. Pressell, into 
 tKree great classes, the enumeration of which will 
 show their wonderful dispersion. The first of 
 these inhabit the interior of Africa, Arabia, 
 India, China, Turkestan and Bokhara. Even 
 the Arabs Mr. Disraeli terms Jews upon horse- 
 back; they are, however, the sons of Ishmael — 
 half-brothers to the Jews. These are the lowest 
 of the Jewish people in wealth, intelligence and 
 religion, though said to be superior to their Gen- 
 
40 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 tile neighbors in each. The second and most 
 numerous class is found in Northern Africa, 
 Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, 
 Asia Minor, European Turkey, Poland, Russia 
 and parts of Austria. In these are found the 
 strictly orthodox, Talmudical Jews; the sect 
 Chasidirrij who are the representatives of the Zeal- 
 ots of Josephus, and the small but most interest- 
 ing sect Karaites, who reject all Rabbinical tra- 
 ditions, and are the only Jews who adhere to the 
 strict letter of the Scriptures. This class is rep- 
 resented as being very ignorant of all except 
 Jewish learning — it being prohibited to study 
 any other. Yet they alone are regarded by 'schol- 
 ars as the proper expounders of ancient Talmud- 
 ical Judaism. As might be inferred from the 
 character of the governments under which they 
 live, their political condition is most unhappy 
 and insecure, and their increase in wealth and 
 their social progress are slow. The third and 
 last class are those of Central and Western Eu- 
 rope and the United States. These are by far 
 the most intelligent and civilized of their race, 
 not only keeping pace with the progress of their 
 Gentile neighbors, but contributing to it largely. 
 Their Oriental mysticism seems to have given 
 place to the stronger practical ideas of Western 
 Europe, with which they have come in contact. 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 41 
 
 n 
 
 and they have embraced them fully. They are 
 denominated "reforming" in their tenets, at- 
 tempting to eliminate the Talmudical traditions 
 which cmnber and obscure their creed, and adapt 
 it somewhat to the spirit of the age, though in 
 tearing this away, they have also, say the theolo- 
 gians, dispensed with much of the Old Testa- 
 ment itself. In fact, they have become simply 
 Unitarians or Deists. 
 
 Many curious facts concerning them are wor- 
 thy to be noted. In various cities of the Eastern 
 World they have been for ages, and in some are 
 yet, huddled into crowded and filthy streets or 
 quarters, in a manner violative of all the rules of 
 health, yet it is a notorious fact that they have 
 ever suffered less from pestilential diseases than 
 their Christian neighbors. So often have the 
 black wings of epidemic plagues passed over 
 them, and smitten all around them, that ignor- 
 ance and malignity frequently accused them of 
 poisoning the wells and fountains and of exer- 
 cising sorcery. 
 
 They have also in a very noticeable degree 
 been exempt from consumption and all diseases 
 of the respiratory functions, which in them are 
 said by physicians to be wonderfully adapted to 
 enduring the vicissitudes of all temperatures and 
 climates. The average duration of Gentile life 
 
42 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 is computed at 26 years — it certainly does not 
 reach 30; that of the Jew, according to a most 
 interesting table of statistics which I have seen, 
 is full 37 years. The number of infants born to 
 the married couple exceeds that of the Gentile 
 races, and the number dying in infancy is much 
 smaller. In height they are nearly three inches 
 lower than the average of other races ; the width 
 of their bodies with outstretched arms is one inch 
 shorter than the height, whilst in other races it is 
 eight inches longer on the average. But on the 
 other hand, the length of the trunk is much 
 greater with the Jew in proportion to height 
 than with other races. In the negro the trunk 
 constitutes 32 per cent, of the height of the whole 
 body, in the European 34 per cent., in the Jew 
 36 per cent. What these physical peculiarities 
 have had to do with their wonderful preserva- 
 tion and steady increase I leave for the philoso- 
 phers to explain. 
 
 Their social life is, if possible, still more re- 
 markable. There is neither prostitution nor pau- 
 perism and but little abject poverty among 
 them. They have some paupers, it is true, but 
 they trouble neither you nor me. Crime in the 
 malignant, wilful sense of that word is exceed- 
 ingly rare. I have never known but one Jew 
 convicted of any offence beyond the grade of 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 43 
 
 a misdemeanor, though I am free to say I have 
 known many a one who would have been im- 
 proved by a little hanging. They contribute lib- 
 erally to all Gentile charities in the communities 
 where they live ; they ask nothing from the Gen- 
 tiles for their own. If a Jew is broken down in 
 business, the others set him up again or give him 
 employment, and his children have bread. If 
 one is in trouble the others stand by him with 
 counsel and material aid, remembering the com- 
 mand, "Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto 
 thy brethren, and shall surely lend him sufficient 
 for his need, in that which he wanteth." Their 
 average education is far ahead of the races by 
 whom they are surrounded. I have never seen 
 an adult Jew who could not read, write and 
 compute figures — especially the figures. Of the 
 four great human industries which conduce to 
 the public wealth, agriculture, manufacturing, 
 mining and commerce, as a general rule they 
 engage only in one. They are neither farmers, 
 miners, smiths, carpenters, mechanics nor arti- 
 sans of any kind. They are merchants only, but 
 as such own few or no ships, and they are rarely 
 carriers of any kind. They wander over the 
 whole earth, but they are never pioneers, and 
 they found no colonies, because as I suppose, 
 being devoted to one business only, they lack the 
 
44 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 self-sustaining elements of those who build new 
 States; and whilst they engage individually in 
 politics where they are not disfranchised, and 
 contend for offices and honors like other people, 
 they yet seek nowhere political power or national 
 aggregation. Dealers in every kind of merchan- 
 dise, with rare exceptions they manufacture 
 none. They dwell exclusively in towns, cities and 
 villages, but as a general rule do not own the 
 property they live upon. They marry within 
 themselves entirely, and yet in defiance of well- 
 known natural laws, with regard to breeding "in 
 and in," their race does not degenerate. With 
 them family government is perhaps more su- 
 preme than with any other people. Divorce, 
 domestic discord and disobedience to parents are 
 almost unknown among them. 
 
 The process by which they have become the 
 leading merchants, bankers and financiers of the 
 world is explained by their history. In many 
 places their children were not permitted to enter 
 the schools, or even to be enrolled in the guilds 
 of labor. Trade was therefore the only avenue 
 left open to them. In most countries they dared 
 not or could not own the soil. Why a nation of 
 original agriculturists ceased to cultivate the soil 
 altogether is therefore only seemingly inexplic- 
 able. All nations must have a certain propor- 
 
THE SCATTEEED NATION, 45 
 
 tion of their population engaged in tilling the 
 soil; as the Jews have no common country they 
 reside in all, and in all countries they have the 
 shrewdness to see that whilst it is most honor- 
 able to plough, yet all men live more comforta- 
 bly than the ploughman. In addition to which, 
 as before intimated, agriculture so fixed them to 
 the soil that it would have been impossible to 
 evade persecution and spoliation. They were 
 constantly on the move, and their wealth must 
 therefore be portable and easily secreted — ^hence 
 their early celebrity as lapidaries, dealers in dia- 
 monds and precious stones — and hence, too, their 
 introduction of bills of exchange. The utility of 
 these great aids to commerce had long been 
 known to the world — perhaps by both Greek 
 and Roman — ^but could never be made available 
 by them, because confidence in the integrity of 
 each other did not exist between the drawer and 
 the drawee. But this integrity, which the lordly 
 merchants of the Christian and Pagan world 
 could not inspire, was found to exist in the per- 
 secuted and despised Jew, So much for the 
 lessons of adversity. These arts diligently ap- 
 plied, at first from necessity, afterwards from 
 choice, in the course of centuries made the Jews 
 skilful above all men in the ways of merchandise 
 and money changing, and finally developed in 
 
 1 
 
 WJf- 
 
46 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 them those peculiar faculties and aptitudes for a 
 calling which are brought out as well in man by 
 the special education of successive generations 
 as in the lower animals. The Jew merchant had 
 an advantage, too, over his Gentile competitor 
 who belonged to a consolidated nation, confined 
 to certain geographical limits, speaking a cer- 
 tain tongue. The aid, sympathy and influence 
 which he derived from social and political ties 
 were also confined to the limits of his nation. 
 But the Jew merchant belonged to a scattered 
 nattoUj spread out over the whole earth, speaking 
 many tongues, and welded together, not by social 
 ties alone, but by the fierce fires of suffering and 
 persecution; and the aid, sympathy, influence 
 and information which he derived therefrom 
 came out of the utmost parts of the earth. 
 
 When after many centuries the flames of per- 
 secution had abated so that the Jews were per- 
 mitted more than bare life, their industry, ener- 
 gy and talent soon placed them among the 
 important motive powers of the world. They 
 entered the field of commerce in its grandest and 
 most colossal operations. They became the 
 friends and counselors of kings, the prime min- 
 isters of empires, the treasurers of republics, the 
 movers of armies, the arbiters of public credit, 
 the patrons of art, and the critics of literature. 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 47 
 
 We do not forget the time in the near past when 
 the peace of Europe — of three worlds — hung up- 
 on the Jewish Prime Minister of England. No 
 people are so ready to accommodate themselves 
 to circumstances. It was but recently that we 
 heard of an English Jew taking absolute lease of 
 the ancient Persian Empire. The single family 
 of Rothschild, the progeny of a poor German 
 Jew, who three generations ago sold curious old 
 coins under the sign of a red shield^ are now the 
 possessors of greater wealth and power than was 
 Solomon, when he could send 1,300,000 fighting 
 men into the field! 
 
 Twenty years ago, when this family was in 
 the height of its power, perhaps no sovereign in 
 Europe could have waged a successful war 
 against its united will. Two centuries since the 
 ancestors of these Jewish money kings were 
 skulking in the caverns of the earth or hiding in 
 squalid outskirts of persecuting cities. Nor let 
 it be supposed that it is in this field alone we 
 see the great effects of Jewish intellect and en- 
 ergy. The genius which showed itself capable 
 of controlling the financial affairs of the world 
 necessarily carried with it other great powers and 
 capabilities. The Jews, in fact, under most ad- 
 verse circumstances, made their mark — a high 
 and noble mark — in every other department of 
 
 m.. 
 
48 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 human affairs. Christian clergymen have sat at 
 the feet of their Rabbis to be taught the mystic 
 learning of the East; Senates have been en- 
 wrapped by the eloquence of Jewish orators; 
 courts have been convinced by the acumen and 
 learning of Jewish lawyers ; vast throngs excited 
 to the wildest enthusiasm by Jewish histrionic 
 and aesthetic art; Jewish science has helped to 
 number the stars in their courses, to "loose the 
 bands of Orion" and to "guide Arcturus with 
 his sons/* 
 
 Jewish literature has delighted and instructed 
 all classes of mankind, and the world has listened 
 with rapture and with tears to Jewish melody 
 and song. For never since its spirit was evoked 
 under the shadow of the vines on the hills of 
 Palestine to soothe the melancholy of her King, 
 has Judah's harp, whether in freedom or captiv- 
 ity, in sorrow or joy, ceased to wake the witch- 
 ery of its tuneful strings. 
 
 Time forbids that I should even name the 
 greatest of those who have distinguished them- 
 selves and made good their claim to rank with 
 the foremost of earth. No section of the human 
 family can boast a greater list of men and wo- 
 men entitled to be placed among the true chil- 
 dren of genius — agoing to make up the primacy 
 of our race in every branch of human affairs, 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 49 
 
 in every phase of human civilization. Dr. Dra- 
 per says that for four hundred years of the mid- 
 dle ages — ages more dark and terrible to them 
 than to any others — they took the most philo- 
 sophical and comprehensive view of things of all 
 European people. 
 
 On the whole, and after due deliberation, I 
 think it may be truthfully said that there is more 
 of average wealth, intelligence, and morality 
 among the Jewish people than there is among 
 any other nation of equal numbers in the world 1 
 If this be true — if it be half true — ^when we con- 
 sider the circumstances under which it has all 
 been brought about, it constitutes in the eyes of 
 thinking men the most remarkable moral phe- 
 nomenon ever exhibited by any portion of the 
 human family. For not only has the world given 
 the Jew no help, but all that he is, he has made 
 himself in spite of the world — in spite of its bit- 
 ter cruelty, its scorn and unspeakable tyranny. 
 The most he has ever asked, certainly the most 
 he has ever received, and that but rarely, was to 
 be left alone. To escape the sword, the rack, the 
 fire, and utter spoiling of his goods, has indeed, 
 for centuries, been to him a blessed heritage, as 
 the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 
 
 The physical persecution of the Jews has 
 measurably ceased among all nations of the high- 
 
50 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 est civilization. There is no longer any proscrip- 
 tion left upon their political rights in any land 
 where the English tongue is spoken. I am proud 
 of the fact. But there remains among us an 
 unreasonable prejudice of which I am heartily 
 ashamed. Our toleration will not be complete 
 until we put it away also, as well as the old im- 
 plements of physical torture. 
 
 This age, and these United States in particu- 
 lar, so boastful of toleration, presents some cur- 
 ious evidences of the fact that the old spirit is 
 not dead; evidences tending much to show that 
 the prejudices of two thousand years ago are 
 still with us. In Germany, a land more than 
 all others indebted to the genius and loyal energy 
 of the Jews, a vast uprising against them was 
 lately excited, for the sole reason, so far as one 
 can judge, that they occupy too many places of 
 learning and honor, and are becoming too rich I 
 
 In this, our own free and tolerant land, where 
 wars have been waged and constitutions violated 
 for the benefit of the African negro, the de- 
 scendants of barbarian tribes who for four thou- 
 sand years have contributed nothing to, though 
 in close contact with, the civilization of mankind, 
 save as the Helots contributed an example to the 
 Spartan youth, and where laws and partisan 
 courts alike have been used to force him into an 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 51 
 
 equality with those whom he could not equal, we 
 have seen Jews, educated and respectable men, 
 descendants of those from whom we derive our 
 civilization, kinsmen, after the flesh, of Him 
 whom we esteem as the Son of God and Saviour 
 of men, ignominiously ejected from hotels and 
 watering places as unworthy the association of 
 men who had grown rich by the sale of a new 
 brand of soap or an improved patent rat trap! 
 I have never heard of one of these indecent 
 
 I 
 
 thrusts at the Jews without thinking of the dying 
 words of Sargeant Bothwell when he saw his 
 life's ciu'rent dripping from the sword of Bur- 
 ley: "Base peasant churl, thou hast spilt the 
 blood of a line of Kings.'' 
 
 Let us learn to judge the Jew as we judge 
 other men — hy his merits. And above all, let us 
 cease the abominable injustice of holding the 
 class responsible for the sins of the individual. 
 We apply this test to no other people. 
 
 Our principal excuse for disliking him now is 
 that we have injured him. The true gentleman, 
 Jew or Gentile, will always recognize the true 
 gentleman, Jew or Gentile, and will refuse to 
 consort with an ill-bred impostor. 
 
 The impudence of the low-bred Jew is not 
 one whit more detestable than the impudence of 
 the low-bred Gentile, children of shoddy, who by 
 
52 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 countless thousands swarm into doors opened 
 for them by our democracy. Let us cry quits on 
 that score. Let us judge each other by our best, 
 not by our worst samples, and when we find gold 
 let us recognize it. Let us prove all things and 
 hold fast that which is good. 
 
 Whilst it is a matter of just pride to us that 
 there is neither physical persecution nor legal 
 proscription left upon the civil rights of the 
 Jews in any land where the English tongue is 
 spoken or the English law obtains, yet I con- 
 sider it a grave reproach not only to us but to 
 all Christendom that such injustice is permitted 
 anywhere. The recent barbarities inflicted upon 
 them in Russia revive the recollection of the 
 darkest cruelties of the middle ages. That is 
 one crying outrage, one damned spot that black- 
 ens the fair light of the nineteenth century, with- 
 out the semblance of excuse or the shadow of 
 justification. That glare of burning homes, 
 those shrieks of outraged women, those wailings 
 of orphaned children go up to God, not only as 
 witnesses against the wretched savages who per- 
 petrate them, but as accusations also of those 
 who permit them. How sad it is again to hear 
 that old cry of Jewish sorrow, which we had 
 hoped to hear no more forever! How shameful 
 it is to know that within the shadow of so-c^lkd 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 58 
 
 Christian Churdies there are yet dark places 
 filled with the habitations of cruelty. No con- 
 siderations of diplomacy or international cour- 
 tesy should for one moment stand in the way of 
 their stern and instant suppression. 
 
 The Jews are our spiritual fathers, the au- 
 thors of our morals, the founders of our civiliza- 
 tion, with all the power and dominion arising 
 therefrom, and the great peoples professing 
 Christianity and imbued with any of its noble 
 spirit should see to it that justice and protection 
 are afforded them. By simply speaking with 
 one voice it could be done, for no power on earth 
 could resist that voice. Every consideration of 
 humanity and international policy demands it. 
 Their unspeakable misfortunes, their inherited 
 woes, their very helplessness appeal to our Chris- 
 tian, chivalry, trumpet-tongued in behalf of those 
 wretched victims of a prejudice for which toler- 
 ant Christianity is not altogether irresponsible. 
 
 There are objections to the Jew as a citizen; 
 many objections; some true and some false, some 
 serious and some trivial. It is said that, indus- 
 trially, he produces nothing, invents nothing, 
 adds nothing to the public wealth; that he will 
 not own real estate, nor take upon himself those 
 permanent ties which beget patriotism and be- 
 come hostages of good citizenship ; that he mere- 
 
54 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 ly sojourns in the land and does not dwell in it, 
 but is ever in light marching order and is ready 
 to flit when the word comes to go. These are 
 true objections in the main, and serious ones, but 
 I submit the fault is not his, even here. 
 
 "Quoth old Mazeppa, ill be-tide 
 The school wherein I learned to ride." 
 
 These habits he learned by persecution. He 
 dwelt everywhere in fear and trembling, and 
 had no assurance of his life. He was ever ready 
 to leave because at any moment he might be com- 
 pelled to choose between leaving and death. He 
 built no house, because at any moment he and his 
 little ones might be thrust out of it to perish. 
 He cherished no love for the land because it 
 cherished none for him, but was cruel and hard 
 and bitter to him. And yet history shows that 
 in every land where he has been protected he has 
 been a faithful and zealous patriot. Also since 
 his rights have been secured he has begun to 
 show the same permanent attachments to the 
 soil as other people, and is rapidly building 
 houses and in some places cultivating farms. 
 These objections he is rapidly removing since 
 we have removed their cause. 
 
 So, too, the impression is sought to be made 
 that he is dishonest in his dealings with the Gen- 
 tiles, insincere in his professions, servile to his 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION. 55 
 
 superiors and tyrannical to his inferiors, Orien- 
 tal in his habit and manner. That the Jew — 
 meaning the class — ^is dishonest, I believe to be 
 an atrocious calumny; and, considering that we 
 derive all our notions of rectitude from the Jew, 
 who first taught the world that command, "Thou 
 shalt not steal," and "Thou shalt not bear false 
 witness," we pay ourselves a shabby compliment 
 in thus befouling our teachers. Undoubtedly 
 there are Jewish scoundrels in great abundance; 
 undoubtedly also there are Gentile scoundrelisl 
 in greater abundance. Southern reconstruction 
 put that fact beyond a peradventure. But our 
 own scoundrels are orthodooo, Jewish scoundrels 
 are unbelievers — that is the difference. If a man 
 robs me I should thank him that he denies my 
 creed too; he compliments both me and it by the 
 denial. 
 
 The popular habit is to regard an injury done 
 to one by a man of different creed as a double 
 wrong; to me it seems that the wrong is the 
 greater coming from my own. To hold also, 
 as some do, that the sins of all people are due to 
 their creeds, would leave the sins of the sinners 
 of my creed quite imaccounted for. With some 
 faith of a scoundrel is all important ; it is not so 
 
 with me. 
 
 All manner of crimes, including perjury, 
 
56 THE SCATTERED NATION. 
 
 cheating and overreaching in trade, are unhesi- 
 tatingly attributed to the Jews, generally by 
 their rivals in trade. Yet somehow they are 
 rarely proven to the satisfaction of even Gentile 
 judges and juries. The gallows clutches but 
 few, nor are they found in jails and penitentiar- 
 ies — a species of real estate which I honor them 
 for not investing in. I admit that there was 
 and is perhaps now a remnant of the feeling that 
 it was legal to spoil the Egyptians. Their con- 
 stant life of persecution would naturally inspire 
 this feeling; their present life of toleration and 
 their business estimate of the value of character 
 will as naturally remove it. Again and again, 
 day by day, we evince our Gentile superiority in 
 tricks of trade and sharp practise. It is asserted 
 by our proverbial exclamation in regard to a 
 particular piece of villainy, "That beats the 
 Jews I" And I call your attention to the further 
 fact that, sharp as they undoubtedly are, they 
 have found it impossible to make a living in New 
 England. Outside of Boston, not fifty perhaps 
 can be found in all that land of unsuspecting in- 
 tegrity and modest righteousness. They have 
 managed to endure with long-suifering patience 
 the knout of the Czar and the bow-string of the 
 Turk, but they have fled for life from the pres- 
 ence of the wooden nutmegs and the left-handed 
 
THE SCATTEEED NATION. 57 
 
 gimlets of Jonathan. Is there any man who 
 hears me to-night who, if a Yankee and a Jew 
 were to "lock horns" in a regular encounter of 
 conmiercial wits, would not give large odds on 
 the Yankee? My own opinion is that the gen- 
 uine "guessing" Yankee, with a jack-knife and 
 a pine shingle, could in two hours' time whittle 
 the smartest Jew in New York out of his home- 
 stead in the Abrahamic covenant.* 
 
 I agree with Lord Macaulay that the Jew is 
 what we have made him. If he is a bad job, in 
 all honesty we should contemplate him as the 
 handiwork of our own civilization. If there be 
 indeed guile upon his lips or servility in his man- 
 ner, we should remember that such are the legiti- 
 mate fruits of oppression and wrong, and that 
 they have been, since the pride of Judah was 
 broken and his strength scattered, his only means 
 of turning aside the uplifted sword and the 
 poised javelin of him who sought to plunder and 
 slay. Indeed, so long has he schemed and shifted 
 to avoid injustice and cruelty, that we can per- 
 ceive in him all the restless watchfulness which 
 characterizes the hunted animal. 
 
 To this day the cast of the Jew's features in 
 
 *This was the effusive humor of a young man. The words 
 of the author applied to the passage from Macaulay criticised 
 by him are suitable here: "I submit it is not history." — Ed. 
 
58 THE SCATTEKED NATION. 
 
 repose is habitually grave and sad as though the 
 very ploughshare of sorrow had marked its fur- 
 rows across their faces forever. 
 
 "And where shall Israel lave her bleeding feet? 
 
 And when shall Zion's songs again seem sweet. 
 
 And Judah's melody once more rejoice 
 
 The hearts that leaped before its heavenly voice ? 
 
 Tribes of the wandering foot and weary heart, 
 
 How shall ye flee away and be at rest? 
 
 The wild dove hath her nest — ^the fox his cave — 
 
 Mankind their country — Israel but the grave." 
 
 The hardness of Christian prejudice having 
 dissolved, so will that of the Jew. The hammer 
 of persecution having ceased to beat upon the 
 iron mass of their stubbornness, it will cease to 
 consolidate and harden, and the main strength of 
 their exclusion and preservation will have been 
 lost. They will perhaps learn that one sentence 
 of our Lord's prayer which is said not to be found 
 in the Talmud and is the key-note of the differ- 
 ence between Jew and Gentile, "Forgive us 
 our trespasses ds we forgive them who trespass 
 against us." 
 
 If so, they will become as other men, and tak- 
 ing their harps down from the willows, no longer 
 refuse to sing the songs of Zion because they are 
 captives in a strange land. 
 
 I believe that there is a morning to open yet 
 for the Jews in Heaven's good time, and, if that 
 
THE SCATTERED NATION, 59 
 
 opening shall be in any way commensurate with 
 the darkness of the night through which they 
 have passed, it will be the brightest that ever 
 dawned upon a faithful people. 
 
 I have stood on the summit of the very mon- 
 arch of our great Southern Alleghanies and have 
 seen the night flee away before the chariot wheels 
 of the god of day. The stars receded before the 
 pillars of lambent fire that pierced the zenith, a 
 thousand ragged mountain peaks began to peer 
 up from the abysmal darkness, each looking 
 through the vapory seas that filled the gorges 
 like an island whose "jutting and confounded 
 base was swilled by the wild and wasteful ocean." 
 As the curtain was lifted more and more and the 
 eastern brightness grew in radiance and in glory , 
 animate nature prepared to receive her lord ; the 
 tiny snow-bird from its nest in the turf began 
 chirping to its young; the silver pheasant 
 sounded its morning drum-beat for its mate in 
 the boughs of the fragrant fir ; the dun deer, ris- 
 ing slowly from his mossy couch and stretching 
 himself in graceful curves, began to crop the 
 tender herbage; while the lordly eagle rising 
 straight upward from his home on the crag, with 
 pinions wide spread, bared his golden breast to 
 the yellow beams and screamed his welcome to 
 the sun in his coming! Soon the vapors of the 
 
60 THE SCATTERED NATION, 
 
 night were lifted up on shafts of fire, rolling and 
 seething in billows of refulgent flame, until far 
 overhead, they were caught upon the wings of 
 the morning breeze and swept away ; perfect day 
 was established and there was peace. So may it 
 be with this long-suffering and immortal people. 
 So may the real spirit of Christ yet be so tri- 
 umphantly infused among those who profess to 
 obey His teachings that with one voice and one 
 hand they will stay the persecutions and hush 
 the sorrows of these their wondrous kinsmen, 
 put them forward into the places of honor and 
 the homes of love where all the lands in which 
 they dwell shall be to them as was Jerusalem to 
 their fathers. So may the morning come, not 
 to them alone, but to all the children of men who, 
 through much tribulation and with heroic man- 
 hood, have waited for its dawning, with a faith 
 whose constant cry through all the dreary 
 watches of the night has been, "Though He slay 
 me, yet will I trust Him 1" 
 
 "Roll, golden sun, roll swiftly toward the west, 
 Dawn happy day when many woes shall cease ; 
 
 Come quickly, Lord, Thy people wait the rest 
 Of thine abiding peace ! 
 
 No more, no more to hunger here for love ; 
 
 No more to thirst for blessings long denied. 
 Judah ! Thy face is foul with weeping, but above 
 
 Thou Shalt be satisfied!" 
 
CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH 
 PARK AVENUE AND 341? STREET 
 
 NEW YORK 
 yOHN MAYNES MOLMES^MINtSTER 
 
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