Free The House of Rothschild by Niall Ferguson Page A

direct state control prompted Lionel to seek interviews with Lord Aberdeen and Peel in advance of a visit by the Tsar to London. When Montefiore travelled to Russia to protest at the government’s treatment of the Jews, Lionel again saw Peel to request letters of introduction for him to Count Nesselrode. In the same vein, we have already seen how the Rothschilds sought to use the political crisis in Rome in 1848—9 to extract concessions from the Pope with regard to the city’s Jews.
    It was nevertheless in England—hardly a country renowned for its religious intolerance—that the most celebrated campaign for Jewish rights was fought and, eventually, won. The position of Jews in Britain at this time was in many ways anomalous, reflecting the relative smallness of the Jewish community by Central European standards. The total Jewish population of the British Isles had been just 27,000 in 1828; thirty-two years later (after decades of unprecedented demographic growth in the country as a whole) there were still only 40,000 Jews—around 0.2 per cent of the population, more than half of them living in London. By continental standards, and compared with popular attitudes to Catholics (and especially Irish Catholics, hostility to Jews was muted. Yet there remained on the statute books, albeit mainly as dead letters, a variety of disabilities including prohibitions on Jews owning landed property and endowing schools. More important, as we have seen, a variety of public offices, of which the most important was membership of Parliament, required the Christological oath. It was the abolition of this oath which was to become the paramount objective of Rothschild political activity.
    Under the influence of his wife Hannah, Nathan had taken up the question of Jewish political rights in 1829-30, in the wake of the successful passage of the Catholic emancipation act. Rothschild disillusionment with the Tory party can be dated from this period, when it became obvious that the Whigs were far more likely to give their support to an equivalent measure for Jews. This political realignment continued after Nathan’s death as a succession of emancipation bills introduced by Robert Grant were thrown out in the Commons in the face of largely Tory opposition. Hitherto overlooked records suggest that Nat played a supporting role in the unsuccessful 1841 campaign to allow Jewish councillors on provincial corporations to swear the same amended oath Salomons had been able to use as Sheriff of London. Tory opposition to this measure in the Lords—which the Rothschilds monitored closely—did nothing to improve relations with the party. In the wake of the Conservative election victory in 1841, the Rothschilds’ old friend Herries warned the new Chancellor Henry Goulburn that he might face opposition from “the Jews and brokers” in the City:
    It may be as well to bear in mind that the said gentry may not be so propitious to you as in former time. The part which Jones Lloyd, Sam Gurney and the Rothschilds etc. took in the City election indicates no kind feeling toward the Conservative Party. But they will not allow their feelings to stand much in the way of their own interest although they will not forgive the rejection of the bill to enable the Jews to be Common Council men and those Leviathans of the money market have much more power to promote or to obstruct a financial measure than any other description of men even possessing larger capitals than themselves.
    A letter from a party activist confirms that Mayer had indeed been involved in registering voters in the City to boost the Liberal poll. 13 When Peel later asked Wellington to drum up support for his government, the Duke was equally pessimistic. “The Rothschilds,” he warned Peel, “are not without their political objects, particularly the old lady [Hannah] and Mr Lionel. They have long been anxious for support to the petitions of the Jews for concessions of political privileges.”