Surely this must portend a November session.
Harcourt House, October 23, 1847. The fat banker's gossip is all stuff. Peel goes to Windsor today, I believe on an invitation of some standing. * * * * who had been dining at Palmerston's last night, tells me that he does not think that ministers mean calling Parliament together, and is confident they mean to maintain the Bank Charter Act. There have been some first-rate articles and letters in the 'Morning Chronicle' lately on this subject.
I will stay over Tuesday, that I may have the pleasure of a thorough talk with you.
I am told things are gradually getting better. I expect, however, a fresh reverse about six weeks or two months hence, when the returned lists of the stoppages in the East and West Indies, consequent upon the late failures here, come home. The Western Bank of Scotland is whispered about. If that were to fail, it might bring the canny Scots to their senses; but they are a headstrong race.
A committee on commercial distress having been appointed, the principal reason for the summoning of the new Parliament in the autumn had been satisfied, and an adjournment until a month after Christmas was in prospect. Before, however, this took place, a new and interesting question arose, which led to considerable discussion, and which ultimately influenced in no immaterial manner the parliamentary position of Lord George Bentinck.
The city of London at the general election had sent to the House of Commons, as a colleague of the first minister, a member who found a difficulty in taking one of the oaths appointed by the House to be sworn preliminarily to any member exercising his right of voting. The difficulty arose from this member being not only of the Jewish race, but unfortunately believing only in the first part of the Jewish religion.
THE relations that subsist between the Bedoueen race that, under the name of Jews, is found in every country of Europe, and the Teutonic, Sclavonian, and Celtic races which have appropriated that division of the globe, will form hereafter one of the most remarkable chapters in a philosophical history of man. The Saxon, the Sclav, and the Celt have adopted most of the laws and many of the customs of these Arabian tribes, all their literature and all their religion. They are therefore indebted to them for much that regulates, much that charms, and much that solaces existence. The toiling multitude rest every seventh day by virtue of a Jewish law; they are perpetually reading, 'for their example,' the records of Jewish history, and singing the odes and elegies of Jewish poets; and they daily acknowledge on their knees, with reverent gratitude, that the only medium of communication between the Creator and themselves is the Jewish race. Yet they treat that race as the vilest of generations; and instead of logically looking upon them as the human family that has contributed most to human happiness, they extend to them every term of obloquy and every form of persecution.