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name is associated with, at least, one great constitutional change, in regard to which I think it will ever be admitted—at least, I can never scruple to admit it-that its arrival was accelerated by his personal act. I will not dwell upon that, but upon the close association of his name with the important change in the principle of the parliamentary franchise. It is also associated with great European transactions, great European arrangements. I put myself in the position, not necessarily of a friend and admirer, who looks with sympathy at the character of the action of Lord Beaconsfield, but in the position of one who looks at the magnitude of the part which he played on behalf of this country, and I say that one who was his political friend might fairly have said of him

"Aspice, ut insignis spoliis Marcellus opimis
Ingreditur, victorque viros supereminet omnes."

The deceased statesman had certain great qualities on which it would be idle for me to enlarge; his extraordinary intellectual powers, for instance, were as well known to others as to me. But other qualities there were in him, not merely intellectual or immediately connected with the conduct of affairs, but with regard to which I should wish, were I younger, to stamp the recollection of him on my mind for my own future guidance, and which I strongly recommend to those who are younger for notice and imitation. These characteristics were not only written in a marked manner on his career, but were possessed by him in a degree undoubtedly extraordinary. I speak, for example, of his strength of will; his long-sighted persistency of purpose, reaching from his very first entrance on the avenue of life to its very close; his remarkable power of self-government; and last, not least, his great parliamentary courage, which I, who have been associated in the course of my life with some scores of ministers, have never seen surpassed. There were other points in his character on which I cannot refrain from saying a word or two. I wish to express my admiration for those strong sympathies of race, for the sake of which he was always ready to risk popularity and influence. A like sentiment I feel towards the strength of his sympathies with that brotherhood to which he thought, and justly thought, himself entitled to belong - the brotherhood of men of letters. It is only within the last few days that I have read in a very interesting book, 'The Autobio

2293 graphy of Thomas Cooper,' how in the year 1844, when his influence with his party was not yet established, Mr. Cooper came to him in the character of a struggling literary man, who was also a Chartist, and the then Mr. Disraeli met him with the most active and cordial kindness-so ready was his sympathy for genius. There was also another feeling which may be referred to now without indelicacy,—I mean his profound, devoted, tender, and grateful affection for his wife, which, if it deprived him of the honor of public obsequies,-I know not whether it did so,has, nevertheless, left him a more permanent title, as one who knew, amid the calls and temptations of political life, what was due to the sanctity and strength of the domestic affections, and made him in that respect an example to the country. There is much misapprehension abroad as to the personal sentiments between public men who are divided in policy. Their words may necessarily, from time to time, be sharp; their judgments may necessarily be severe, but the general idea of persons less informed than those within the parliamentary circle, is that they are actuated by sentiments of intense antipathy or hatred for one another. I wish to take this occasion-if, with the permission of the House, I may for a moment degenerate into egotism of recording my firm conviction that in all the judgments ever delivered by Lord Beaconsfield upon myself, he never was actuated by sentiments of personal antipathy. It is a pleasure to me to make that acknowledgment. The feeling on my part is not a new one, but the acknowledgment of it could hardly have been made with propriety on an earlier occasion.

I have now called attention to the fact that that to which we have to look is the greatness of the man himself, and of the transactions with which he was associated, and the full, undisputed, constitutional authority that he possessed to sanction his policy.

RICHARD GOTTHEIL

(1863-)

OCTOR RICHARD GOTTHEIL, Professor of Semitic Languages and Rabbinical Literature in Columbia University in the city

of New York, is president of the American Federation of Zionists, and one of the organizers of a movement which has attracted world-wide attention. The American Federation, organized July 4th, 1897, now comprises a hundred societies, representing every section of the country, all co-operating to bring about the rehabilitation of Palestine as a political power, the seat of a restored Hebrew national life. In the peroration of his address of November 1st, 1898, here given, Doctor Gottheil eloquently presents the objects of the movement.

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THE JEWS AS A RACE AND AS A NATION

(Peroration of the Address, The Aims of Zionism,' Delivered in New York City, November 1st, 1898)

I

KNOW that there are a great many of our people who look for a final solution of the Jewish question in what they call "assimilation." The more the Jews assimilate themselves to their surroundings, they think, the more completely will the causes for anti-Jewish feeling cease to exist. But have you ever for a moment stopped to consider what assimilation means? It has very pertinently been pointed out that the use of the word is borrowed from the dictionary of physiology. But in physiology it is not the food which assimilates itself into the body. It is the body which assimilates the food. The Jew may wish to be assimilated; he may do all he will towards this end. But if the great mass in which he lives does not wish to assimilate him what then? If demands are made upon the Jew which practically mean extermination, which practically mean his total effacement from among the nations of the globe and from among the religious forces of the world,-what answer will you give? And the demands made are practically of that nature.

I can imagine it possible for a people who are possessed of an active and aggressive charity which it expresses, not only in words, but also in deeds, to contain and live at peace with men of the most varied habits. But, unfortunately, such people do not exist; nations are swayed by feelings which are dictated solely by their own self-interests; and the Zionists, in meeting this state of things, are the most practical as well as the most ideal of the Jews.

It is quite useless to tell the English workingman that his Jewish fellow-laborer from Russia has actually increased the riches of the United Kingdom; that he has created quite a new industry, that of making ladies' cloaks, for which formerly England sent £2,000,000 to the continent every year. He sees in him some one who is different to himself, and unfortunately successful, though different. And until that difference entirely ceases, whether of habit, of way, or of religious observance, he will look upon him and treat him as an enemy.

For the Jew has this especial disadvantage. There is no place where that which is distinctively Jewish in his manner or in his way of life is à la mode. We may well laugh at the Irishman's brogue; but in Ireland, he knows, his brogue is at home. We may poke fun at the Frenchman as he shrugs his shoulders and speaks with every member of his body. The Frenchman feels that in France it is the proper thing so to do. Even the Turk

will wear his fez, and feel little the worse for the occasional jibes with which the street boy may greet it. But this consciousness, this ennobling consciousness, is all denied the Jew. What he does is nowhere à la mode; no, not even his features; and if he can disguise these by parting his hair in the middle or cutting his beard to a point, he feels he is on the road towards assimilation. He is even ready to use the term "Jewish" for what he considers uncouth and low.

For such as these amongst us, Zionism also has its message. It wishes to give back to the Jew that nobleness of spirit, that confidence in himself, that belief in his own powers which only perfect freedom can give. With a home of his own, he will no longer feel himself a pariah among the nations, he will nowhere hide his own peculiarities,-peculiarities to which he has a right as much as any one, but will see that those peculiarities carry with them a message which will force for them the admiration of the world. He will feel that he belongs somewhere and not

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everywhere. He will try to be something and not everything. The great word which Zionism preaches is conciliation of conflicting aims, of conflicting lines of action; conciliation of Jew to Jew. It means conciliation of the non-Jewish world to the Jew as well. It wishes to heal old wounds; and by frankly confessing differences which do exist, however much we try to explain them away, to work out its own salvation upon its own ground, and from these to send forth its spiritual message to a conciliated world.

But, you will ask, if Zionism is able to find a permanent home in Palestine for those Jews who are forced to go there as well as those who wish to go, what is to become of us who have entered, to such a degree, into the life around us, and who feel able to continue as we have begun? What is to be our relation to the new Jewish polity? I can only answer: Exactly the same as is the relation of people of other nationalities all the world over to their parent home. What becomes of the Englishman in every corner of the globe? What becomes of the German ? Does the fact that the great mass of their people live in their own land prevent them from doing their whole duty towards the land in which they happen to live? Is the German-American considered less of an American because he cultivates the German language and is interested in the fate of his fellow-Germans at home? Is the Irish-American less of an American because he gathers money to help his struggling brethren in the Green Isle? Or are the Scandinavian-Americans less worthy of the title Americans, because they consider precious the bonds which bind them. to the land of their birth, as well as those which bind them to the land of their adoption?

Nay! it would seem to me that just those who are so afraid that our action will be misinterpreted should be among the greatest helpers in the Zionist cause. For those who feel no racial and national communion with the life from which they have sprung should greet with joy the turning of Jewish immigration to some place other than the land in which they dwell. They must feel, for example, that a continual influx of Jews who are not Americans is a continual menace to the more or less complete absorption for which they are striving.

But I must not detain you much longer. Will you permit me to sum up for you the position which we Zionists take in the following statements:

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