Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753

Last updated

Naturalization of Jews Act 1753
Act of Parliament
Coat of Arms of Great Britain (1714-1801).svg
Long title An Act to permit Persons professing the Jewish Religion to be naturalized by Parliament; and for other Purposes therein mentioned.
Citation 26 Geo. 2. c. 26
Dates
Royal assent 7 July 1753
Repealed20 December 1753
Other legislation
Repealed by Naturalization of Jews Act 1754
Status: Repealed
Naturalization of Jews Act 1754
Act of Parliament
Coat of Arms of Great Britain (1714-1801).svg
Long title An Act to repeal an Act of the Twenty-sixth Year of His Majesty's Reign, intituled, "An Act to permit Persons professing the Jewish Religion to be naturalized by Parliament; and for other Purposes therein mentioned."
Citation 27 Geo. 2. c. 1
Dates
Royal assent 20 December 1753
Repealed15 July 1867
Other legislation
Repealed by Statute Law Revision Act 1867
Status: Repealed

The Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753 was an Act of Parliament (26 Geo. 2. c. 26) which allowed Jews resident in Britain to become naturalised by application to Parliament. It received royal assent on 7 July 1753 but was repealed in 1754 (27 Geo. 2. c. 1) due to widespread opposition to its provisions. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

History

During the Jacobite rising of 1745, the Jews had shown particular loyalty to the government. Their chief financier, Sampson Gideon, had strengthened the stock market, and several of the younger members had volunteered in the corps raised to defend London. Possibly as a reward, Henry Pelham in 1753 brought in the Jew Bill of 1753, which allowed Jews to become naturalised by application to Parliament. It passed the Lords without much opposition, but on being brought down to the House of Commons, the Tories made protest against what they deemed an "abandonment of Christianity." The Whigs, however, persisted in carrying out at least one part of their general policy of religious toleration, and the bill was passed and received royal assent (26 Geo. 2. c. 26). The public reacted with an enormous outburst of antisemitism, and the Bill was repealed in the next sitting of Parliament, in 1754. [4]

Horace Walpole, a contemporary observer, said that the Act removed "such absurd distinctions, as stigmatized and shackled a body of the most loyal, commercial and wealthy subjects of the kingdom"; the affair demonstrated that "the age, enlightened as it is called, was still enslaved to the grossest and most vulgar prejudices". [5] The political economist Josiah Tucker defended the Act in A Letter to A Friend Concerning Naturalizations (1753), where he pointed to the economic benefits of granting naturalisation to Jewish people:

As to the Bill itself, it only empowers rich Foreigners to purchase Lands, and to carry on a free and extensive Commerce, by importing all Sorts of Merchandise and Raw Materials, allowed by Law to be imported, for the Employment of our own People, and then Exporting the Surplus of the Produce, Labour, and Manufactures of our own Country, upon cheaper and better Terms than is done at present. This is all the Hurt that such a Bill can do. [6] [7]

German Jews

While the Sephardim chiefly congregated in London as the centre of international commerce, Jews immigrating from Germany and Poland settled for the most part in the seaports of the south and west, such as Falmouth, Plymouth, Liverpool, Bristol, etc., as pawnbrokers and small dealers. From these centres it became their custom to send out hawkers every Monday with packs to the neighbouring villages, whereby connections were made with some of the inland towns, where they began to settle, such as Canterbury, Chatham, Cambridge, Manchester, and Birmingham. Traders of this type, while not of such prominence as the larger merchants of the capital, came in closer contact with ordinary English people and may have helped to allay some of the prejudice which had been manifested so strongly in 1753.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1753</span> Calendar year

1753 (MDCCLIII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 1753rd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 753rd year of the 2nd millennium, the 53rd year of the 18th century, and the 4th year of the 1750s decade. As of the start of 1753, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Pelham</span> Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1743 to 1754

Henry Pelham was a British Whig statesman who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1743 until his death in 1754. He was the younger brother of Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who served in Pelham's government and succeeded him as prime minister. Pelham is generally considered to have been Britain's third prime minister, after Robert Walpole and the Earl of Wilmington.

The Test Acts were a series of penal laws originating in Restoration England, passed by the Parliament of England, that served as a religious test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Catholics and nonconformist Protestants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Townshend</span> British politician (1725–1767)

Charles Townshend was a British politician who held various titles in the Parliament of Great Britain. His establishment of the controversial Townshend Acts is considered one of the key causes of the American Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke</span> British lawyer and statesman (1690–1764)

Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, was an English lawyer and politician who served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. He was a close confidant of the Duke of Newcastle, Prime Minister between 1754 and 1756 and 1757 until 1762.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Jews in England</span>

The history of the Jews in England goes back to the reign of William the Conqueror. Although it is likely that there had been some Jewish presence in the Roman period, there is no definitive evidence, and no reason to suppose that there was any community during Anglo-Saxon times. The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070. The Jewish settlement continued until King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290.

The History of Sephardic Jews in England consists of the Sephardic Jews' contribution and achievement in England.

The resettlement of the Jews in England was an informal arrangement during the Commonwealth of England in the mid-1650s, which allowed Jews to practice their faith openly. It forms a prominent part of the history of the Jews in England. It happened directly after two events. Firstly a prominent rabbi Menasseh ben Israel came to the country from the Netherlands to make the case for Jewish resettlement, and secondly a Spanish New Christian merchant Antonio Robles requested that he be classified as a Jew rather than Spaniard during the war between England and Spain.

Jewish emancipation in the United Kingdom was the culmination in the 19th century of efforts over several hundred years to loosen the legal restrictions set in place on England's Jewish population. Between 1833 and 1890 Parliament passed a series of laws that placed male Jews in the United Kingdom on an equal legal footing with the kingdom's other emancipated males.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Josiah Tucker</span> Welsh economist (1713–1799)

Josiah Tucker, also known as Dean Tucker, was a Welsh churchman, known as an economist and political writer. He was concerned in his works with free trade, Jewish emancipation and American independence. He became Dean of Gloucester.

An Appropriation Act is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which, like a Consolidated Fund Act, allows the Treasury to issue funds out of the Consolidated Fund. Unlike a Consolidated Fund Act, an Appropriation Act also "appropriates" the funds, that is allocates the funds issued out of the Consolidated Fund to individual government departments and Crown bodies. Appropriation Acts were formerly passed by the Parliament of Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sampson Gideon</span> British banker and philanthropist

Sampson Gideon was a British banker and philanthropist active in the City of London during the Georgian era. Gideon is most prominently known for his financing of the Hanoverian-Whig government's suppression of the Jacobite rising of 1745, subsequently becoming a trusted "adviser of the Government" who supported the passage of the Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753. Historian James Picciotto, in his 1875 book Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History described Gideon as the "Rothschild of his day" and the "pillar of state credit".

Events from the year 1753 in Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aliens Act 1905</span> United Kingdom legislation

The Aliens Act 1905 was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The act introduced immigration controls and registration for the first time, and gave the Home Secretary overall responsibility for matters concerning immigration and nationality. Those who "appeared unable to support themselves" or "likely to become a charge upon the rates" were declared "undesirable". The act also allowed to turn away potential immigrants on medical grounds. Asylum-seekers fleeing from religious or political persecution were supposedly exempted from the act but, nevertheless, their claims were often ignored.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Fazakerley</span> English lawyer and politician

Nicholas Fazakerley (1685?–1767), of Prescot, Merseyside, was an English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1732 to 1767.

Nationality law in the American colonies preceding the Articles of Confederation was a decentralized early attempt to develop the concept of citizenship among colonial settlers with respect to the major colonial powers of the period. Precedent was largely based on English common law, with jurisdictional discretion afforded to each of the colonies in accordance with the principles of self-governance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plantation Act 1740</span> United Kingdom legislation

The Plantation Act 1740 or the Naturalization Act 1740 are common names used for an act of the British Parliament that was officially titled An Act for Naturalizing such foreign Protestants and others therein mentioned, as are settled or shall settle in any of His Majesty's Colonies in America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Handel's Naturalisation Act 1727</span> United Kingdom legislation

An Act for naturalizing Louis Sechehaye, George Frideric Handel, Anthony Furstenau and Michael Schlegel, later given the short title of Handel's Naturalisation Act 1727, was a 1727 Act of the Parliament of Great Britain with the intent of naturalising German-born composer George Frideric Handel and other foreigners as British subjects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naturalization Act 1714</span> United Kingdom legislation

The Naturalization Act 1714, printed under the full title An act to explain the act made in the twelfth year of the reign of King William the Third, intituled, "An act for the further limitation of the crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the subject.", was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The act was passed in 1714, as part of the first session under the new reign of King George I of Great Britain, at the outset of the Hanoverian dynasty. According to historians of British nationality and citizenship, this "Act of 1714 prescribed that no Bill of naturalisation should be received in either House unless it included a clause embodying the disabilities of the Act of Settlement."

References

  1. Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History . Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p.  316. ISBN   0-304-35730-8.
  2. Perry, TW (1962). Public Opinion, Propaganda, and Politics in 18th-Century England: A Study of the Jew Bill of 1753. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pres.
  3. Katznelson, Ira (11 May 2021). "Measuring Liberalism, Confronting Evil: A Retrospective". Annual Review of Political Science. 24 (1): 1–19. doi: 10.1146/annurev-polisci-042219-030219 . ISSN   1094-2939.
  4. Appelbaum, Diana Muir (14 November 2012). "Jacob's Sons in the Bishop's Palace". Jewish Ideas Daily . Retrieved 1 August 2016.
  5. Horace Walpole, Memoirs of King George II. I: January 1751–March 1754, ed. John Brooke (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 238.
  6. Josiah Tucker, A Letter to A Friend Concerning Naturalizations (London: Thomas Trye, 1753), pp. 6-7.
  7. Alan H. Singer, 'Great Britain or Judea Nova? National Identity, Property, and the Jewish Naturalization Controversy of 1753', in Sheila A. Spector (ed.), British Romanticism and the Jews: History, Culture, Literature (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 32.

Further reading