Yet so essentially
are they one people, we might almost say one family; and so disposable
is their wealth, as mainly vested in money transactions, that they must
be considered as an aggregate, and not in their individual portions.
The Jews in France are perhaps from thirty to forty thousand; they
abound chiefly at Metz, along the Rhine, and at Marseilles and Bordeaux.
In Bonaparte's time they were imagined to amount to at least twice that
number.--They are relieved from civil restraints and disabilities in
France, and in the Netherlands also. The Jews in Holland, of both German
and Portuguese origin, are numerous; the latter are said to have taken
refuge there when the United Provinces asserted their independence of
Spain; they have a splendid synagogue at Amsterdam. Infidelity is
supposed to have made more progress amongst them than amongst the German
Jews in Holland. The Italian Jews are chiefly at Leghorn and Genoa; and
there are four thousand of them at Rome. In speaking of the religion of
the Jews, it is not necessary to particularize those who assumed the
mask of Christianity under terror of the Inquisition, although much has
been said of their wealth and numbers, and of the high offices they have
filled in Spain, and especially in Portugal. But it is curious to see,
in a very distant quarter, a like simulation produced amongst them
by like causes.
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