The House of Rothschild

by Ferguson, Niall

  l.ii: Anon., ONE OF THE BENEFITS OF THE JEWISH EMANCIPATION.

  Consequently, Lionel seems to have resolved to adopt a method which the older generation of Rothschilds had used to great effect (for rather less lofty purposes) in the 1820s and 1830s. On December 23, 1846, Nat wrote to his brother in terms which are unambiguous:I regret much to observe that you think it necessary to use certain means to secure some votes in the House of Lords which are not peculiarly commendable, I must say I should have preferred to have seen it otherwise, after the late procès de corruption which we witnessed here one fights rather shy of being party to anything of the sort. To come however to the point, on this occasion our worthy uncle & yr humble servant are of opinion that we must not be too scrupulous and if it be necessary to ensure the success of the measure we must not mind a sac riftce—We can not fix the amount, you must know better how much is required than we do, I hope that as you say half the sum demanded will suffice, at all events our good Uncle has authorised me to write that he will take it upon himself to satisfy all the Family that whatever you do is for the best and that you may put down the sum to the house—of course you will not cash up until the bill passes the Lords, and you must not make any bargain or care about who gets it—The thing is this in our opinion, you place so much at the disposal of the individual in question upon the bill passing and you know nothing more about it—I wd not give money to support a petition nor for any other purpose that does not intimately concern us—all we have to do is to give the money in the event of the case being won to the lucky jockey—I think you can not be sufficiently cautious in managing this job & I therefore do not see how you can propose a subscription to yr friends—On what plea? & what do you suppose they will give? if merely a trifle it will not be worth while, if on the other hand they will cash up & not ask for particulars of course I wd take their money as they are as much benefited as ourselves.

  In short, Lionel was proposing to buy votes in the Upper House. Still more striking is the revelation that he sought to win the support of Prince Albert (whose influence in the Lords was considerable) in a similar fashion. Of course, Albert was probably already sympathetic. Lionel had been in touch with him from the moment he embarked on his political career in 1847, and by 1848 Nat was able to record his “delight ... that Prince Albert is so favourably disposed towards you and that he will support our bills.” But he also advised Lionel to “pay him now & then a visit & coax him a little.” “You should now work the court party,” he wrote on February 14, “get yr. friend P. A. [Prince Albert] to use his influence and then perhaps [the bill] will go thro‘.” What this meant in practice is one of the most intriguing, but hitherto overlooked, episodes in the emancipation story.

  By this time the Rothschilds’ early links to Prince Albert—in their capacity as postmen to the European elite—had developed into more serious financial dealings. In 1842, for example, James invested 100,000 francs in Nord shares for Albert’s adviser Baron Stockmar. Three years later, when Albert was planning a trip to Coburg to discuss financial matters with his brother, Stockmar relayed Lionel’s request “that the house of Rothschild might have the honour to act as banker in Germany for any financial requirement which Your Majesty might have on this journey.” In 1847 the Rothschilds gave Albert’s impecunious Bavarian relative Prince Ludwig von Oettingen- Wallerstein a £3,000 loan which Albert personally guaranteed; he thus became the debtor when Prince Oettingen defaulted after a year, leaving only an unsaleable art collection as security. This explains why Nat expected his brother to “cash up” in order to be sure of Albert’s support, though he and his uncle became vehemently opposed—on financial grounds—to making any payment after the outbreak of the revolution in Paris. In May, Albert summoned Anthony to the Palace to “request a loan for his brother the duke of Coblenz [should be Coburg] and [for himself?] a loan of [£] 13 or 12,000” (later raised to £15,000). Nat made his opposition abundantly clear:[Y]ou ask my advice respecting a loan of £15/ [thousand] to P A. [Prince Albert]. I think there is not the slightest reason to consent to it, you will find yourselves in the same position with regard to him as we are with L. P [Louis Philippe]—If I do not mistake my dear Brother he already owes you £5,000 which we paid here to the Bavarian minister [Prince Oettingen], I really do not think you are authorised to advance so large a sum considering the state of things & you should in my opinion tell him so—There is not the slightest reason to make compliments with him & I am convinced that whether you give the cash or not it will not make the slightest difference in the fate of the Jews bill—I can only repeat that I am decidedly against the advance & under the present circumstances I do not think you are authorised to consenting to it.

  It is not clear whether Lionel deferred to his brother’s wishes. We know that Albert bought the lease of Balmoral Castle and its 10,000 acres for £2,000 just ten days after Nat wrote his letter; but there is no indication in the Royal Archives of Rothschild involvement in this. On the other hand, Lionel did see Albert and Stockmar at Windsor in January 1849. And it is suggestive that in July 1850—just eleven days before Lionel’s famous attempt to take his seat by swearing a modified oath on the Old Testament—he contributed £50,000 to subsidise Albert’s pet but chronically under-funded project for a Great Exhibition of the “Industry of All Nations.” Three years later, it was apparently pressure from “the Court”—that is, Albert and Stockmar—which induced Lord Aberdeen to drop his opposition to emancipation in order to form a coalition between Peelites and Whigs. The evidence is circumstantial, but it does not seem unreasonable to infer that something had indeed been done to “get ... P.A. to use his influence.”

  Yet whatever Lionel attempted in this direction proved insufficient: it was probably never realistic to imagine that opposition in the Lords could be overcome by paying sweeteners to the “court party.” As Russell rather acerbically put it, “You have such an abominable habit of assigning to anything a money value that you seem to think even principles may be purchased. Now throughout this country the parties hostile to your Bill all are [a] great section of the High Church Party and the Low Church Party to a man. Now get one of their organs to fight your battle if you can, for their opposition is a conscientious one.”26 Persuasion, the Prime Minister argued, rather than bribery was the only way forward. Although another bill was brought forward by Russell in the summer of 1849 and approved in the Commons, it was once again (as he had foreseen) thrown out by the Lords by 95 votes to 25.

  This prompted Lionel finally to “accept the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds” —to force a by-election in the City—a move he announced in a statement “To the Electors of the City of London,” published in The Times: “The contest is now between the House of Lords and yourselves. They attempt to retain the last remnant of religious intolerance; you desire to remove it ... I believe that you are prepared to maintain the great constitutional struggle that is before you.” His more radical friends—notably the MPs J. Abel Smith and John Roebuck—had in fact urged him to force a by-election when the first Russell bill had been rejected over a year before; so the move itself was not unexpected. It was the confrontational language of Lionel’s address which provoked the “storm” of criticism described by Charlotte.

  To understand why this was, it is important to bear in mind the broader European context in which these events took place. On January 1, 1848, Alphonse had written to Lionel to express the hope that the New Year would witness “the triumph of religious equality over the [rotten?] principles of superstition and intolerance.” Needless to say, it witnessed a good deal more than that. But although the 1848 revolution did give Jews in some European states legal equality (if only temporarily), its net effect on the campaign for emancipation in Britain was probably negative. As the letters which arrived from Paris, Frankfurt and Vienna indicated, the revolution precipitated isolated but alarming outbreaks of popular anti-Jewish violence, for example in parts of rural Germany and in Hungary. At the same time, however, many of the
more radical liberals who considered themselves the leaders of the revolution were themselves Jews—hence Mayer Carl’s view that “the Jews themselves provoke anti-Semitism.” The association of the emancipation issue with the continental revolution was therefore doubly damaging. Lionel’s address suggested to many of his Whig and Tory supporters that the Rothschilds too were throwing in their lot with radicalism—even Chartism—at the very moment when the radicals were denouncing the Rothschilds for financing the defeat of the Hungarian revolution!

  Whatever reservations he may have awoken among his supporters, Lionel’s ploy worked as an electoral gambit. He trounced his Tory opponent, Lord John Manners—who seems to have been persuaded to stand as a token gesture27—by 6,017 votes to 2,814. Having thrown in his lot with the radicals, however, Lionel now had little alternative but to follow their next piece of tactical advice: to present himself at the Commons to claim his seat. This was essentially to follow the examples of the Catholic O‘Connell and the Quaker Pease and represented Lionel’s most confrontational step yet; Peel explicitly warned him against it. Small wonder he hesitated, spending fully a year trying to persuade Russell to bring in another bill. But at a crowded and boisterous meeting of City Liberals in the London Tavern on July 25, 1850, he publicly attacked the government for failing to “carry on measures of reform and improvement” and “to further the cause of civil and religious liberty.” At 12.20 the next day, following the resolution passed unanimously at that meeting, he appeared before the table of a rowdy House of Commons and, in answer to the Clerk’s question whether he desired to subscribe the Protestant or Catholic oath, replied: “I desire to be sworn upon the Old Testament.” As the Tory diehard Sir Robert Inglis rose to protest, the Speaker directed Lionel to withdraw and there followed a debate, primarily concerned with procedure. After the weekend, it was decided to ask Lionel directly why he wished to be sworn on the Old Testament, to which he replied: “Because that is the form of swearing which I declare to be most binding upon my conscience.” He was once again asked to withdraw and, after a densely argued debate, it was agreed (by 113 votes to 59) that he should be allowed to do as he requested.28 The next day (July 30), Lionel again appeared and was duly offered the Old Testament. The oaths of allegiance and supremacy were administered, but when the clerk reached the words “upon the true faith of a Christian”:The baron then paused, and after a second or two said: “I omit these words, as not binding upon my conscience.” He then placed his hat upon his head, kissed the Old Testament, and added, “So help me, God.” This act was followed by loud cheers from the Liberal side of the house. He also took up his pen, with the object, we presume, of signing his name to the Parliamentary test-roll; but Sir F[rederick] Thesiger rose and much excitement prevailed on all sides, in the midst of which the Speaker said the hon. member must withdraw. (Loud cries of “No, no”; “Take your seat”; “Chair” and “Order.”) The baron, however, withdrew.

  Though anti-climactic, this was probably a wise decision. Granted, it amounted to another defeat. When the debate resumed on August 5, a government resolution was passed that Lionel could not take his seat unless he swore the abjuration oath in full, and it was nearly a year before the government could introduce a bill designed to amend the oath as required.29 But when David Salomons sought to force the pace following his victory in a by-election at Greenwich, he was no more successful and cut a rather less dignified figure. Having taken his seat without having sworn the three oaths in full, Salomons was ordered by the Speaker to withdraw, but refused; when a motion was passed requiring him to withdraw, he still refused and indeed spoke and voted against it; and only finally left the House when the Speaker asked the Serjeant-at-Arms to remove him. The net result was the same: as a further vote confirmed, neither he nor Lionel could take their seats until they swore the abjuration oath. Salomons’s only achievement was an. act of June 1852 which did away with the archaic penalties which might in theory have been inflicted on him for his. unlawful conduct following a successful court action against him. The electorate seemed to deliver their verdict on his tactics when he was defeated resoundingly in the 1852 general election; Lionel, by contrast, won again. The waiting game resumed, for it soon became apparent that emancipation remained as divisive in the Commons and as unpalatable in the Lords as ever. De facto, Lionel acted as a kind of seatless MP, lobbying from outside the chamber when issues affecting Jews arose in Parliament (for example, state funding of Jewish schools in 1851-2 or the exemption of rabbinical divorces from the jurisdiction of the civil Divorce Court in 1857). But de iure there was deadlock. Yet another bill was defeated in the Lords; and in 1855 there was even an ingenious attempt by the Rothschilds’ old foe Thomas Duncombe to force another City by-election on the ground that by floating the government’s Crimean War loan Lionel had “entered into a contract for the public service.”

  “A Real Triumph”

  It was not until after the 1857 election—which saw Lionel once again returned for the City, this time ahead of Russell, who had quarrelled with the Liberal caucus—that battle was rejoined in parliament. With a comfortable majority behind him, Palmerston felt it was “due to the City of London with reference to the election of Baron Lionel de Rothschild, to give Parliament early in this session an opportunity of again considering the question of admission of Jews, and that such a proposal would have the best chance of success by being proposed by the Government.” A bill was duly introduced on May 15 and gained a resounding,majority of 123 on its third reading. To the satisfaction of its proponents a number of senior Tories now signalled a change of heart, notably Sir John Pakington, Sir Fitzroy Kelly and most important Lord Stanley, the son of the Earl of Derby, the party leader. In the Lords too the new Bishop of London expressed support; and altogether 139 members of the Upper House voted in favour. Yet once again—to Lionel’s disappointment—they were in the minority. When the government shrank from overruling the Lords by a unilateral resolution, instead introducing a new Oaths Validity Act Amendment Bill, Lionel decided once again to resign his seat and fight a by-election on the issue. He was returned unopposed, having launched another strong attack on “the men who went but very seldom among the people, who knew not the wishes of the people, and who, in fact, attended to very little but their own pleasure and amusement.” 30

  It was not this renewed appeal to people versus peers which finally broke the deadlock, however, but—paradoxically—the advent of a minority Conservative government. For now Disraeli, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the party in the Commons, was at last able to repay his debts to the Rothschilds by persuading the reluctant Derby that the Lords must compromise. He did this by giving the Opposition a free hand in the Commons. On April 27, 1858, Russell’s Oaths Amendment Bill had been mauled in the Lords at the committee stage, the crucial fifth clause being struck out. Two weeks later, a motion proposed by Russell “disagreeing” with the Lords was passed by a majority of 113. Even more startling, the House also passed (by 55 votes) a motion proposed by the maverick Duncombe that Lionel be appointed a member of the Commons committee set up to explain the “reasons” for its disagreement. Russell then moved that these reasons be relayed through a conference with the Upper House. The Lords’ consent to this was the decisive turning point. On May 31, the Earl of Lucan proposed what proved to be the solution: that the Commons should be allowed to change its own oath of admission by resolution, provided this was first legalised by act of Parliament. This allowed the Lords to spell out their “Reasons” for disagreeing with the Commons and Derby—albeit “sulkily and reluctantly”—declared his support for it on July 1. On the 23rd, the compromise became law in the form of two acts, one merging the three oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration for all offices which had hitherto required them; the other permitting Jews to omit the words “upon the true faith of a Christian” if the body to which they sought admission consented. On Monday July 26, Lionel appeared once again in the Commons. For the last time, he was obliged t
o withdraw as the House debated the two resolutions necessary for him to take the shortened oath—essentially a final opportunity for diehards like Samuel Warren and Spencer Walpole to record their opposition to “the intrusion of the blasphemer.” The critical resolution having been passed by 32 votes, Lionel was at last sworn in as a member using the new oath—and the Old Testament. Rather piquantly, given the means to which he had earlier resorted, the first piece of legislation on which he voted immediately after taking his seat on the Opposition front bench was The Corrupt Practices Prevention Act Continuance Bill.

  Lionel’s admission to Parliament was, as James wrote, “a real triumph for the family.” At the general election held the following year, his brother Mayer joined him in the Commons (along with David Salomons); and in 1865 his son Natty was elected. As Charlotte pointed out with glee, in a close vote (as in July 1864) Palmerston’s government could be “saved by the Jews.” Lionel’s election also had a wider resonance for the Jewish community as a whole: the Board of Deputies published resolutions expressing its “sincerest gratification ... respect and gratitude” and, henceforth, the anniversary of Lionel’s admission to the Commons would be prize-giving day at the Jews’ Free School—though Lionel pointedly underlined his own commitment to religious toleration by endowing the City of London school with “its most valuable [open] scholarship in honour of his taking his seat.”