JEWISH SUC CESS AND FAILURE.
THE success of the Jews in Western and Central Europe, of . which so much is being said just now in Germany, is not, we think, very hard to understand. The Jewish, like every other tolerably pure race, has its own distinctive quality, and that quality, which is substantially quickness of insight, or, to use a simpler phrase, intelligent keenness, happens, under the condi- tions of modern society, to be exceedingly valuable. There are many other qualities which the race has never displayed, and which are also very important. They have never founded a State of any magnitude, though they have always been more numerous than the Romans who conquered the world, and now exceed in 'lumbers any of the minor peoples of Europe. They have never made even an effort to become a nation, which, in recent times, at all events, would have been easy for them, on better soils than Palestine. With a momentary exception in Moorish Spain, they have never dominated any people, or conciliated any people, even in the East, where they have had fair chances ; or founded any great city, or done anything except in theology, of which his- tory hitherto has found itself compelled to take great notice. It may hereafter be compelled to describe Lassalle and Marx, but the hour of triumph for their ideas, if it is ever to arrive, has not conic yet. They have never since the Maccabees produced a great soldier, for Masseua was only second-rate, the Jewish Chief of the Staff on the Austrian side did not succeed at Sadowa, and we cannot yet credit them with a statesman of the first class. Lord Beaconsfield is hardly more than a great party leader. in politics, though he has a certain genius for apprehending the passing waves of emotion in the British people ; Herr Lasker has never overthrown a Government, M. Cr6mieux proved a failure at Bordeaux, M. Fould was only a clear-headed banker, Sir H. Drummond Wolff has scarcely made a mark, and if M. Gambetta is, as the Jewish papers say, Hebrew by descent, he is at once the strongest representative of the race and the one whose blood is least pure. The Jews have never produced a very great engiueer, and, curiously enough, have not risen to the front rank among the captains of industry. We can recall no man of the race who, as inventor, is on a level with Arkwright ; or, as manufacturer, with Titus Salt ; or, as contractor, with Mr. Brassey ; for Herr Strousberg, who in the range of his ideas was decidedly greater than any of the three, failed, being beaten, we have always thought, by qualities the world does not attribute to Jews, an over-fervid imagination and breadth of enterprise. The Jew has not the constructive faculties in any unusual degree, and still less the industrial ; in fact, he pro- duces nothing, neither buildings, nor food, nor ships ; but he has keen intelligence and great strenuousness, and in our day keen intelligence tells, while strenuousness, in many departments of life, compensates for industry. The Jew succeeds as a lawyer, as an official, as a professor, as an advocate, as a Parliamentary debater, as a proprietor of journals, as a physician, and in many walks of literature, occasionally, as in Heine's case, rising to the highest. That he is a great wealth-maker, we should, if we had the courage to defy a universal prepossession, be inclined to deny, for he adds nothing to the wealth of the world, and the mass of his nation remains, therefore, poor to penury, no poverty surpassing that of Russian, Polish, German, and Austrian Jews, that is, of the enormous majority; but he has mastered the secret that money is to be made rapidly by the distribution of products ; he has been compelled, by the oppression of centuries, to comprehend exactly the value of paper " securities " and the mode of dealing with them, and his intellect being exactly fitted to the work, whenever he gets fair-play in those departments of life he beats all competitors, except, perhaps, Armenians and Parsees. The Armenians have never invaded the orderly countries, and have, therefore, never been able to accumulate freely; and the Parsees have confined their great capacities to rather too narrow a field, the trade of India and a few ports of the Southern-Asiatic coasts. Neither Armenian, Parsee, nor Christian, however, will labour as the Jew labours in his own groove, take half the trouble, or watch opportunity with half the aggressive intelligence. Within his limits the Jew succeeds, and as he is extremely strenuous, rarely burdens himself with more education than he needs—for though Jews are among the most cultivated of mankind, the majority-care more to be lin- guists, mathematicians, and masters of the ways of trade—and has the sympathy of his entire people, he rises more rapidly and with less friction than his competitors, till in some places every prominent person seems to be more or less a Jew, and Dr. Stocker's fierce epigram becomes literally true,—" At the post-mortem examination of a body,lately there were present the district physician, the lawyer, the surgeon, and a fourth official, all Jews, and none but the corpse was German. Behold
a picture of the present !" The success is won fairly enough, by qualities which his rivals might display, if they had them, —by intelligence, effort, and readiness to accept all inevitable conditions. The only advantages Jews possess is their cosmo- politan character, which is an accident ; their mutual sympathy, which, though sometimes carried rather far—as in the feel- ing which the Jews of all countries have displayed for Lord Beaconsfield—is natural in an oppressed race ; and a certain limitation of sympathy to their own people, which makes all Christians deem them hard. Read Lord Beaconsfield upon Irishmen or on English politics, and then read him on his own people, and mark the difference of the passion. Trades' Unionism, however, even upon a large scale, is not in itself immoral, and in Asia " white men " hold together against dark men quite as strongly as Jews have ever done against the Gentiles among whom they dwell.
It is more easy to explain why Jews succeed than why they fail, but in one respect they certainly do fail. They genuinely desire to be liked by the peoples among whom they sojourn, and they are not liked, either in Asia, or America, or Europe. This is not due to their creed, for Asia tolerates all creeds, and their callus, depending on pedigree, gives no offence by pro- selytism, while in Europe whole classes hold a faith hardly dis- tinguishable from theirs. Nor is it their conception of life which is offensive. Jews have become an adaptable race ; they do not reverence asceticism, and their idea of luxury, apart from a certain love of splendour, which the East thinks magnificent and the West vulgar, differs very little from that of their com- petitors. The rich German, or Frenchman, or Englishman has not much right to talk about Jewish profusion, or his hunger after material comfort, or even his fondness for display. Still, the Jew is disliked, as his rivals, living like him, are not disliked, and in all Western countries things are par- doned to successful natives which in successful Jews arouse the bitterest resentment. The reason is alleged to be want of patriotism, but though the Jews are often cosmopolitan, and in countries where they are persecuted distinctly hostile to the oppressive regime—a hostility rising in States like Roumania to a passion—they often can be and are patriotic. There are no more decided Germans, Frenchmen, or Italians than the Jews of those countries ; and the English Jews would be English, too, were they not so few, and so impatient of the English temperament. The main reasons, we believe, for the dislike are two,—the first being that the Jews in all countries remain Jews, that is, distinctive, and thereby acquire the dislike with which any foreign race whatever similarly successful would be regarded ; and the second, that they are an exceedingly pushing people. They are not more disliked than the Scotch were, and the Greeks are, in England, or than the Poles are in those districts of Germany where the races come in contact. The Jews say, of course, everywhere, that they are merely citizens with a distinctive creed ; but citizens with a distinctive creed rarely refuse to intermarry, do not live so completely among them- selves, do not help each other so markedly, and are not separated from the majority by so unmistakable a difference of appearance. They are separate, and with the mass of mankind separation implies hostility, more especially when, as in this case, separation is not accompanied and palliated by seclusion. The Jew is everywhere except in the open fields, in all societies, in all marts, in all streets, and everywhere is the least secluded of men,—the man, in fact, who makes himself the most visible. He is gregarious, not solitary ; a man of society, not a recluse; a pushing man, not a retiring, and far less a humble one. There, we suspect, we arrive at the final secret of popular dislike. " My people," said one of the most accomplished and best born of their number to the writer, " have all one foible which breeds trouble- All Jews are vain." They like to be at the top, to be great in society, to be en evidence everywhere, to be important, and to make their importance felt. They all, if they grow rich, ask rank at the Sovereigns' hands. They all, not without reason, are full of the pride of pedigree, and look down on other races as both parvenus and stupid. They assert themselves strongly, with a certain triumph, as of people to whom justice has been done at last ; and as self-assertion has till recently been difficult, their manners have often become, as a witty American said, "a little large in proportion." Their method of asserting themselves is not their fault, for all Orientals not of the highest type pursue it, a wealthy Baboo, or Parsee, or Persian asserting himself in just the same way, with a certain swell and fuss, but it makes them prominent ; and, granted a separate people, very sttc- cessful, very conspicuous, and very vain, planted among another people much more numerous, much less suc- cessful, and rather proud than vain, the two understand- ing each other's language perfectly, and being close enough to differentiate each other at a glance and follow each other's nuances of manner, we have all the materials of popular dislike. We doubt its being very deep, even in Germany, where, after all, there is a rooted respect for the intellectuality which is the Jew characteristic ; and believe that with the existing distress, which embitters the country against all who are rich and extra- vagant, it will pass away, if not as completely as in France, at least as much as in England, where Jewish blood is no bar at all, and where Jews of the Synagogue reach every kind of office at least twice as easily as Roman Catholics. There is here, as in Germany, a philosophic distrust of the influence the Jewish mind, which is very separate, may exert on politics, journalism, and theology ; but it is not a popular dislike, properly so called. If it were, it would be exhibited at the hustings.
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