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antisemitism, and the Bill was repealed in the next sitting of Parliament, in 1754. Within the Bedfordite press, the opposition weekly
The Protester campaigned against the bill during its 1753 run.
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". 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. ==German Jews==