Jewish History (2006) 20: 147Y170 DOI: 10.1007/s10835-005-9002-z

•c Springer 2006

Rules, rights and redemption: The negotiation of Jewish status in British Atlantic port towns, 1740Y1831 HOLLY SNYDER* Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A. E-mail: Holly [email protected] On the 5th of July in 1820, Levy Hyman appeared at the polling booth set up in Kingston for the election of local representatives to the Jamaica Assembly and, Fdesir[ing] that his name should be polled for such person or persons as he thought proper,_ demanded a ballot.1 In 1820, Hyman was a long-time resident of Kingston Y an affluent selfemployed merchant, with a store on Harbour Street and a home several blocks away on Orange Street, on the west side of town.2 In addition to his mercantile activities, Hyman owned as many as 20 plantations, including a modest 50-acre plantation with 46 slaves in nearby St. Andrew_s Parish, which he had purchased at some point prior to 1810 and renamed FHyman_s Delight._3 Although he well knew that Jews were forbidden to vote in Jamaica by Resolution of the Assembly passed 70 years earlier, on this July day Hyman nonetheless argued with the electoral personnel that he should be permitted to exercise the franchise, basing his conviction on the fact that he met the property qualifications specified for voting under Jamaican law, had duly registered his titles in the office of the island Secretary and, like all Jamaicans eligible to vote, had paid his share of the poll tax. Now, knowing that voting had long been prohibited to Jews on the island, Levy Hyman was surely not surprised when he was refused the privilege of casting his ballot in the 1820 Kingston assembly election. Rather, the surprise comes from the fact that he determined to undertake such an

* Holly Snyder is North American History Librarian at the Brown University Library. She is deeply indebted to James Robertson of the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, and to Dennis Landes of the John Carter Brown Library for drawing her attention to a primary source newly acquired by the JCB Library. She also thanks James Robertson, Linda Sturtz, Arthur Kiron, Lois Dubin and Kenneth Stow for helpful discussions and suggestions on earlier drafts of this piece.

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action when he must have known it was unlikely to succeed. Moreover, the record reflects that Levy Hyman had no intention of letting the matter rest with a polite refusal at the polling booth. After his rebuff by the deputy marshall in charge of polling, one Joseph Samuel Geoghegan, Hyman filed a lawsuit. In the Complaint, Hyman claimed that in refusing his request to be polled Geoghegan had violated Hyman_s rights as a British citizen, and that Geoghegan was therefore personally liable to pay damages under Section 18 of the Act of Jamaica for regulating elections. Though that contention was ultimately rejected by the courts, the lawsuit certainly created the public stir that Hyman had been seeking, for Geoghegan incurred legal costs in excess of U273 for defending himself and was forced to petition the Assembly for relief.4 The tale of Levy Hyman_s attempt at voting in 1820 raises three issues which are critical to a comprehensive understanding of political development in both Britain (in its largest, imperial sense) and the United States. First, there is the transformation of multiplicitous European restrictions on the economic behavior of Jews into rules proscribing Jewish political participation in English colonies on the far side of the Atlantic. Second is the popular interpretation of Fnatural rights_ and its influence on the way Britons on both sides of the Atlantic began to order political life in the colonies, after (as well as before) the American Revolution. The third is perhaps implicit in Levy Hyman_s behavior Y that is to say, the manner in which the Jews of the seaport towns of the British Atlantic actively exerted pressure to expand the range of their privileges, both political and economic, within the imperial polity, alternately using and reshaping ongoing political debates as they maneuvered for the redemption of their Frights._ Taken together, examination of these issues can illuminate how the Jews of the Atlantic world contributed to an increasingly cosmopolitan discourse regarding the political rights and privileges of subjects and citizenship in Britain and its variegated colonies, at a time when the very notion of citizenship was in a state of flux. Nowhere in the British Atlantic were these questions as well delineated for Jews as in Jamaica, where the contest over Jewish political rights consumed the better part of two centuries before the island_s Jewish population finally achieved full civil emancipation. To flesh out the discussion which follows, I will therefore draw extensively upon evidence from Kingston, Jamaica, with glancing references to parallel developments in London and other British port towns on the western-most edge of the Atlantic.

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Rules Officially absent from the shores of England since 1290, Jews presented a dilemma for English political theorists of the 17th century. On the one hand, England_s new-found commitment to Protestantism demanded a reconsideration of Catholic mistreatment of the Jews, viewed in Protestant eyes as not properly Christian behavior. At the crux of what was often viewed as a purely religious matter lay England_s burgeoning need for the development of new market structures Y a need which made desirable the trade that Jewish merchants would presumably bring with them should their return be permitted. On the other hand, the prospect of an influx of Jews into a nation so recently scourged by its own internal religious conflicts aroused deep anxieties of further political instability. English political writers of all persuasions argued that Jews were unlikely to make good subjects, Ffor,_ as James Harrington put it, Bthey of all nations never incorporate but, taking up the room of a limb, are of no use or office unto the body, while they suck the nourishment which would sustain a natural and useful member.^5 Harrington suggested that if Jews were to be absorbed into the nation, they ought to be settled at its peripheral outposts (Ireland, for example), because this was the only means by which to both obtain profit from Jewish economic activities (via taxation) and avoid the political damage a Jewish presence would inevitably cause to an English commonwealth. The question of the Jews soon became embroiled in the ongoing ideological debate over the nature of sovereignty in England, particularly after Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660. Did absolute sovereignty descend to the King by divine authority, or was it granted (and thus limited) by consent of his subjects? Could the King not be restrained in some things by the weight of the law of the land?6 And if that were so, what did it mean for the legal position of the Jews, long perceived in English thought as the special creatures of the Crown? In fact, the question of the Jewish readmission to England arose at a moment when English politics were marked by a distinct shift in the legal rationale underlying the common parlance of governance. To be sure, legalistic interpretations of the nature of kingship had been circulating in England for some five hundred years prior to the English Civil War; as Kantorowicz notes, the evolution away from theological toward legal theories of monarchical authority had begun by the mid12th century and had firmly taken hold by the end of the 13th.7 But a secondary shift in political theory had begun under the Tudors,

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precipitated by Henry VIII_s break from Rome and the violence that became part and parcel of Henry_s effort to compel England_s Christians to join the Reformation. While the later Tudors (notably Elizabeth I) continued to benefit from the expectation that the authority of the monarch was absolute, the powers of Parliament, along with the varieties of religious dissent, had begun to expand at the end of the 16th century. Thus, the same exercise of autocratic power that had worked so well for Henry VIII and Elizabeth I was not well received by time of the early Stuarts, James I and Charles I. The question of the King_s sovereignty was soon reframed for the context of an evolving market-based culture: that is, should the King have the ultimate authority to rule over his subjects, or was that power more properly in the hands of his subjects, through their duly appointed representatives (the Parliament)? Confronted by a fractious Parliament, Charles I argued the former and was executed for his arrogance in 1649. In the ensuing debate over the proper distribution of authority within government, the Jewish question became an icon Y albeit hypothetical, and only one of many Y that epitomized distinctions between opposing sides.8 Seventeenth-century legal writers and Parliamentarians like Sir Edward Coke, William Prynne and William Hughes were troubled by the potential inclusion of Jews within the realm, and saw them as a threat to England_s well-established constitutional order. Collectively and individually, they used the spectre of a horrific medieval past to suggest that readmitting Jews to England constituted a betrayal of England_s Fancient Constitution_ and its political traditions, which dated back beyond Magna Carta into the distant Anglo-Saxon past.9 In their view, the incorporation of the Jews into English life was the beginning of a slippery slope toward a lawless nation governed by immorality and greed rather than by rationality and justice. To prevent such a sad state of affairs, they argued, it would be both necessary and desirable to confirm the legal precedent established in 1290 and keep the Jews out of England altogether. For Coke, whose Institutes of the Lawes of England was written at a moment when the very idea of readmitting the Jews could be readily dismissed as the fantasy of a handful of crackpot Protestant dissenters, anti-Jewish statements were rhetorical; he needed only to declare, for example, that Edward I had made the correct choice in acting to expel them from the realm. Prynne and Hughes, however, were confronted in the 1650s by the reality of a growing (if tiny) Jewish presence in England Y something they perceived as an imminent danger to England_s political soul. Their arguments against the Jews had to be nuanced Y expulsion was the obvious

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preference, but they were at some pains to suggest alternatives: At a minimum, the Jews should be severely restricted, and excluded from privileges readily available to other subjects of the Crown.10 By contrast, adherents of a more liberal perspective, like the dissenting Protestant theologians John Dury (who sought church unity) and Henry Jessey (a Baptist), thought it possible that readmitting Jews could only have a salutary effect. That is, professing Jews, through witnessing the good example of believing Protestants, would finally be persuaded that Christianity was indeed the rightful successor to Judaism, and thus convert. Even these proponents of readmission, however, did not intend Jews to wield free rein in England. Jessey, for one, suggested that Cromwell restrict Jewish residency to port towns in desperate need of economic regeneration, where, as Aliens, they would pay customs at double the usual rate. The risk of readmitting Jews was perceived to carry sufficient risk that it was necessary to exercise great caution; as Dury put it, BOur state doth wisely to goe warily. . . [because Jews] have wayes beyond all other men, to undermine a State^ and, accordingly, they Fmust be restrained in some things._11 In short, the perception that Jews either would definitely or might possibly threaten the mechanisms of the state was widespread among both opponents and proponents of readmission prior to 1656; the differences lay in how the adherents of each position proposed to address the problem. This deep ambivalence among English thinkers about the inclusion of Jews in the English commonwealth was given public voice at Cromwell_s Whitehall Conference of December 1655, at which the question of the potential readmission of the Jews to England was subjected to heated arguments both in favor and opposed to the proposal. Many Englishmen read Cromwell_s deferral of a clear decision in favor of readmission as a license to impose restrictions and requirements on the kinds of activities in which the Jews who had tacitly begun to settle in England could engage. Others would renew the opportunity with each change of administration (the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, accession of James II in 1685 and the Glorious Revolution of William III in 1689Y1690) to petition for additional restrictions and, perhaps, a return to the status quo ante Y that is, to have the Jews expelled from England altogether. Thus, by 1750, Jewish mercantile activities within England were subjected to a convoluted schema of regulations and restrictions. London merchants, for example, were required to take a Christian oath in order to achieve the freedom of the city. Since no merchant could legitimately operate within the city boundaries without having such Ffreedom,_ this requirement effectively

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prohibited the establishment of retail shops owned by Jews. Jewish influence in overseas trade was also limited through restrictions on admission to the monopoly trading companies, particularly the Russia and Levant Companies. The number of Jewish sworn brokers permitted on the London commodities exchange remained restricted to 12 until 1830, despite petitions to the Aldermen from Jewish merchants in 1723, 1730 and 1739 to increase the quota of Jewish brokers. When Jews ran into bureaucratic problems in the exercise of privileges actually granted them, they found they could not be assured of equal treatment. In such cases, they were often forced to appeal to the highest levels of the British hierarchy to assert legal rights which had already been officially granted, or to assure that legal rights might be granted in future.12 Added to the overt restrictions imposed on Jews in England were the myriad of covert restrictions which could be (and frequently, in the colonial context, were) imposed under the aegis of the Navigation Acts. A case in point is the admiralty prosecution of New York merchant Rabba Couty in Jamaica. In 1671, Couty_s ketch, The Tryall, arrived in Jamaica laden with provisions but was seized and condemned on the libel that it was not an English ship. Couty appeared before the Admiralty Court to defend his interest in the vessel by presenting a license from Col. Francis Lovelace, the British governor of New York. Rather than having his status as an English subject ratified by the Court, however, Couty was stunned by the unanticipated ruling that Fhee was no Denizen._ Since Couty had already confessed that twothirds of the vessel and its cargo were his, the Court now proceeded to condemn the vessel and its contents. Couty was forced to sail to New York to obtain a second certificate from Gov. Lovelace that verified his status as Ba Free Burgher of this Citty^ as well as the status of the ketch and its crew as English, in order to petition the king to have his property restored. The Privy Council, appointed to investigate Couty_s claims, subsequently found Bthe said sentence [in Jamaica] to be grounded on a presumption that the said Rabba Couty being not an Englishman, but a Jew was for this cause to be accompted a Forreigner^ to be in contravention of colonial policy. Instead, they ruled that the two certificates from Gov. Lovelace were in fact sufficient to establish Couty_s claim to be Ban Inhabitant, and free Cittyzen of your Majestyes Plantations.^ In this case, the attempt of the Admiralty Court in Jamaica to construct Couty as a foreigner relied upon the premise that Couty_s documentation was inadequate to prove his status as an English subject. This notion was defeated only by the direct intervention of the Crown.13 The prosecution of Jewish merchants as BAliens^

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was not exclusive to the Caribbean sugar colonies, however, and took place on two occasions in Rhode Island. The first of these, in 1684, involved the seizure of property belonging to eight Jewish merchants residing in the town of Newport to compel their appearance in court on the charge that as BAliens^ they were not entitled to conduct trade in Rhode Island under the Navigation Acts, although the Jews involved had been residing in Newport for nearly seven years. On June 24, 1684, after the Complaint had been filed by the Colony_s Surveyor General, two of the Jewish merchants presented a Petition to the General Assembly requesting protections from this unwarranted seizure of their property. The Assembly, without debate, promised the Jews Bas good protection here as any strangers being not of our nation residing amongst us. . .being obedient to his Majesty_s laws.^ While purporting to extend the requested protection, however, the Assembly_s statement underscored the public position of the eight Jews as outsiders (that is, Fstrangers being not of our nation_) despite their long term of residence in the colony.14 The propensity of colonial officials to manipulate Parliamentary Acts so as to control the activities of Jews residing within their respective jurisdictions can be seen even more clearly by investigating the impact of the Naturalization Act of 1740 (13 Geo. II, ch. 7). The 1740 Act made lawful the naturalization of Jews by individual colonies, but did not significantly challenge the position of Jews as social outsiders. Thus, while most of the British American colonies complied with the provisions of the 1740 Act, approving the applications of those resident Jews who sought naturalization, other means were found to circumvent Parliament’s attempts to level the playing field for attaining the status of an English subject in the colonies. Only in Rhode Island were Jews prevented outright from obtaining the benefits of naturalization, on the grounds that their naturalization would be Babsolutely inconsistent with the first Principle upon which the Colony was founded^ Y which, as the Colony_s Superior Court explained, meant Christianity.15 Jamaican officials, like those in most other colonies, did permit the naturalization of Jews under the 1740 Act, in part because of the fees it would generate for local officials, who were habitually underpaid. But the Jamaica Assembly imposed other legal and financial disabilities on Jamaican Jews Y most notably, extraordinary taxation and an open proscription of Jewish voting and officeholding, enacted by statute in 1711 and reinforced by Resolution of the Assembly in 1750. Through the crafting of such legislative legerdemain, ruling elites in British America consistently acted to divert Jews (along with other

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undesirable groups Y notably Indians, freed Blacks, persons of mixed racial heritage, Catholics and, in the early Caribbean context, Quakers) from taking any role in local politics, or threatening, in other ways, the existing political hegemony of Englishmen over their non-English compatriots.16

Rights In his extended Commentary on the legal rights of individuals under English law, first published in 1765, Sir William Blackstone divided the subjects of the Crown into two broad categories: natural-born subjects (that is, those Bborn within the dominions of the crown of England^) and aliens (Bsuch as are born out of it^). Both, according to Blackstone, owed Ban implied, original, and virtual allegiance^ to the King; what distinguished them from each other was the nature of that allegiance. The allegiance of natural-born subjects he deemed Bperpetual^ and Bdue. . .immediately upon their birth,^ transcending the physical boundaries of the empire. It was Bintrinsic^ to the subject Y Ba debt of gratitude^ owed for the King_s protection that could not be denied. By contrast, aliens were characterized by what Blackstone called Blocal^ allegiance. This he deemed to last only Bfor so long a time as [the alien] continues within the king_s dominion and protection.^ It was, in effect, ephemeral, evaporating Bthe instant such stranger transfers himself from this kingdom to another.^17 Relying on Coke_s Institutes of the Lawes of England, Blackstone established that aliens were incapacitated under law from owning real property, although they might enter into long-term leases and buy and sell personal property at will. An alien could remove these limitations if, and only if, he took one of two steps. The first was to become a denizen by obtaining letters patent of denization from the King. This step put the alien, in Blackstone_s view, Bin a kind of middle state between an alien, and natural born subject;^ the denizen, he wrote, Bpartakes of them both.^ The denizen could purchase and convey real property, but was still required to pay the higher tariffs assessed against aliens. The second step that an alien might take to ameliorate his status was to be naturalized by act of Parliament. This naturalized subject was more nearly equal to the natural-born subject; the only distinction in their rights was that the naturalized subject was barred from holding elective office. The critical question, from the Jewish perspective, was how Jews fit into this scheme of

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allegiance and how they might legitimately change their status from alien to naturalized subject.18 The neat theoretical division of the categories into aliens, denizens, naturalized and natural born subjects quickly broke down under the weight of experience, given the complex social networks that had already evolved in the British American colonies by Blackstone_s time. In fact, the patchwork system of jurisprudence that had emerged from the British colonial experience by 1750 drew a major fault line between what was law in England itself and what sufficed for the rest of the British empire. While Jamaica and the other North American colonies jointly espoused English common law as the basis for colonial legal systems, ultimately each colony constituted a quasi-independent jurisdiction which could act, in at least some circumstances, without direct sanction of the central government at Whitehall.19 More important, however, were the Parliamentary Acts that clearly differentiated the rights and privileges available to subjects in the British colonies from the rights and privileges of the subject in England. In England, for example, an alien could be naturalized either by royal patent or by Parliamentary enactment. In order to obtain full naturalization by Parliamentary Act, however, it was required for the applicant to take the sacrament of the Church of England. While this requirement had a negligible impact on Protestant non-Anglicans, it constituted an insurmountable barrier for professing Jews. In effect, the religious requirements of Parliamentary naturalization meant that Jews who wished to remain Jewish had to rely on the authority of the King, whose grants of denization could be either expansive or limited in whatever ways the King might see fit, in their quest for the rights of British subjects. When the attempt was made by Parliament to extend naturalization to Jews living in England in 1753, the statute (known as FThe Jew Bill_) aroused such a wild public outcry that it was repealed later that same year.20 Not until 1826 was the requirement to take the Anglican sacrament removed from English naturalization laws. But when the 17th-century Test and Corporation Acts were repealed in 1828, a last minute amendment continued the requirement that public officeholders make oath Bon the true faith of a Christian.^ The civil emancipation of Roman Catholics the following year meant that Jews were, thereafter, the only religious minority excluded from full political participation Y a situation that would persist into the 1850s. As Lord Chancellor Broughton put it in 1833, BHis Majesty_s subjects professing the Jewish religion were born to all the rights, immunities and privileges of His Majesty_s other subjects, excepting so

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far as positive enactments of law deprive them of those rights, immunities and privileges.^21 The situation was otherwise in Britain_s trans-Atlantic colonies. Through the 1740 Naturalization Act, professing Jews could obtain the very rights appending to naturalization that they were unable to gain in England without forswearing Judaism. Because of this tangled web of bureaucratic rule-making, the British Atlantic provided an unprecedented forum for the expansion of Jewish rights of citizenship. Jews not only took advantage of these new opportunities in the British American colonies, but also used their new success and social visibility to promote a broader, even tacitly political, agenda. Even prior to the 1740 Naturalization Act, Jews were said to have participated in the electoral process in contested elections in the colonies of Carolina (between 1702 and 1704) and New York (in 1737).22 By 1807, they were standing for election to municipal and legislative offices in some parts of the United States and to Parliament in Canada.23 This was exactly the kind of political activism that Jews in London, particularly in the wake of the FJew Bill_ debacle in 1753, were extremely loathe to undertake. These enlargements on the political process in the colonies hearkened back, not only to the evolution of religious toleration in the early 17th century, but also to the growing influence of natural rights philosophy as an underlying principle of governance. This new approach first emerged early in the 17th century with Hobbes, Milton and Harrington, and quickly expanded into the British colonies with Roger Williams.24 But it had its most eloquent and enduring expression toward the end of the 17th century through John Locke_s Second Treatise on Civil Government and the appended Letter Concerning Toleration. Locke_s revision of the relationship of government and society, often termed the contract theory of government, allowed that subjection to the king was grounded in the individual_s consent to be governed rather than natural inferiority. Each individual, in Locke_s view, was born possessed of rights that no government could lawfully abrogate without his consent.25 The logical extension of this new formulation was that any individual who could demonstrate his consent to be governed was part of the social compact and thus eligible to participate in the mechanisms of governance. For Locke, the new formulation of consent-based governance required that church and state function as separate entities, both because religious truth could not be determined to a certainty and because religious belief was irrelevant to civil cooperation.26 Since Locke_s grand theory was grounded in the concept of volitional allegiance and did not specify any exclusions from eligibility for the

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social compact, the question of how to define fitness for participation in the compact was left open for interpretation Y which is to say, open to the argument that Jews might be lawful participants. But since Locke also did not specify that Jews ought to be included, it remained for Jews to forward that claim for themselves.

Redemption Blackstone_s attempt to systematize English law relied on two generations of 17th century legal theorists to support his claims. Since Blackstone was attempting to record English law in current practice, his efforts were inherently conservative. He preferred to rely on the established precedents outlined by writers like Coke for his understanding of the law, and did not advocate particular interpretations or try to advance new legal theories. But by the mid-1760s, when Blackstone was writing, the legal ground that underlay the popular understanding of the English constitution had already shifted substantially from where it had been in the early 17th century, prior to the Jewish Readmission of the 1650s. As Blackstone himself would note, at the very end of his compilation, Bmany laws have passed^ since Bthe revolution in 1688 to the present time...which have asserted our liberties in more clear and emphatical terms[.]^ These included such critical amendments to English constitutional practice as Bthe bill of rights [of 1689 and] the toleration-act, the act of settlement with it_s [sic] conditions, the act for uniting England with Scotland, and some others.^ The changes wrought by these new laws had not only restrained the authority of the King and empowered Parliament, they had expanded the notion of empire and citizenship, and Bindulged tender consciences with every religious liberty, consistent with the safety of the state.^ Blackstone_s authorities on the relationship of law and governance to individual rights necessarily included not only Sir Edward Coke but also John Locke, whose treatises on government Blackstone quoted in his discussion of Parliamentary elections and the King_s prerogative.27 This is, indeed, a key point, for Locke_s works were not widely read in the mid-18th century; but Blackstone (along with Coke himself) was a key source for every colonial student of the law.28 Blackstone_s works exposed colonists conversant with the law to Lockean theories of the balance of governance and individual rights as well as Coke_s more conservative views. Thus, Blackstone_s presentation contained elements that potentially both inhibited and advanced the position of Jews in

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British colonial society. Moreover, American writers often expanded on Coke_s notions of the common law and constitutional rights in ways that gave them a liberal, Whiggish spin Y one in which Coke, had he witnessed it, would not have been able to recognize himself as the original author.29 Given some substantial lines of resistance to a new and more liberal view of political participation, we ought to consider the process of Jewish emancipation in Britain and its Atlantic colonies as a bit of gamesmanship. We are bound to review not only the decisions of powerful elites in granting rights to Jews but also the insistent, and sometimes even aggressive behavior of Jews themselves to claim those rights. Understanding the full implications of Levy Hyman_s quest to vote requires that we examine more closely the behavior of other Jamaican Jews, as well as the similar claims and behavior of politically-minded Jews throughout the British Atlantic world. In August 1702, for example, the town of Port Royal sent an Indenture to the Assembly in Saint Jago de la Vega to certify the election of three representatives, including among the twenty-two electors Jewish merchant David Nunes. When the Port Royal Indenture was presented in the Assembly chamber, a debate arose over the news that Jews had appeared and voted at this and other local elections.30 Concern over the issue of Jewish voting was subsequently expressed in a provision of the 1711 FAct for regulating Fees_ which stated BThat no Jew, Mulatto, Indian, or Negro, shall be capable to officiate or be employed to write in [i.e., vote for] or for [i.e., hold] any of the above offices upon any pretence whatsoever,^ with a penalty of U100 imposed on any Jamaican official who permitted Bsuch person or persons so incapacitated, to write or be employed in or for any of the said offices[.]^31 The issue of Jewish voting was not raised again publicly until October 1750, when Abraham Sanches Morao presented a petition to the Assembly. Sanches Morao, who owned land in the parish of St. John, had appeared at the polling place for that parish and attempted to cast his vote in an election for the assembly. According to his Petition, the polling officer had refused Sanches Morao_s ballot, Balthough the petitioner offered and insisted on taking the oath required to be taken by the freeholders, by an act of the governor, council, and assembly, of this island, made for that purpose.^ Sanches Morao grounded his claim to exercise the franchise on the argument that he met all requirements for the exercise of voting privileges under Jamaican law. He had obtained letters patent of denization, had taken the oaths of naturalization in May 1742 (under the aegis of the 1740 Naturalization

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Act), and, moreover, was possessed of Fa considerable freehold in the said parish._ He Btherefore humbly apprehends that he is entitled to all the rights and privileges of the rest of his majesty_s liege subjects.^32 The Jamaica Assembly fixed a date for open debate of the Sanches Morao petition, and ordered that the petition be published in the island_s three main towns of Saint Jago, Port Royal and Kingston for purposes of public discussion. News of Sanches Morao_s petition was greeted with anger by Anglo-Jamaican Christian freeholders, who countered the claim that Jews were entitled to vote with petitions of their own. Petitioners from St. Catherine parish, of which Saint Jago was the primary town, argued Bthat the Jews are a foreign nation, and . . . that they are at this instant governed by laws and magistrates of their own, and pay no voluntary obedience to our laws.^ Accordingly, they argued, the extension of voting rights to Jews would lead to undue influence by Jews on the assembly Bto a degree that might be destructive to our religion and constitution.^ A petition from the parish of Saint Andrew, to the immediate north of Kingston, similarly stated that Jews Bcannot be deemed on the footing of his majesty_s Christian subjects^ due to Ban absolute incapacity to be freeholders or electors in any Christian community, never having had either real or pretended right . . . since they crucified the saviour of mankind.^ Moreover, the prospect of Jewish voting raised the vision of the reduction of the island’s Christian population to Ba slavish dependence on the Jews^ and the elimination of any Bsafeguard for [the petitioners_] religion, liberty, lives and property; and . . . would produce the dreadful consequence of rendering precarious all that in this island, to the petitioners, appear valuable, dear and sacred.^33 These arguments reflect a growing consciousness by Jews and nonJews alike of the rights and privileges of British citizenship, along with the claim that Jews were (or at least ought to be) entitled to exercise them. This consciousness was used by Jamaican Jews not only to claim the franchise, but on at least one occasion was also used to assert the right to due process of law. In August 1779, Isaac Bernal, a naturalized Jamaican, was arrested at his shop in Saint Jago de la Vega and subjected at military headquarters to a rigorous interrogation Bconcerning his knowledge of, or secret correspondence with^ French and Spanish military forces.34 Unsatisfied with Bernal_s answers, the Major-General on duty had him bound over for confinement in the local gaol, where Bernal would remain Y housed in truly squalid conditions among runaway slaves and common criminals Y for five long weeks, without ever being charged with any crime.35 Appalled by the sheer

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injustice of his ordeal, Bernal wrote out a long and detailed narrative of his experience and sent it to The Jamaica Mercury, where it occupied a full page in print. In asserting his innocence, Bernal referred to his longstanding contributions to the public good in Jamaica: BI have,^ he said, Bconscientiously discharged every duty of a good member of society . . . in the office of constable, as a soldier in the trained Militia of this country, in paying my private debts, and chearfully discharging my proportion of the public taxes, how heavy soever they might be laid.^ In reviewing his conduct, the only possible defect he could find was that he had once temporarily fed Ba few poor distressed French Prisoners of war,’’ behavior which, he believed, might as equally have been undertaken by Bany man not totally devoid of the bowels of compassion.^36 The indignities and hardships inflicted on him by an unjust and unexpected captivity were the more perplexing when Bernal considered that he had been the first Trooper in arms to have been entrusted with a pacquet to forward following the declaration of Martial Law on the Island the previous year. How a man who had so recently earned such a high level of trust from the Island military authorities could now be suspected of Bholding a secret and traiterous correspondence with our enemies^ was not a proposition that made sense to him. He had repeatedly petitioned both the Major-General and Col. Samuel Howell, the commander of the troop of horse in the St. Catherine Parish militia to which he belonged, praying not to be condemned before he had had the opportunity to confront his accusers at a fair and legal Court Martial. But to these appeals, he had received no response. Bernal was convinced that his arrest could not be justified under the rule of English law, in which he fervently believed. In his unprecedented public protest, Bernal repeatedly invoked the sacred authority of the English constitution and common law, under which, he said, BI flattered myself that ample redress was provided. . .for false imprisonment, and that no free subject can be committed to prison . . . unless the cause of his commitment is previously set forth[.]^ He had Bconfided in this security^ of English law, by which he had conceived Bthat there was the most sacred regard paid to the liberties of the subjects . . . unlike the arbitrary government of France . . . .^ Having heard that Beven an alien enemy^ might have the benefit of a trial under English Martial Law for offenses of the type of which he had been suspected, it was unthinkable that the Bwanton confinement . . . without the concurrence of a Magistrate or Commander-in-chief^ of a naturalized citizen freeholder such as himself could be countenanced by an informed citizenry. As

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might anyone with a clean conscience, he challenged his enemies Bto make good or prove one single assertion or accusation against me, of holding wittingly or unwittingly, treacherous correspondence^ with the enemy French, Spanish or American forces. He concluded his address by calling on the authorities to consider the ruinous impact on the reputation of the virtuous citizen of allowing ill-minded bureaucrats the leeway to act on surreptitious allegations: Bif this is allowed,^ he wrote, Bany other innocent man, may in future, experience the same ignominious treatment, on base suspicion only, and for the officious pleasure of every petty piece of lace and scarlet . . . .^37 As these stories demonstrate, Jamaican Jews did not quietly accept their second-class status and, as the 18th century progressed, they relied upon the growing body of Enlightenment ideas to support their arguments for the expansion of the roles allotted to them in the public sphere. In 1750, confronted with arguments that suggested Jews could never be more than second class citizens, Daniel Almeyda and other Kingston Jews who supported the Sanches Morao petition, had countered, in language that echoed Locke_s first Letter Concerning Toleration (published in 1690), that Bthe Jewish nation, are well known to profess no opinions destructive of civil society, or prejudicial to the constitution and laws of their country.^ They then sought to shame their critics for employing Bblind prejudice^ and Bindecent reproaches^ in enlightened times, and further asserted that their rights were no different than those of Ball the rest of his majesty_s subjects that have freeholds,^ whether they in fact chose to exercise the privilege or not. Locke himself had put it this way: I say, first, no opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary for the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate. But of these, indeed, examples in any Church are rare. For no sect can easily arrive to such a degree of madness as that it should think fit to teach, for doctrines of religion, such things as manifestly undermine the foundations of society, and are, therefore, condemned by the judgment of all mankind; because their own interest, peace, reputation, everything would be thereby endangered.38 In 1820, Kingston_s Jews were even less willing to surrender the ground to those who would deny them the privilege of full participation. In fact, Levy Hyman_s appearance at the polling booth on the 5th of

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July was preceded by a concerted campaign to elevate public awareness of Jewish claims to the rights of English subjects. A handful of Jamaican Jews of a liberal bent had evidently determined that the time was ripe to push forward the issue of Jewish rights. In furtherance of the cause, they paid personal calls on each Jewish freeholder to solicit his appearance at the polls for the forthcoming Kingston Assembly elections, and, over the course of the next four months, sent letters published in the island’s newspapers in which they argued that the denial of the vote to Jews was a violation of both Jamaican law and the English Constitution.39 One such exchange was elicited when the Editor of the St. Jago Gazette declared . . . no man is eligible to vote at an election, who is not equally so to be elected himself. We have great respect for many of the Jewish nation in this island...but they may rely that any attempt to encroach on long established custom in so important a matter as that of voting for representatives in Assembly, cannot succeed. Until the Mother Country shew the example, we cannot swerve from accustomed practice . . . In response to this diatribe, a writer using the pen name A JEW gave chapter and verse in the pages of the Kingston Chronicle, pointing out that Catholics and small landholders might vote but could not hold elective office, and that the situation in Britain and its remaining American colonies was not as the Editor had presented it: With regard to the British Parliament recognising the right of Jews to vote, I can confidently assert, that at Westminster and Middlesex the right of those Jews who have voted have never yet been disputed. In Canada, they not only vote, but also sit in the Provincial Parliament; as in 1808, at the election for the town of Three Rivers, which was sharply contested, Mr. Ezekiel Hart, a Jew, was chosen to serve for the town by a large majority, (vide Mr. John Lambert_s Travels in Canada, in 1806, 7, and 8, page 493). Here, nothing has as yet been produced against the eligibility of a Jew_s voting, but . . . resolutions and custom.40 When the events of July 5th culminated in the denial of Hyman_s right to cast his ballot, the advocates sprang to work: they pressed the Wardens of Kingston_s Princess Street Synagogue to take action on behalf of their congregants, they formed a Committee to assert the Jewish

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right to the franchise, encouraged Jewish freeholders to cast ballots at subsequent elections, and, informed that Levy Hyman intended to prosecute his claim against Geoghegan under the Jamaican election laws, set up a subscription fund to help him cover the costs of legal proceedings.41 Although these efforts were doomed to failure in the short term, having been successfully circumvented by actions undertaken by the ruling elites Y not only in the Assembly and the island’s courts, but also in the synagogue vestry Y to resolve the question against the Jews, they represented the commencement of an effective long-term strategy that would eventually culminate in the passage of a law extending the franchise to Jamaican Jews in 1826. One of the men most clearly responsible for achieving this feat was Moses Delgado, a Portuguese Jew and a prominent Freemason. Delgado, born in 1789 (at the dawn of the French Revolution), had been an early advocate of the franchise. He accompanied Levy Hyman to the polls on July 5, 1820, although he himself was not a freeholder and would not have qualified to vote even under the liberal interpretation of the Jamaican election law of 1780 being advanced by the advocates. After Hyman_s ballot was refused, Delgado served on the Committee formed by Jewish liberals to promote the expansion of the franchise to Jews. When, in 1826, he was honored by the Jewish community for his efforts in securing their civil emancipation, he responded that his motivations in undertaking these Fpublic services to the Jewish Nation_ were motivated by a simple belief: Convinced that all persons professing our religion were justly entitled to the Political Rights and Privileges of the country which gave them birth[,] I was always satisfied that the doctrine of exclusion was at variance with the principles of the British Constitution, and that it was the inherent right of the natural-born subject to be capable of being elected to all the trusts and offices of the state without prejudice to the religion which governs his belief.42 In Delgado_s thoughts, again, we can see reflections of Locke_s theories of the natural right of the individual to participate in civil government. Levy Hyman_s abortive attempt to demonstrate his desire and fitness for political participation, as he appeared at the Kingston polling booth in July 1820, thus rested, in the end, upon liberal, Lockean notions of the foundation of British constitutional law Y notions that Anglo-Jamaicans would finally and reluctantly be persuaded, after years of persistent pressure, to apply to the case of Jamaican Jews.

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It is tempting, with the hindsight of the 21st century, to look back on this effort as part of a larger revolutionary movement toward democratic republicanism. Yet, Jamaica_s Jews made no such claims for their efforts. They could hardly have raised France as an example of enlightened politics. The disdain for the Terror among British intellectuals, coupled with the deep-seated fear among Anglo-Jamaicans of a Jacobin slave uprising similar to that of the 1791 revolt in nearby St. Domingue (now Haiti), discredited any reference to the Declaration of the Rights of Man from the outset. Jamaican Jews were further constrained from pursuing the French as a model for civic humanism by the knowledge that a French Jew named Sasportas had already been captured in Jamaica while attempting to foment just such a slave revolt, and had been hanged publicly on the Kingston parade in 1799.43 The United States, though not as problematic an exemplar as France, was hardly a better one for advocating Jewish rights. Though ratification of the federal Constitution meant that Jews could vote in federal elections in the U.S. by the 1790s, the individual states were slow to follow suit. Thus, in 1820, Jews could vote and hold elective office in some states (Georgia and South Carolina, for example) but not others (Maryland and New Hampshire).44 The patchwork growth of Jewish rights in the United States, coupled with the unsavory fact of Britain_s tense relationship with the former colonies Y rendered into open warfare between 1812 and 1815 Y made the United States itself a less than compelling model of republican principle for their intended audience. Instead, the advocates of civil rights for Jamaica_s Jews chose to invoke the sacred authority of Britain_s ancient constitution, memorialized by popular English political writers at both ends of the political spectrum, from Coke to Locke and Burke, using it as a tool to expand on the general atmosphere of rights and liberties. In furtherance of their cause, they cited Canada and England itself as their exemplars, rather than France and America. What Jews in the port towns contributed to the public discourse concerning nationality and citizenship rights was thus a mirror to Anglo-Americans Y a new and provocative spin on English political history and traditions, as well as a more expansive vision of what it meant to be British in the Atlantic world.

Notes 1. Petition of Joseph Samuel Geoghegan, October 31, 1820, Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica, Vol. XIII [29 Oct 1816Y15 Dec 1822] (Kingston: Alexander Aikman, 1822), 433.

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2. Eli Faber, Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight (New York University Press, 1998), 208. Hyman paid U5.10.0 in trade tax in 1819. This figure represents the highest amount paid by any Jewish merchant in town for that year, and thus places Hyman in the upper echelon of Kingston_s Jewish community. See ibid., 206Y212. In 1820, Hyman was assessed, and paid, parish tax in the amount of U28.15.0 and poll tax in the amount of U16.1.8. Kingston Tax Roll for 1820, Kingston Vestry Records, Record Group 2/6/106, The Jamaica Archives. 3. Narrative of the Proceedings of the Jews, in Their Attempt to Establish Their Right to the Elective Franchise in Jamaica. To Which is Added, a Correct Report of the Action brought by Levy Hyman, Esq. Against Samuel Joseph Geoghegan, Esq. Returning Officer, for Refusing His Vote. In a Series of Letters, from a Gentleman of Kingston, to His Friend Off the Island (Belfast: A. MacKay, Jun., 1823), 48Y49; Parish Tax Roll and Quit Rent Roll for 1810, St. Andrews Vestry Records, Record Group 2/6/153, The Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town. In 1810, Hyman had 24 slaves, six cattle and one or two wheeled vehicles at Hyman_s Delight. See also Samuel J. Hurwitz and Edith Hurwitz, BThe New World sets an example for the old: The Jews of Jamaica and political rights, 1661Y1831,^ American Jewish Historical Quarterly, 55:1 (1965): 47 (citing listings for Hyman in the Jamaica Almanac and Register of 1811, the Jamaica Almanac of 1821, and Jamaica Almanack of 1831). Hyman had six slaves in Kingston (four at his home and two at his store) in 1819; in the Slave Register of 1817, he appears as the owner of eight slaves in Kingston parish and 45 slaves in St. Andrew parish. Faber, Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade, 208, 235, 241. 4. Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica, Vol. XIII, 433Y434, 436, 439. While Geoghegan claimed court costs of U273.11.0 1/2, the legislative committee formed to respond to his petition ultimately recommended that he be remunerated in the amount of U143.18.1 Y only half of what he had spent. ibid., 470, 504. 5. James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceania and A System of Politics, edited by J.G.A. Pocock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 6. The quote given here appears toward the end of Harrington_s brief BIntroduction or order of the work.^ 6. See for example Michael Mendle, BParliamentary sovereignty: A very English absolutism,^ in eds. Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain (England: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 97Y103, 118Y119. 7. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King_s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957), 93Y97, 146Y164. Kantorowicz pins this evolution in English law to the writings of the 12th-century scholar John of Salisbury and the 13th-century lawyer Henry of Bracton. He does not, however, discuss the significance of Magna Carta (1215) in shaping Bracton_s interpretation of the law. 8. David S. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1982), 163Y167, 169Y175. Katz recounts several instances of the early 17th century where accusations of judaizing or Jewishness were leveled alternately at the Crown or Parliament in an attempt to discredit a variety of political positions. ibid., 16Y17. On debates over the distribution of authority, see Mendle, BParliamentary sovereignty,^ 115Y118. 9. Holly Snyder, BUsury, to the English mind: The image of the Jewish merchant in the British Atlantic world, 1550Y1750,^ Paper presented at ninth annual

166

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

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Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture conference (New Orleans, Louisiana), June 6, 2003; Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission, 220Y222. On conceptualizations of England’s Bancient Constitution,^ see J.G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century, A Reissue with a Retrospect (England: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 38Y41, 156Y161; Paul Christianson, BAncient constitutions in the age of Sir Edward Coke and John Selden,^ in ed. Ellis Sandoz, The Roots of Liberty: Magna Carta, Ancient Constitution, and the AngloAmerican Tradition of the Rule of Law (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1993), 89Y146; John Phillip Reid, BThe jurisprudence of liberty: The ancient constitution in the legal historiography of the 17th and 18th centuries,^ in Sandoz, The Roots of Liberty, 147Y231; Daniel J. Hulsebosch, BThe ancient constitution and the expanding empire: Sir Edward Coke’s British jurisprudence,^ Law and History Review, 21:3 (2003): 439, 441Y446. See, generally, Coke_s discussion of the medieval statute De Judaismo in Edward Coke, The Second Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England (London: M. Flesher and R. Young, 1642); W[illiam] H[ughes], Anglo-Judaeus, or the History of the Jews, Whilst Here in England (London: T.N. for Thomas Heath, 1656); William Prynne, A Short Demurrer to the Jewes Long discontinued barred Remitter into ENGLAND. . . , Second edition (Benlarged^) (London: Edward Thomas, 1656). [Henry Jessy,] A Narrative of the late Proceedings at White-Hall Concerning the Jews: Who had desired by R. Manasses an Agent for them, that they might return into ENGLAND, and Worship the God of their Fathers here in their Synagogues, & c. (London: Printed for L. Chapman, at the Crown in Popeshead-Alley, 1656); Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 21; John Dury, A Case of Conscience, Whether it be lawful to admit Jews into a Christian Common-wealth? (London: Richard Wodenothe, 1656), 5, 9. Since, for example, the power to license new sworn brokers for vacancies rested in the office of the Lord Mayor of London, the city_s Jews were put in the precarious position of paying substantial bribes (between U1000 and 2000 sterling) to the holder of that office in return for appointments to the coveted position. As early as 1671 the Bevis Marks synagogue, as a body, had initiated the practice of making an annual gift, worth approximately U50 sterling, to the Lord Mayor in order to ensure his favorYa practice which continued until 1779. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 21Y24; Lionel D. Barnett, Richard D. Barnett and Miriam RodriguesPereira eds., Bevis Marks Records: Being Contributions to the History of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation of London, Illustrated by Facsimiles of Documents, in The Early History of the Congregation from the Beginning Until 1800 (Oxford: John Johnson, 1940), 1:35Y36. Herbert Friedenwald, BMaterial for the history of the Jews in the British West Indies,^ Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 5 (1897): 76Y87. Original documents are in Colorado 1/29 f.50 and Domestic Entry Book 31 (Charles II), f. 101d, at the Public Record Office. John Russell Bartlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, and Providence Plantations, in New England (Providence: Knowles, Anthony & Co. State Printers, 1856Y1865), (1678Y1706), 3:160. The case against the eight Bforeign borne^ Jews was brought to trial on March 13, 1685. The Surveyor General, Major William Dyre, did not appear in court but was represented by an attorney, and the Court proceeded without him. The jury rendered a verdict in favor of the eight

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15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

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defendants, and charged court costs against the plaintiff; the goods retained pursuant to the writ of attachment were subsequently returned to the defendants. Dyre v. Campanell et al., General Court of Trial, March Term 1685, Newport Record Book A, f. 73, Collection of the Rhode Island Supreme Court Judicial Records Center. Record Book E of the Newport Superior Court of Judicature, f. 184, Rhode Island Supreme Court Judicial Records Center. The Courts reference evidently relied upon the language of the colonial Charter that Roger Williams obtained from Charles II in 1663, which provided that the colonists should have the capacity Bto defend themselves, in their just rights and liberties, against all the enemies of the Christian faith, and others, in all respects.^ See Charter of 1663, published in John Callendar, An Historical Discourse, on the Civil and Religious Affairs of the Colony of Rhode-Island, Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, (Providence: Knowles, Vose & Company, 1838), as Appendix XXI, 4:241Y261 (The citation here appears at page 244). Jews and Roman Catholics alike fell into this category, as specified in the mysterious statute, appearing in the first Rhode Island Digest of Laws in 1719, which banned Roman Catholics and nonChristians from voting or holding elective office in the colony. A close examination of Rhode Island legislative history casts significant doubt on the validity of this law. After conducting his own extensive research, the 19th century Rhode Island historian Sidney S. Rider concluded that this Bstatute^ was never officially enacted by the Assembly but was, rather, the invention of Richard Ward, Secretary of State for the colony, who claimed it to have been enacted by the Assembly during its March 1663 session. However, a review of the Assembly’s 1663 proceedings by Rider and other scholars (including me) has revealed no such enactment. Despite its evident falsity, the 1719 Bstatute^ appeared in each subsequent edition of the Digest of Laws, and remained common practice in Rhode Island to the end of the Revolution. See Sidney S. Rider, An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of the Clause in the Laws of Rhode Island (1719Y1783) Disfranchising Roman Catholics, Rhode Island Historical Tracts, Second Series, no. 1 (Providence: Sidney S. Rider, 1889), 14Y22, 24Y26. See, for example, Eliga H. Gould, BLines of plunder or crucible of modernity? Toward a legal history of the English-speaking Atlantic, 1660Y1825,^ Paper presented at Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges, The Library of Congress, Washington, District of Columbia, February 12Y15, 2003, (23 April 2005), 6Y8; Eliga H. Gould, BZones of Law, Zones of Violence: The Legal Geography of the British Atlantic, circa 1772,^ William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 60 (2003): 505Y509. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765Y1769), Volume I: Of the Rights of Persons (1765) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 354, 356Y358. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. I, 360Y362. This latter topic was one on which Blackstone elected not to enlarge, arguing that it had already been Bthe subject of very high debates^ at the time of the Bfamous Jew-bill^ in 1753. The short-lifespan of the latter effort rendered moot the question of Jewish naturalization in England as far as Blackstone was concerned. Ibid, 363. Gould, BLines of plunder,^ 4Y5, 7Y10; Gould, BZones of Law, zones of violence,^ 497Y499, 500Y501. On this point, see also Richard Ross, BLegal Communications

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21.

22.

23.

24.

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and Imperial Governance in the Colonial British and Spanish Empires,^ in Cambridge History of American Law, Christopher Tomlins and Michael Grossberg, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2006 or 2007). See, generally, Thomas W. Perry, Public Opinion, Propaganda, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study of the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962); James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608Y1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina , for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1978), 70Y74. Quoted in M. C. N. Salbstein, The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain: The Question of the Admission of Jews to Parliament, 1828Y1860 (Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982), 44 (emphasis added), but see also 46Y52; David Feldman, Englishmen and Jews: Social, Religious and Political Culture, 1840Y1914 (Yale University Press, 1994), 2Y3; David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485Y1850 (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1996), 384Y388. The author of the letters in A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Jews claimed to have knowledge that Jews were already voting in English elections in 1820, and an attempt was made by Plaintiff_s Counsel, during the trial of Levy Hyman_s case in February 1821, to introduce testimony of an English Jew who said that he himself had voted several times. Salbstein observes that, after 1707, English law authorized the administration of the Oath of Abjuration (Bupon the true faith of a Christian^) to prospective voters. However, enforcement was contingent upon the request of a third party, and was therefore remarkably spotty. Consequently, as David Katz notes, Jews did manage to vote in some areas prior to 1835, when the oath-taking requirements were removed from the voting process. See Salbstein, The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain, 51; Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 386; A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Jews, 3, 92. By this point, Jews had already been voting at the federal level without challenge in both the United States (now independent) and in Canada (a remaining colony) for at least three decades. See, for example, Sheldon J. Godfrey and Judith C. Godfrey, Search Out the Land: The Jews and the Growth of Equality in British Colonial America, 1740Y1867 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995), 239tY240t, indicating that Jews were voting without challenge in Nova Scotia by 1789 and in New Brunswick from 1810. Jacob Rader Marcus, The Colonial American Jew (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), Volume I, 407Y410, 464Y465; Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 116; see also Account of John Ash in Alexander S. Salley ed., Narratives of Early Carolina, 1650Y1708, (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1953), 269Y271. In 1807, Ezekiel Hart was elected to the Canadian Parliament from Trois-Rivieres in Quebec. However, the Parliament refused to seat him because he was a Jew and would not take the Oath of Abjuration. He was preceded in this position by Samuel Hart, elected from Nova Scotia in 1793, who converted to Christianity and thus claimed his seat as a Christian. Godfrey and Godfrey, Search Out the Land, 146Y152, 171Y181, 238tY240t. Jonathan Scott, BThe Rapture of Motion: James Harrington_s Republicanism,^ in Phillipson and Skinner, Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, 142Y150; Knut Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 31Y35,

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25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

35.

169

51Y60; R. E. Ewin, Virtues and Rights: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1991), 113Y162; on Milton, see R. S. White, Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature (England: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 216Y242. Charles L. Sherman ed, Treatise of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke (New York: D. Appleton Century Company, Inc., 1937, 1965), 63Y65; Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 143. Ursula R. Q. Henriques, Religious Toleration in England 1787Y1833 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 25Y28. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. I, 72Y73, 172, 236. See, e.g., H. Trevor Colbourn, BThomas Jefferson’s use of the past,^ William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 15 (1958): 56Y70. Hulsebosch, BThe ancient constitution and the expanding empire,^ 440Y441, 479Y482. Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica, Vol. I [From January the 20th, 1663Y4, . . . to April the 20th, 1709] ([Kingston]: Alexander Aikman, 1821), 248Y249 (August 7, 1702). It was resolved to continue the debate the following week, but the matter was not taken up for debate on the subsequent date and was never rescheduled. BAn Act for regulating Fees,^ Act 56, Section 273, enacted 1711, printed in Acts of Assembly, Passed in the Island of Jamaica, From the Year 1681 to the Year 1769 inclusive (Kingston: 1787), Volume I [1681Y1754], 96. Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica, Vol. IV [18 Mar 1745/6 to 22 Dec 1756] (London: J. Whiting, 1827), 238. Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica, Vol. IV, 247. Saint Jago de la Vega, founded in the mid-16th century, was the capital and principal city of Jamaica under the Spanish. Following the English takeover of the Island in 1655, St. Jago (later referred to as BSpanish Town^ by the English) remained the seat of governance. In spite of repeated attempts during the 18th century to remove the capital to Kingston Y which, by 1730, had become the Island’s primary commercial center Y the central government functions for the Island of Jamaica remained at St. Jago. Spanish Town today continues as the seat of some of the important functions of governance on Jamaica, such as the Island Record Office and the Jamaica Archives. Bernal apparently did not exaggerate the sordid state of the Spanish Town goal in the brief description of his captivity. Five years earlier, Edward Long had described the deplorable conditions of detention in this facility in similar language, noting that Bthe room appointed for the reception of felons, which runs along one side of the court, is so loaded with filth in general, as to be perfectly pestilential, not only to the miserable wretches who are there confined, but to the poor debtors . . . : add to this, that on the outside of the wall there is suffered a constant accumulation of putrid mud and water, sufficient to poison all the neighbouring atmosphere. In this delightful place of custody debtors and malefactors of all sorts, all sexes, and complexions, are promiscuously crowded; a circumstance highly disgraceful to the publick humanity . . .^ Edward Long, The History of Jamaica, Or, General Survey of the Ancient and Modern State of That Island: With Reflections on its Situation, Settlements,

170

36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

43.

44.

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Inhabitants, Climate, Products, Commerce, Laws, and Government (London: T Lowndes, 1774), 2:14. See Isaac Bernal, BTo the impartial and independent public,^ The Jamaica Mercury and Kingston Weekly Advertiser, October 2, 1779, 284. Bernal, BTo the impartial and independent public,^ 284. See BPetition of Daniel Almeyda, and several others of the Jewish nation,^ which was presented to the Assembly of Jamaica on October 16, 1750, responding to the petitions from the Christian freeholders of St. Catherine Parish, St. Andrew Parish and Kingston, in Journal of the Assembly of Jamaica, Vol. IV, October 16, 1750, 249Y50; Sherman, Treatise of Civil Government, 180Y181, 210. A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Jews, 1Y46. Letter writers who advocated Jewish voting rights included Philanthropos, Vetus, Candidus, Justice, A JEW and A Citizen of the World; their letters appeared in the Kingston Chronicle, The Royal Gazette (Kingston) and the Cornwall Chronicle (Montego Bay). The anonymous author of the Narrative notes that some newspapers (notably the Jamaica Courant and the St. Jago Gazette) declined to print letters on this topic. Although the religious identity of most of the letter writers is not clear, Philanthropos declared himself to be a Jew. A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Jews, 20Y23. A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Jews, 53Y70, 102Y109. Ernest Henriques de Souza, Pictorial: Featuring some aspects of Jamaica_s Jewry and his community activities to commemorate his 40th anniversary as a lay reader of Synagogue FShaare Shalom_ United Congregation of Israelites, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies, 1946Y1986 (Kingston: Cong. Shaare Shalom, UCI, [1986]), 47, 291. The quote is given incorrectly in this source; on recent trip to Kingston, I visited Congregation Shaare Shalom and viewed the original text, which I have corrected here. Royal Gazette (Kingston), December 21, 1799, 17 and December 28, 1799, 19; Zvi Loker, BAn Eighteenth-Century Plan to Invade Jamaica: Isaac Yeshurun Sasportas Y French Patriot or Jewish Radical Idealist,^ Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 28 (1984): 132Y144. See, e.g., Jacob Rader Marcus, United States Jewry, 1776Y1985, Vol. 1 (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 84Y87. Jonathan D. Sarna and David Dalin eds., Religion and the State in the American Jewish Experience (South Bend, Indiana: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 63, 94.