FABLES.

ART. VI.-FABLES, &c., IN PROSE AND VERSE-CONTINUED.

The Iron pot and the Pitcher. *Fab: 291. Æsop.
Written under a former administration.

Ille ego qui quondam &c. Virg.

I who, erewhile, in Chymic art,
'Mid pots and pans a meaner part
Sustain'd, and brought by honest trade
To self and Esculapius aid,

May well, thus taught, my fancy bring
These humble implements to sing!
Did Virgil occupy the muse
With dirty things that farmers use,
And while he tutor'd princes give
His ploughmen lessons how to live?
Take it for proof, though born a poet,
His mother happen'd not to know it,
And he with prudent care was bred
To use the hands as well as head.

What drives the thoughtless heir to ruin
But this same penchant to be doing?
Which, baulk'd ef joys it should have found
In tilling, planting native ground,
Clings (with incumbrance at his heels)
+To prancing steeds and rattling wheels,
And buys (a thousand times too dear)
A rustick's labours, and his cheer.
Hail, then, as rising virtue's friend,
Each art that pleads a useful end,
And chief of these, the farmer's toil,
(Free bounty to a grateful soil)

Of Britain's wealth the nobler source,
Nor shrunk by fraud, nor damm'd by force!
While melting snows prepared a flood,
Close by the river's brink there stood,
Of Northern Carron's toughest metal,
A three-legg'd, huge-round-bellied kettle;
Item, a few yards from the place,
A Jug, (in Classic phrase, a vase)
Of delicate Etruscan ware:

The waters rise-our ill match'd pair

At the same moment are afloat;

Each tight and buoyant as a boat.

They dance, they pitch upon the wave:

'Fear nothing' cries the iron Brave,

'Keep to my side-I guarantee

79

Found also in Croxall's Esop, and in "Cents Fables choisies des anciens Auteurs, mises en vers Latins" par Gabriel Faerne; et traduites par M. Perrault de L'Acad: Francoise. London, 1743.

t I believe (to do justice to the generation now coming up) we may conclude the age of Four-in-hand driving by school boys gone by, and the glory of these Phaethontiades, as Young happily terms them, extinguished for ever!

'Against all rubs, by land or sea,
'Each weaker state's integrity: '
The kind proposal serv'd not quite
His helpless neighbour to delight-
'Alas! Pray don't of union think,
'Sure as we fraternize I sink!'

Our little tale has done its best—
Let Europe's history shew the rest.*

They who remember the state of our Foreign trade during the full power of Bonaparte will need no explanation here.

The Reader will have gathered already from the public prints, some information respecting a Bill, which has been before Parliament, for extending Friends' privilege under their Affirmation. This Bill, not having originated with the Society, required in their judgement some amendments, which being suggested to the promoters of the Bill, have for the most part succeeded; and, with the assistance, in a Christian and liberal spirit, of Lord Morpeth and the Duke of Richmond in the Lords, the Bill has passed. I shall insert in a future number the act as it stands, with some remarks. Ed.

Communications may be addressed, POST PAID, “For the Editor of the Yorkshireman,” at the Printer's, Pontefract; at Longman and Co.'s, London; John Baines and Co.'s. Leeds; and W. Alexander's, York.

CHARLES ELCOCK, PRINTER, PONTEFRACT.

THE

YORKSHIREMAN,

A

RELIGIOUS AND LITERARY JOURNAL

BY A FRIEND.

PRO PATRIA.

No. XXX. SEVENTH DAY, 28th NINTH Mo. 1833.

ART. I.-On the Civil disabilities of the Jews.

PRICE 4d.

The subject of granting to the Jewish people their Civil rights, as natural born subjects of our King, has now been for rather more than three years before the Legislature. It was early in the year 1830 that "Lord Bexley presented a petition from certain British born subjects called Jews, praying to be relieved from the disabilities under which they at present labour: he spoke in favour of the petitioners and their claims, and intreated the House to reflect gravely on the subject, and shake off the hereditary prejudices which attach to it." Times.

In the House of Lords, again, Thursday, “August 1st, 1833, Lord Bexley moved the second reading of the Jewish Civil Disabilities Removal Bill. In doing so his lordship observed that he was not the enemy of the political rights of any body of men, although many went so far as to contend that the Jews never could be, for any length of time, the subjects of any Government, except one of their own. He believed the British Jews to be attached to the country of their birth; he believed them to be good subjects, and thought that the removal of Civil disabilities was not only calculated to make them better subjects, but to afford increased chances of their conversion. On these grounds he moved the second reading of the Bill.

"The Archbishop of Canterbury admitted the moderate character of the speech with which the second reading had been proposed, but he felt bound to resist the Bill. He maintained that the Jews, on account of their tenets, were disqualified from co-operating in the work of legislation in a Christian Parliament and a Christian country.

"The second reading of the Bill was supported by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Bishop of Chichester, the Duke of Sussex, the Lord Chancellor, the Marquis

of Westminster, Lord Melbourne, Lord Gosford, and Lord Clifford; and opposed by the Bishop of London, the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Seagrave, Lord Winchilsea, and Lord Howden.

On dividing the numbers were—

For the second reading

Against it

Majority against the Bill............

54

104

50"

Patriot, August 7th, 1833. Let us hope however that, in a year or two at farthest, the obstacle here subsisting to an acknowledgment of the Civil rights of our Hebrew brethren (the children in common with ourselves of One Almighty parent) will have given way. To me it seems high time that we, who call ourselves Christians, and who say that our Father in heaven causes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, his rain to desend on the just and on the unjust, should cease to be the enemies of the Jews for malice shewn against Christians eighteen Centuries ago. Surely we may now, at length, lay down our weapon of State Establishment, and set them the example (if they need it) of forgiveness of injuries, of an oblivion of wrongs that ought to be forgotten. It is amazing that, with the plain injunctions of the founder of their Religion before their eyes, professing Christians should so long have deemed it lawful to take upon themselves the office of executing God's wrath upon his rejected people. We forget that they, who now are 'not a people,' but dispersed over the earth, are yet to be the people of the Lord that they who are now 'scattered and peeled snared in holes and hid in prison houses,' are yet to be His chosen, gathered from the four winds of heaven, embodied once more and owned anew; for the vindication of His mercy, by an act as signal as was that of His justice in their dispersion!

Christianity (said the objectors to Robert Grant's motion for leave to bring in the Bill to the Commons) is part and parcel of the law of the land-our government should be the Christian government of a Christian nation-and so forth. But, what do the objectors mean by Christianity-what part of the Christian religion is the basis of our whole system of Law? Surely it is not the Ceremonial, but the MORAL-that which is common alike to the law of Moses, the prophets and the New Testament that which was the religion of God's people in all ages, both before the coming of the Saviour and since, the obligation to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God! If it be not this--if it be the Sacrament' (so called in imitation of the Roman military oath)—the bread and wine and a modern Levite to administer them,-let these persons shew how it became so, and who made the Statutes. I say nothing of sprinkling, put for Baptism, the sign (as now administered, and admitting it to be a correct type) of at best but a transient and imperfect inward change-but how has it happened, if not through the prevalent interest of one religious party after another, provoking the State to do wrong, that a religious Ceremony (a mere ceremony in itself and a relic of Judaism) together with oaths, upon points on which every man should be presumed true

and honest to his country until he give indications of the contrary— how comes it, I say, that these things were ever made the office key' to seats in Parliament, and places under the Crown?

The specific disabilities under which the Jew labours in this country were, in 1830, not very dissimilar to those of the Quaker, being as follows: 1st. The local usage of the Corporation withheld from him the freedom of the city of London. This was not the quaker's case at any time: and practice has, I believe, now relaxed it also for the Jew. 2nd. The Oath of abjuration is so framed as to prevent him (though averse as any one to Popery') from taking it, in order to a place under the Government-or to any, even the lowest office in a Corporation or to sit in Parliament. This oath, in consequence of its containing the words upon the true faith of a Christian' may be so employed as even to occasion the rejection of his vote at elections. 3rd. In conjunction perhaps with the form required in taking this and the oath of supremacy, it disqualifies him from practising in the Law [here again practice has relaxed the code] whether as Barrister, Attorney or Notary, and from acting as a Schoolmaster, or, it may be, even serving as Constable (though he may sit on Juries) unless so far as he is protected in any of these respects by an annual Indemnity Bill, [that is to say, taking his right by mere favour.] He may even be refused a Licence from the bishop of the diocese to teach youth in a private house. 4th. The Declaration prescribed by the 9th Geo. IV. cap. 17, in lieu of the Sacramental Test, contains the same phrase upon the true faith of a Christian,' and consequently would, independently of the oath of abjuration exclude him from any place under the Government, and from any office in a Corporation, (unless so far as protected by the annual Indemnity Act as before mentioned.) Thus it appears that, where any influence, advantage or emolument attaches, he is excluded-where trouble and charge are alone to be found, he may be a Citizen. The changes required in the law in his case are merely these: The removal of any doubt that may exist respecting the operation of the Toleration Act and the Law of 1813, (53 Geo. III. c. 160) the leaving out of the oath of abjuration, and also out of the declaration which has been substituted for the sacramental Test, the words 'upon the true faith of a Christian.' See Remarks upon the civil disabilities of British Jews: By Francis Henry Goldsmid: London, 1830. On the motion [in 1830] for leave to bring in a Bill for the above purpose, after a debate in which several members opposed it (among them the [then] Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Solicitor General) the numbers were: For the motion, 115; Against it, 97; Majority for the motion, 18: and the Bill was read a first time accordingly.

It is for us, the people called quakers, who are now in pursuit of the complete enjoyment of our Civil rights, to do in this case as we would be done by, and promote on all occasions the charitable and liberal (which is the only Christian) construction of this subject. We see that the measure, having travelled through the Commons, is now likely to experience the delay usual where any thing is to be conceded