The Daily Crescent

Present Influence of the Jews,

If it should be asserted, that at no time between the calling of Abram, and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, was the influence of the Hebrew nation upon the world, as great as it is at this time, the assertion might raise a smile of incredulity. And yet a little reflection might sustain such an assertion.

The power, which has been wielded by the Rothschild family, acting as bankers for European governments, and thereby controlling in some degree the action of those governments, is well known. But this, great as it has been, is but a small item in the account. A vast influence is exerted in continental Europe, by Jews through the current literature. Not a few of the most powerful writers in Europe are Jews: and the aggregate influence which the men of the nation are exerting through the press, is untold.

Nor is this all. The Jews have had an immense agency in promoting the revolutions, which have made the past and present year so memorable in history. It is well known, that there has been great concert of action among the ultra republicans, the agents of revolution in the different countries. It is a great mistake to suppose that those popular out-breaks which first exploded in Paris, then in Berlin, then in Vienna and so on, were wholly independent of foreign influence. It was testified by residents in Berlin, that on the day previous to the first attempt at revolution there, the streets of the city were filled with strangers and foreigners—that propagandists of revolution had come from Paris and other places. And this appears to have been a general fact, touching all the revolutions of the last year.

Though popular discontents and popular notions of liberty had gone before and prepared the way, the immediate occasion of the revolutions when they occurred, was something more than the invisible sympathy passing from one kingdom and city to another. There was a combination of revolutionizers, more or less definitely organized, extending its ramifications through the continent, and concentrating its force on a given place as occasion required.

Prominent among this band of republic-makers were some Jews of great energy and force of character. And as the pens of Jews had previously done much, to propagate principles leading to revolutions, so now Jewish conspirators did much to hasten the catastrophe. And in this the Jewish nation has had its revenge on the monarchies of Europe, for the oppressions and indignities, which they have ever inflicted. And it is not unnatural to think, that the hatred, which the remembrance of the many wrongs that nation has endured from kings and emperors, may have been a leading motive, impelling the Jews to act the part which they have acted. The Jew in this country is a peaceable and useful citizen, because he has never been here oppressed by our government.

But against every monarchy of Europe he has charged a heavy score of injuries. And when the day of reckoning comes for those monarchies, it will be strange if the Jew does not file in his accounts. We are then, in these events, witnessing such a retribution as was every way to have been expected.

But if Jewish hands have mingled in promoting those political earthquakes, if Jewish talent has been so potent in those issues of the press, that have prepared the public mind for them, and Jewish wealth was held the policies of kings and the movements of armies in a sort of dependency, then it may be true that Jews are now exerting more influence in the world than they did under the reign of the most renowned of their kings.

And if providence has now elevated that people to such an influence, it may be with reference to some greater events, in which they are to bear a part. The separate existence of that nation, mingled among all nations yet amalgamated with none, is a standing miracle. That separate existence is doubtless preserved in subservience to some great designs of Providence hereafter to be accomplished through and upon them.

The importance, though not perhaps the precise nature of these designs, is intimated in prophecy, and while we reject the theories of the millenarians, we still expect that the incoming of the Jews will be as life from the dead to the Gentiles. And hence we watch with special interest every turn of the hand of Providence that elevates that people.

Puritan Recorder.