year Congress passed a measure under which Utah, in the beginning of 1896, attained its long-sought object, and was admitted as a separate State in the American Union. One of the conditions of the enabling Act is that the new Constitution prohibits polygamy. The party which was created for the special purpose of opposing Mormonism was formally disbanded at the close of 1893, and both of the great parties in the State are now competing for the Mormon vote. The charge which has recently been brought, with most effect, against the Mormons has not been their polygamy, but their susceptibility to Church interference in political life. At the same time the nonMormon politicians have shown themselves very ready to nominate as candidates officials of the Mormon Church, believing that such candidates are likely to secure the largest number of Mormon votes. A gentleman holding the high position of Apostle' in the Church was put forward by the Democratic party as their nominee for the Senate of the United States.1 complete to all appearance is the reconciliation between the American Government and the Mormon Church, that it is said to be a Mormon tenet that the American Constitution is an inspired document.2 6 So A future historian must tell the final results of the COLL. which I have described between religious fanaticism and repressive legislation, but it is surely a curious sign of the times that the theatre of the struggle should have been the great democracy of the West. See an article of Mr. Glen Miller's in The Forum, December 1895. The senators elected, however, were of the Republican party. Report of the Commissioners on the Causes of Immigration to the U.S.A. (House of Repre sentatives, 1892), pp. 185-86. When democratic opinion thoroughly favours repression, that repression is likely, in the conditions of modern society, to be stronger and more uncompromising than under a monarchy or an aristocracy. It is difficult to observe without some disquiet the manifestly increasing tendency of democracies to consider the regulation of life, character, habits, and tastes within the province of Governments. On the whole, however, democracies, at least in the Anglo-Saxon race, seem to me favourable to religious liberty. No doctrines have more manifestly declined during the last half-century than the doctrines of salvation by belief, of exclusive salvation, and of the criminality of error, which lay at the root of the great persecutions under Christian rule. No forms of liberty are more prized by English democracies than the liberty of expression, discussion, and association. The prevailing passion for equality favours the rise of various sects, and a great indifference to religious dogma in general prevails among the working class, who have now risen to power. There is, however, another influence connected with, and scarcely less strong than, democracy which has an opposite tendency, and it is probable that if religious persecution ever again plays a great part in 'human affairs, it will be closely connected with that growing sentiment of nationality which I have examined in the last chapter. No attentive observer can have failed to notice how frequently it displays itself in a desire to unify the national type, and to expel all alien and uncongenial elements. Religion more than any other single influence perpetuates within a nation distinct types and consolidates distinct interests. Few facts in the nineteenth century have been so well calculated to disenchant the believers in perpetual progress with their creed as the anti-Semite movement, which in a few years has swept like an angry wave over the greater part of Europe. It was scarcely heard of before the latter years of the seventies, but it has already become a great power, not only in semi-civilised countries like Roumania and Russia, but also in Austria and in Germany. In France, which had been prominent for its early liberality to the Jews, the immense popularity of the works of Drumont shows that the anti-Semite spirit is widely spread. I have already noticed how clearly the extravagant French enthusiasm for Russia, at the very time when the Russian Government was engaged in savage persecution of the Jewish race, shows that a question of national interests and national revenge could supersede, in one of the most enlightened nations in Europe, all the old enthusiasm for religious liberty. The recent movement for proscribing, under pretence of preventing cruelty to animals, the mode of killing animals for food, which is enjoined in the Jewish ritual, is certainly at least as much due to dislike to the Jews as to consideration for cattle. It appears to have arisen among the German anti-Semites, especially in Saxony, and in 1893 a law prohibiting the Jewish mode of slaughtering cattle was carried in Switzerland by a popular vote. In these countries the anti-Semite movement has been essentially a popular movement, a fierce race-hatred, pervading great masses of the people, and for the most part neither instigated nor encouraged by their Governments. Religious fanaticism has mixed with it, but usually, and especially in Germany, it has played only a very minor part. Many causes have conspired to it. The enormous power which Jews have obtained in the press and the money markets of Europe is very evident, and great power is never more resented than when it is in the hands of men who suffer from some social inferiority. Jews, in some countries, are specially prominent in unpopular professions, such as tax-gatherers and small money-lenders, agents, manipulators, and organisers of industry. They have little turn for labouring with their hands, but they have a special skill in directing and appropriating the labour. of others. They have come to be looked upon as typical capitalists, and therefore excite the hostility both of Socialists, who would make war on all capitalists, and of the very different class which views with jealousy the increasing power of money, as distinguished from land, in the government of the world; while, on the other hand, they have themselves contributed. largely to the socialistic and revolutionary elements in Europe. Among their many great gifts, they have never, as a race, possessed the charm of manner which softens, conciliates, and attracts, and the disintegration of politics, which is such a marked feature of our time, brings every separate group into a clearer and stronger relief. It is as a distinct and alien element in the national life that they have been especially assailed. The Russian persecution stands in some degree apart from the other forms of the anti-Semite movement, both on account of its unparalleled magnitude and ferocity, and also because it is the direct act of a Government deliberately, systematically, remorselessly seeking to reduce to utter misery about four and a half millions of its own subjects. The laws of General Ignatieff in May 1882, and the later and still more atrocious measures that were taken at the instigation of M. Pobedonostseff, form a code of persecution which well deserves to rank with those that followed the religious wars of the sixteenth century.' The Russian legislator does not, it is true, altogether proscribe the Jewish worship, though no synagogue is permitted in any place where there are less than eighty, and no public prayer in any place where there are less than thirty, Jewish houses. Nor does he absolutely and by a formal measure expel the Jews from Russian soil. Such a step has, indeed, been adopted on a large scale in 1891 and 1892, in the case of the poorer Jews of foreign nationality. It is estimated that these number about 150,000, and many of them, though of foreign parentage, had been born in Russia, had lived there all their lives, spoke no language except Russian, depended absolutely on Russian industries for their livelihood, and desired nothing more than the naturalisation which was refused them. The small number who consented to abjure their faith were suffered to remain. Multitudes of the others were expelled from their houses, and driven like cattle. by bands of Cossacks across the frontier, where thousands have perished by misery and cold.2 For the native Jews a different treatment was provided. The legislator contented himself with driving the great body of these Jews, including several hundreds of thousands of persons, out of an immense proportion of the territory and out of the great cities, in which they had long lived unmolested; confining them, in the territory in which they were allowed to dwell, to the overcrowded towns; banishing them by countless restrictions, disabilities and disqualifications 1 An excellent summary of these laws will be found in the report of Messrs. Weber and Kempster to the House of Representatives of the U.S.A.: Report of Commissioners of Immigration upon the Causes which incite Immigration to the See Errera, Les Juifs Rus- ད |