In the mid 18th century the Whigs needed backers to finance the suppression of the Jacobite uprising. The foremost backer was Sampson Gideon, a Sephardic Jewish banker later called the Rothschild of his day.
In the following decade, Gideon and others lobbied Prime Minister Henry Pelham to introduce what became known as the Jew Bill. It provided a means for Jews to become naturalized by parliament.
It wasn’t much, as only the very rich could utilise such a process. But the opposition was furious. The Tories, particularly in the Lords, were unsurprisingly vocal, although the leading opponent was a Whig MP who happened to be… amazingly, a London merchant in constant trench warfare with his foreign competition.
The Jewish Naturalization Act received royal assent on 7 July 1753. However, it remained unpopular and a new Whig government under Pelham’s brother the Duke of Newcastle had to ditch it the following year in order to bolster support for the coming election.
The language of the following pamphlet is telling of the flavour of the times. The city in the reference to Acts is Iconium, now Konya in Turkey but the real “City” of the pamphlet is the ancient City of London for whom the unnamed author citizens purport to speak.
