Produced by David Widger






THE CHARACTER OF THE JEW BOOKS

Being, A Defence of The Natural Innocence of Man, Against Kings and
Priests or Tyrants and Impostors

BY PHILANTHROPOS

London:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET.

1821.

Price Twopence.




THE CHARACTER OF THE JEW BOOKS

Justice is due to all men; it is a gem that sheds a brilliant radiance
upon the tyrant and the slave, upon the rich and the poor; Justice is
in the moral world what the sun is in the physical, one illuminates
the intellectual, the other the terrestrial system. By the standard of
justice measure the rulers of the earth; try their actions, calculate
their characters, weigh their governments in the balance of justice;
when analyzed by this test and found unalloyed, grant unmeasured praise;
if deficient, if tyranny, villainy, bigotry and cruelty preponderate,
condemn them, and consign them to the execration of all mankind.
Notwithstanding the exertions of Philosophy, and the undaunted
perseverance of _a few men_, barbarity, cupidity and bigotry, generally
prevail; the numerous devotees, the thronged congregation of rogues,
slaves, and fools at the shrine of avarice, too frequently paralyze
the efforts of liberal men; mean, pitiful, despicable traffic, has
introduced mercantile ideas, and consequently _this nation of hucksters
estimates merit in money_. The rich assume to be privileged, and
unceasingly condemn and revile the industrious poor, as being vicious,
immeasurably criminal, and abandoned to every moral offence: regardless
of themselves, their families, their society, and their souls; let us
enquire if those charges are just, if the poor are degenerated, if they
have abandoned themselves to contempt, to degradation, to confinement,
and to death; _let us endeavour to ascertain if the laws of nature are
changed, let its endeavour to ascertain if the precepts of reason are
revoked, let us endeavour to ascertain if death is preferred to life_.
The poor are the most numerous, the most industrious, and the most
useful part of society; should this portion, this staple part, this
lever of the nation be so deserving of contempt, of execration, and of
condemnation, as some puny-minded, rickety-headed fools would have us
believe, much might be feared for the continued indissolubility of the
nation; such as have monopolized the labour of the poor, and enjoy
the rank of the privileged rich, incessantly insist that severe laws,
vindictive tortures, and daily sanguinary executions would insure
tranquility endangered, preserve religion scoffed, suppress blasphemy
encouraged, strengthen monarchies loathed, despised, scorned, hated and
execrated. The passions of distrust, revenge, fear, hatred, malice and
cruelty distract the rich, that thrive by treachery, hypocrisy, tyranny
and rapacity; conscious of turpitude, stung by remorse, alarmed for the
safety of ill-gotten gains, the robbers and impostors are afraid the
people will claim a restitution of rights and property.

In investigating the origin of crime perhaps it will appear that the
robbery and hypocrisy of King, and Priests, and Peers, have been the
exciting cause, the immoderate agents, the operative principle, that
called into action the criminal intention imputed to the poor; if such
is proved, could any thing be more cruel, more shocking, more outrageous
of common decency, than for the rich and privileged robbers, usurpers
and impostors, to accuse the people of crimes they have been parties to,
that they have promoted by rapine, encouraged by example; crimes that
they may in effect have committed, for Kings and Peers and Priests
unblushingly practise trades of fraud, imposition, and rapine, their
titles admit their separation from men; experience proves they have
inclination and capacity for any degree of villainy, the worst, the
vilest, and the most detestable of men can invent; no disgrace can
move, no contempt can stagger, no scorn can lower such as pollute the
sanctuaries of the Church and Throne, as certain places are called.

Survey man from his origin, from his birth, from his infancy, he enters
the word without reflection, without will, without ideas; his mind can
be formed, it can be moulded, it can be directed at pleasure; his
ideas, his expressions, his actions, his life, are the result of his,
education; his infancy, adolescence, his manhood, and his old age, are
the consequence of his instruction; without internal or innate idea,
without any indigenous or spontaneous mind he was nothing but from
without: he has no ideas, no conceptions, but such as result from
external impressions; if deficient organization has deprived him of
sight, he knows nothing of colours; of hearing, nothing of sounds; of
both, he is an idiot.

If a male child is shut up in a dungeon and fed through a chink, from
twelve months old, he would know nothing beyond his cell, nothing
further than its walls; he would know nothing of Kings, or Priests,
or Peers, or prayers, or tithes, or taxes, or blasphemy; he would know
nothing beyond softness and hardness, roughness and smoothness, heat
and cold; he would know nothing beyond experience, nothing but by
examination, and could have no conception of any thing beyond his
hearing, seeing, touching, tasting and smelling; he would only have
conception of such things as would be produced by a combination of his
few ideas; even the man in the world without information knows nothing
about the superstition of Mahomet, of Zoroaster, of Brahma, and an _Old
Jew_; the child in the dungeon would know nothing of the cruelty of _Jew
Moses_, the licentious ferocity of David, or the amiable gallantry of
Solomon; he would know nothing about the incest, the polygamy and murder
of the Jew fellows, he would knew nothing beyond simple sensations;
let the experiment be continued, let the subject be placed in another
situation, let him be taken at ten years of age from his dungeon and
placed in a disused cell unfrequented by any person but his keeper,
his instructor, his director, a monk and a eunuch; let his keeper
be directed to teach him nothing but the _Jew Books_, let all his
information, let all his ideas, let all his impressions be from those
famous books of law, of morality, and of religion; he will be taught
that incest, adultery, fornication, hypocrisy, drunkenness, perjury,
indecent exposure of women, rapine, and assassinations, are acts of
religion, inculcated, enforced, patronized and practised, by Jew Kings
and Jew Prophets, the chosen people of God; the subject could think
of nothing but what resulted from his education, nothing but what was
consistent with his theory; he could not speak of colours never seen,
describe the people never known, prefer nations never heard of. Arrived
under those exclusive impressions at puberty, sexual organization would
be developed, a new ardour, a new stimulus, a new inclination would
act. His mind would be filled with assassinations, with butcheries,
with seductions and with debaucheries; now prepared, now surcharged with
religious precepts, let him enter the world; his mind, his impressions,
his actions would be formed upon the most sacred models, such as Moses,
David and Solomon; he would be religiously prepossessed in favour of
fraud, perjury, hypocrisy, incest, lust, perfidy and homicide; impressed
with experience, impregnated with religion, with Jew Morality and sacred
gibberish, he would act according to his experience, to his education,
to his religion, and to his God; now set at liberty, impelled by his
passions, irritated by opposition to his lust, his avarice, or his
petulancy, he would, acting consistently and religiously, commit a rape,
a robbery, or a murder, and offend against _human laws or the laws of
reason_, and not those of religion; it would avail nothing even among
Kings, Priests and Peers, to plead the injunctions, the precepts, the
examples, and the dignity of Moses, of Abraham, of Lot, of Isaac, of
David, or of Solomon; suppose he is under sentence of death, who brought
him into that situation? Is he to blame, is he the architect of his
case, is he the cause of his fate, is he the author of his misfortunes,
is human nature to be blotted by such affairs, is he to be censured,
execrated, and despised? Oh no! he is the victim of iniquity, the
martyr of wrong impressions, of wrong education and of bigotry, he
acted according to his education, to his religion and to his experience;
instruction in falsehood, in error, and in injustice has been the
cause, and the blame could only be annexed to the authors of fallacious
principles, interested bigots, and venal hypocrites. Any one instructed
to follow practically the horrid dogmas set forth in the _Jew Books_
would soon reach the gallows, would be soon covered with crimes, would
be soon consigned to infamy, and the dignity of human nature would be
traduced, would be vilified, would be denounced by every silly fool,
every fanatical quack, every ignorant pretender to legislation, and
every Arch-hypocrite would call aloud for vengeance upon the seduced.

Man knows nothing of his infancy, he knows nothing but what he is
taught, of the combination of ideas he has imbibed, consequently such
as teach are answerable for the crimes, when the principles of education
are false, and such are Kings, Priests and Legislators.

Impostors unnecessarily make, religion an important feature in men's
education, the people are obliged to hear, to read, told to reflect upon
some ignorant, illiterate, confused, and cabalistical _Jew Books_*, as
these books contain false, cruel; lying, bloody and obscene stories, and
hold up, as religious and moral, most indecent examples of lechery and
murder, so they are very improper, very dangerous books to put into the
hands of the uneducated and of children. The _Jew Books_ will debauch
the wife, seduce the maid, brutalize and mislead the son; the beastly
maxims they inculcate, have been protected by the superstitious
ignorance, and unreflecting barbarity of former venal bigoted
Parliaments, whose ignorance would now disgrace the awl, or the spade;
the intelligence of the age, however deficient, scorns the Gothic
superstition of our forefathers; the hypocrites endeavour to enforce the
jargon by the perversion of law, by the halter, by the torch, and by
the sword; the intellectual dwarfs are laughed at when they call for
everlasting wrath, and vow eternal perdition; anathemas, eliminations,
and maledictions are ridiculed, as well as the rogue or fool that raves
in the pulpit for his bread; where reason has not spread her rubies,
false doctrines are dangerous; impressed upon vacant minds with such
terrific emphasis and sordid assiduity, the youth and unsuspecting are
corrupted; false doctrines are instilled into vacant minds, which are
the precursors of crime. _Eclat_ is given to the cruelties, of Moses,
the lewd butcheries of David, and the amours of Solomon; the Jew Books
say, "God approves such acts," and such heroes are said to be men after
God's own heart: the statutes, blasphemously of course, proscribe such
royal adventures. Either the statutes, are irreverend and impious, or
the Jew Book is irreverend; law, religion, reason, and the Bible are the
opposites of each other, so that the supporters of what is now called
law, are the destroyers of the Jew Books; the destroyers of the Jew
Books are statute lawyers, or blasphemers, as reasoners are termed in
ant phraseology. Rare inconsistency!

* Sometimes called Bibles and Testaments.

Man is the creature of the instruction received; intellectual
impressions form his motives of action, he is necessitated to direct his
life according to those impressions; the mind is moulded like clay by
the potter, carved like marble by the sculptor; as the Jew Books contain
the religion and morals of children, and as they are cruel, wicked,
and vindictive, so children have criminal propensities excited by their
existence; first impressions are adulterated, early habits are poisoned,
and future life impregnated with villainy.

So far from criminality being occasioned by neglect of Bible reading,
as the ignorant, sordid hypocrite pretends, if it was more read, and
education less mixed, men would be more debased, more perfidious, and
more sanguinary. It is a matter of fact, it is known by experience,
that since Bible Societies have been instituted, and Bible circulation
widened, crimes have increased; the people have been more cruel, more
brutal, more sanguinary, and more vindictive; the human mind has been
poisoned, all the feelings of philanthropy have been blighted; if
such gibberish should extend, the intelligence of the human mind will
retrograde, and its element, a reign of Gothic ignorance predominate,
omit the Bible part of education, and there will be fewer prostitutes,
fewer debauchees, fewer perjurers, fewer tyrants, and fewer murderers;
it is this part of education that pollutes and contaminates the essence
of charity, and mildews all the flowers of intellectual cultivation;
this is the source of the present barbarous schemes of government,
idolized by rogues, and allowed by fools; the Jew Books are the prolific
origin of the cruelty, the treachery, the avarice, and bloody-mindedness
of Kings, Peers and Priests, and all the _coterie_ of impostors; they
collect, they coalesce, they conspire to mislead, to dupe, to rule,
to rob and degrade an unsuspecting and innocent people; a spontaneous
course, a common object, a fellow feeling, bind together the plunderers
and oppressors of mankind. If the people were instructed in morality, in
justice, and in equity, they would see the robbery, the oppression, the
intolerance, and villainy of Kings, Priests and Peers; if intelligence
lead the people to see injustice, a spontaneous breath would remove it,
and regal and sacked impostors cease to oppress; morality and justice
should be the fundamental principles of education, then would men
annihilate the baneful despotisms of Kings, and Priests; they would
no longer support, no longer vindicate, no longer permit to exist,
the canting slothful hypocrisy of voracious privileged impostors;
such villains devour the produce of other men's toil, laugh at what
themselves profess, without care, except to propagate and to continue,
the simplicity, the ignorance, credulity and superstition, of a devoted,
a plundered and inoffensive people; how can men listen to the precepts,
or be persuaded by, the example of impostors, who spend their lives in
licentiousness, in debauchery, in fornication, in drunkenness, and in
sacred swindling? If men follow the example of impostors, abounding in
nothing but infamy, they cease to have claims as citizens upon society,
they forfeit every claim to credit, to justice, and the laws; they are
the pests, the terror, and the disgrace of each other. The impostors
demand the people to pay attention to the Jew Books, because the Jew
Books recommend tribute and tithes; this code of the hypocrites is
calculated to advance the intolerance of despots, and rapacity of
priests; if the people followed some Scripture examples, and adopted as
perfection the models preached up by the priests, they would be daily
conspiring against Kings or tyrants, slaying their brothers, sleeping
with their fathers' wives, debauching their sisters and daughters? in
short, there would, be nothing but adultery, licentiousness, perjury,
conspiracy, cruelty, perfidy, and murder; all those crimes would be the
consequence of adhesion to the Jew Books; yet if the people do act like
Jew-Book heroes, if they do commit any one crime, if either avarice or
delusion excite to violence, they are accused of not having the fear of
God before their eyes, of not having attended to the _tithe-catching_
advice of Priests, and their books; but of being actuated by
irreligious, profane, blasphemous, and diabolical motives; the dogmas
of Priests and the Laws constantly dash, and while reason suffers the
_tithe-eating corporation_ to exist, legislation must be necessarily
imperfect; it is impossible for the people to follow the law and the
Bible; notwithstanding the suspicion of the Priests, the laws will act
in contradiction to the Bible.

Men are the creatures of education, they act consistently with what
they are taught; impostors and fools promulgating false principles are
amenable to reason, and they should be to laws made by the whole of
the people; men are criminal in consequence of a fallacious education
adopted by regal and religious impostors, with a view of reaping other
meu's harvests; the object is firstly, to debase, to enslave, to
degrade the mind, and secondly, to plunder the victim; such scoundrels
constantly preach up the deficiency of human nature, that more authority
may be granted to those earthly saviours; a nation governed by Kings
and Priests must be always in a state, of barbarism, of shameful
indifference, and of crime; such nations are inhabited by an inferior
race of men, when it may be presumed only a few scintillations of
Philosophy have reached; States governed by Kings and Priests show the
sun of reason is still below the horizon; if human nature is criminal
in appearance, it is not so in fact, such cases are confounded with the
errors of educators, which are instilled into man from the moment of his
birth; if he is ever revengeful, vindictive, and sanguinary, attribute
it to the licensed villains that blot the face, of the earth; reflect
upon this you pampered; you bloated impostors, who riot upon the poor
man's industry; you hypocrites, who carouse upon the sweat of his
brow, and who sack the spoil of the criminal your rapacity has created;
_Tyrants and impostors! remember you are splendid at the expence of
honesty, pain, disease and death_; Give the people justice, and they
will be laborious; if they are laborious, they must have plenty; and
if they have plenty, they will be honest; men are naturally innocent,
passive and pacific; false information and injustice are the sources of
violence and crime; remember this, you corporate impostors and tyrants,
and correct your own errors before you brand the innocent with infamy.
Cast the beams out of your own eyes before you shed your acrimonious
calumny upon the virtuous and the just.







End of Project Gutenberg's The Character Of The Jew Books, by Philanthropos