this whole epic will in days to come sink deep into the memory of men. It will speak to the heart and the conscience of men, not merely to their curious mind. It will secure respect for the silvery hair of the Jewish people, a people of thinkers and sufferers. It will dispense consolation to the afflicted, and by its examples of spiritual steadfastness and self-denial encourage martyrs in their devotion. It is our firm conviction that the time is approaching in which the second half of Jewish history will be to the noblest part of thinking humanity what its first half has long been to believing humanity-a source of sublime moral truths."

And yet this view, however welcome and gratifying, would appear too sanguine; from thinking humanity the yoke of prejudice may be removed, but thinking humanity can never form more than an insignificant fraction of mankind. Education, or what we are pleased to call education, may be made compulsory and rendered more efficient, but it teaches men to absorb the thoughts of others rather than to think for themselves. The tendency is for prejudice to be ingrained and deepened rather than removed, and so long as Christianity remains the dominant religion there will always be a desire on the part of its votaries to pass over in silence the long and painful story of oppression of Jew by Christian, even after its final cessation, of which there are as yet unhappily but few signs. Still, this latter half of Jewish history, though it may never command universal attention, must nevertheless, showing as it does the struggle of a people to retain in the face of overwhelming difficulties and insuperable opposition its separate entity and national existence, of necessity be attractive to the historical student, and there is ample scope for a great writer to bring to light the records of this unknown or forgotten history. Would that M. Dubnow with his great knowledge and wide sympathy would expand the faint outline sketched in his short but pregnant essay into a compact and detailed history!

The possession of a common government and a common territory has usually been considered essential to consolidate or keep together a nation. The Jews have remained a nation without any such binding links, held together by a community of suffering and religious and moral ideals ineffaceably instilled into them by their earlier history, and buoyed up by the memories of a historic past and the hopes of a great future. Theirs has been one long unbroken story of the patient endurance of cruelty and wrong, nor could that endurance have been well maintained had there not been in the engulfing desert of persecution and misery green spots or oases in which the Jew might live in comparative ease the spiritual and intellectual life which distinguished him from the surrounding Gentiles. But in all ages this happy lot has been confined to a very small fraction of the race. From the time of the destruction of the second Temple the Jews still clung to Palestine and the neighbouring lands. looking forward to the coming of the Messiah VOL. 160.-No. I.

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and the speedy restoration of their "earthly kingdom." The time of fulfilment seemed at hand, and the nation rose under the leadership of Bar Kochba, but the rebellion was mercilessly suppressed by the legions of Hadrian; the hope of establishing a Jewish state was destroyed and replaced by the ideal of a spiritual nation or a spiritual community, wedded to an ancient but living religion, dwelling among strange nations, but always kept apart and distinct from them. The establishment of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire and the fierce persecution of sectaries, which followed, made the centre of gravity of Jewry shift from Syria and Egypt to the plains of Babylon, where a thousand years before the sons and daughters of Israel had lamented the desolation of Zion. There for some centuries, under the peaceful sway of Persia, the Jews were enabled to work out their spiritual development. Then Islam arose, and in his all conquering train the light of Jewish learning and spirituality was transferred to the sunny land of Spain, for more than five centuries justly regarded as the home of that which was best and highest in Israel.

At length Christianity broke the Moorish power in Spain, and the Crescent had to yield to the Cross. In celebration of the victory the Jews were exiled en masse or forced to renounce their religion by the horrors of the Inquisition. The story of the Marranos, those involuntary converts, who, complying outwardly with the forms of Christianity, yet retained within their hearts their loyalty to their ancient faith, though of thrilling interest, can be but mentioned here. The exiles sought new homes in Italy, whither they were led by Abarbanel, once thought the greatest statesman in Spain; in Turkey, where they were welcomed by the Sultan Bajazet exclaiming, "How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king, who has made his land poor and enriched ours?"; and in the Netherlands, and especially Holland, where they bore their part in the rebellion soon to break forth against the tyranny of Spain and the inhuman cruelty of the Inquisition. From Holland, some generations later, a small band wandered to England, where Charles II. granted them an asylum which had been denied to them by the Anglican bigotry of the earlier Stuarts and the Puritan intolerance of the Commonwealth. The small Jewish community in England, reinforced by Marranos from Spain and her dependencies, established offshoots in the British plantations beyond the seas, and so founded the principal intellectual centres of modern Judaism.

Such is in outline the story of the wanderings of the Sephardim or Southern Jews; the Ashkenazim or their northern brethren, had been spread over the European territories of the Roman Empire and still dwelt among the barbarians who dismembered it; their lot was never a happy one; given up to trade and especially to money-lending, from which the creed of the Church and the law of the land

forbade all Christians to refrain, and which was therefore their monopoly, continually made the mark of oppression and robbery, they had little opportunity for intellectual activity. They were after grievous suffering banished from England at the end of the thirteenth, and from France at the end of the fourteenth century, and throughout Germany and the Empire were pent up in their narrow and overcrowded ghettos. In Poland alone some measure of security and freedom was granted them, and there alone was their intellectual development possible. The partition of Poland was a great blow to Jewry, especially as many of its followers were absorbed in the retrograde and barbarous empire of the Czar. The spread of rationalism in the eighteenth century proved a great boon to the Polish and German Jews. The French Revolution, with its doctrines of the rights of man and the domination of Napoleon, brought them freedom and equality in Western Europe; but this freedom has been recently endangered by the growth of Antisemitism, just as the hope of winning it for Russian and Roumanian Jews has been extinguished by the equally pernicious doctrine of Judaeophobia.

When the history of all these movements is written and appreciated, then perhaps we may expect the attitude of mankind towards the Jews to change; for, says M. Dubnow, "It is inconceivable that the Jewish people should be held in execration by thoseacquainted with the course of its history, with its tragic and heroic past." Then perchance men will not take as the type of a Jew, though there are many such, as there always must be among a fallen and downtrodden nation, the man whose only thought is his own advancement at any cost, and who, to attain it, will gladly relinquish all the ideals for the sake of which his people have suffered for countless ages; but the man who in scorn of consequences still cherishes the ideals and memories of his nation's past, with firm faith in its exalted mission, though unable to define it, and believing that all the woes and affliction of his people tend to the fulfilment of some great purpose which will be made manifest in God's own time. Θεῶν ἐν γούνασι κεῖται.

H. S. Q. HENRIQUES.

HUSBANDS AND WIVES UNDER THE NEW LICENSING ACT OF 1902.

MUCH attention is now being directed to the provisions of the Licensing Act of 1902, which came into force this year. Much is heard of such of its earlier provisions (Sections 1 to 4) as to the more drastic treatment of inebriates; and under these sections the police will no doubt be actively employed in hunting up and securing the punishment of the habitual drunkard in the hope that he may be reformed, if not by moral suasion at any rate by Act of Parliament, or at least by fear of loss of liberty to drink as and when he likes during a period of three years; but there are other provisions of the Act, not yet brought into much prominence, but which will soon attract notice. Amongst others, there is the amendment of the law having reference to the matrimonial relations of people who unhappily give way to drink. It is to be feared it is too true that domestic life is rendered one of much endured misery owing to the intemperate habits of some husbands and some wives. It has been found that the married have not been able hitherto (under such earlier remedial law as has been made) to secure protection, the wife from the husband and the husband from the wife when one or other has given way to the vice of drunkenness. Some years ago only the affluent could by costly proceedings in the Divorce Court secure relief from domestic infelicity. Judicial separations on the ground of cruelty and desertion, sought for and obtained by summary proceedings before justices and at the very doors of the poor, were unknown. Now this is all past, the Legislature, having once begun to afford relief by summary jurisdiction vested in magistrates to husbands and wives in respect of cruelty in the nature of aggravated assaults, and by means of separation orders which the justices are empowered to make, has now advanced a step further and have given justices, by this Act of 1902, practically the same. powers of making separation orders, in all cases of confirmed drunkenness of a certain special character unaccompanied by any other misconduct whatever. No doubt it is an effort, legislatively, to grapple with a vast class of cases which from time to time appealed to the magistrates for relief, but which in the local temples of justice they could not listen to because of the limited powers vested in them. But what exactly are the conditions which will have

to be fulfilled ere the relief can be obtained ? It is to assist in elucidating this that it has been thought worth while to write this paper.

From the manner in vogue in law-making it is always impossible for any one to say from the mere perusal of any provision in a given Act of Parliament, or from the four corners of it, what exactly the whole law is; to shorten it is presumed the particular provision or section being enacted, it is generally found that older enactments are, for purposes sometimes of definition, sometimes of limitation by way of provisoes, incorporated by express reference; the result is, that the exponent of the given law to-day on the subject in hand must, ex necessitate rei, have before him say at least half-a-dozen other Acts of Parliament, and then he may or may not be able to define exactly what the Legislature have intended. Now in the present case it is just as well to give the ipsissima verba of the section which deals with marital relations before making comment or reflection founded upon either the language of the older Acts now incorporated, or upon the case law which these older Acts have evolved in the course of their application. "Section 5" of the Licensing Act, 1902, provides thus under the head or title "Protection of wife or husband of habitual drunkard."

"SUB-SECTION 1.-Where the husband of a married woman is a ⚫ habitual drunkard,' as defined by Section 3 of the Habitual Drunkards Act, 1879, the married woman shall be entitled to apply for an order under the Summary Jurisdiction (Married Women) Act, 1895, and that Act shall apply accordingly.

"SUB-SECTION 2.-Where the wife of a married man is a 'habitual drunkard,' as defined by Section 3 of the Habitual Drunkards Act, 1879, the married man shall be entitled to apply to a Court of Summary Jurisdiction for an order under this sub-section, and on any such application the Court may make one or more orders containing all or any of the following particulars :

"(a) A provision that the applicant (husband) be no longer bound to cohabit with his wife (which provision while in force shall have the effect in all respects of a decree of judicial separation on the ground of cruelty).

"(b) A provision for the legal custody of any children of the marriage.

"(c) A provision that the applicant shall pay to his wife personally, or for her use to any officer of the Court, or other person on her behalf, such weekly sum, not exceeding £2, as the Court, having regard to the means both of the applicant and his wife, shall consider reasonable.

"(d) A provision for payment by the applicant (husband) or his wife, or both of them, of the costs of the Court, and such reasonable costs of the parties, or either of them, as the Court may think fit."

Then follows a clause making generally the Summary Jurisdiction (Married Women) Act, 1895, applicable to the above sub-section, making all references in that Act to "a married woman and her