The Jews and Their Bill: Jewish Motivations in the Controversy of 1753

In discussing the debates that followed passage of the English Jew Bill of 1753, historians have had little to say about why the Sephardi Jewish leadership of the time was interested enough in this legislation to press the government for its passage and to expose British Jewry to considerable hostility. Although the Bill is most frequently described in the context of immigration, in fact it must be understood as part of an intensive sequence of efforts to improve the economic, social, and legal circumstances of Anglo-Jewry around the middle of the eighteenth century. The Bill was also intended to serve the needs of the wealthy sector already resident in England, whether native or foreign-born. The Bill would directly benefit foreign-born Jewish merchants already resident in England, but would also alleviate stigmas attached to all Jews as a result of naturalization restrictions. An example of the connection between the disabilities of Jewish aliens and the rights of native-born Jews is found in the legal questions concerning the right of Jews to hold real property. In at least this respect, the Bill itself went beyond its apparently modest objectives. It sought to establish by inference the legality of property ownership for Jews born in England, by first establishing the right of property ownership for those Jews born abroad. /// [Abstract in Hebrew].