The Jewish Relief Act, 1858
Robert Woodall describes how twenty-nine years of public controversy preceded the political emancipation of British Jews.
When, in the year 1829, the Tory government headed by the Duke of Wellington reluctantly passed the Catholic Emancipation Act, a triumphant Daniel O’Connell spared a thought for the Jews. ‘You must force your question on Parliament,’ he advised them, adding that from his experience of the English it was useless to ‘confide in any liberality but that which you will yourselves rouse into action and compel into operation.’ Here O’Connell was being less than fair.
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