the objects of persecution and oppression.  The earnings of their labor were deemed legitimate prey by both, and taken wherever found:  they were led into captivity by the Assyrians and by the Egyptians, enslaved, and denied the legal right to possess the soil—­which, to the everlasting disgrace of Christian Europe, was a restriction upon this wonderful people until within the present century.  A blind bigotry would have blotted them from the face of the earth, but for that energy, talent, and enterprise possessed by them in a superior degree to any people upon the globe.  Inspired by a sublime belief that they were the chosen people of God, no tyranny nor oppression could subdue their energies.  They prayed and labored, went forward with untiring determination, upheld by their faith, and always, under the direst distress, found comfort from this belief and the fruits of incessant labor.  The soil of their loved Canaan was barren, and yielded grudgingly to the most persistent labor.  This drove them to trade, and an extended intercourse with the world.  Without a national government of sufficient power to protect them when robbed by the people or the governments surrounding their own, they were compelled, for self-protection, to resort to every means of concealing the earnings of their enterprise and superior knowledge and skill from Christian and pagan alike.  They gave value to the diamond, that in a small stone, easy of concealment, immense wealth might be hidden.  They invented the bill of exchange, by which they could at pleasure transfer from one country to another their wealth, and avoid the danger of spoliation from the hand of power and intolerance.  Without political or civil rights in any but their own country, they were compelled to the especial pursuit of commerce for centuries, and we now see that seven-tenths of all Jews born, as naturally turn to trade and commerce as the infant to the breast.  It has become an instinct.

To these persecutions the world is probably indebted for the developments of commerce—­the bringing into communication the nations of the earth for the exchange of commodities necessary to the use and comfort of each other, not of the growth or production of each, enlarging the knowledge of all thus communicating, and teaching that civilization which is the enlightenment and the blessing of man—­ameliorating the savage natures of all, and teaching that all are of God, and equally the creatures of His love and protection; and leading also to that development of mind in the Israelite which makes him conspicuous to-day above any other race in the great attributes of mind—­directing the policy of European governments—­first at the Bar, first in science, first in commerce, first in wealth—­preserving the great traits of nationality without a nation, and giving tone, talent, wealth, and power to all.