The Arguments Advanced Against the Enfranchisement of the Jews Considered in a Series of Letters.

The second edition of Francis Henry Goldsmid's (1808-1878) treatise advocating the political enfranchisement of British Jews, inscribed 'with the Author's Respectful Compliments' in a contemporaneous hand. At the time, restrictive Christian oaths of allegiance effectively barred unconverted Jews from holding political office or voting in Parliamentary elections. Goldsmid, the son of the noted reformer Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid (1778-1859), emerged in the 1830s as the leading voice in the movement for Jewish emancipation. In 1833 he became the first professing Jew to be called to the bar (for Lincoln's Inn), and his tireless campaigning for equal rights under the law received a significant victory in 1858 when Lionel de Rothschild became the first non-Christian to take his seat in the House of Commons, swearing a modified oath on the Old Testament. Goldsmid joined Rothschild in the House in 1860 as member for Reading, a seat he would hold until his death eighteen years later. The 'State cannot without injustice deprive any class or classes of loyal and useful subjects, of the privileges which are enjoyed by the rest' (p.31). An uncommon book, OCLC lists only 16 copies in institutional collections. Not in the British Library. Second edition; 8vo (20.5 x 12.5 cm); inscription in pen to title header, light foxing to prelims, D8 with small marginal tear and partially detached from text-block; disbound, stitched as issued; [4], 47 pp. Roth 177.…