further fostered by the break-up of that cosmopolitan aristocratic society which had marked the eighteenth century, and which could note and register the movements of prominent individuals from nation to nation. The new industrial fortunes and the new international finance both contributed to the same end, while the Jew also began to compete successfully in every one of the liberal professions without as yet dominating any of them. No conflicts had arisen between the Jewish race and the national interests of any European people, with the exception perhaps of the Poles; and these were subject and silenced.
Throughout all this time, from the years after Waterloo to the years immediately succeeding the defeat of the French in 1870-71, the weight and position of the Jew in Western civilization increased out of all knowledge and yet without shock, and almost without attracting attention. They entered the Parliaments everywhere, the English Peerage as well, and the Universities in very large numbers. A Jew became Prime Minister of Great Britain, another a principal leader of the Italian resurrection; another led the opposition to Napoleon III. They were present in increasing numbers in the chief institutions of every country. They began to take positions as fellows of every important Oxford and Cambridge college; they counted heavily in the national literatures; Browning and Arnold families, for instance, in England; Mazzini in Italy. They came for the first time into European diplomacy. The armies and navies alone were as yet untouched by their influence. Strains of them were even present in the reigning families. The institution of Freemasonry (with which they are so closely allied and all the ritual of which is Jewish in character) increased very rapidly and very greatly. The growth of an anonymous Press and of an increasingly anonymous commercial system further extended their power.
It is an illusion to believe that all this great change was Jewish in origin. The Jew did not create it, he floated upon it, but it worked manifestly to his advantage, and we find him at the end of it represented on the