ALTHOUGH a small Jewish community had openly existed in
Britain since the Restoration, and was gradually increasing in
size, no move had been made to secure civil or political rights
for the Jews since the fiasco of the Jew Naturalization Bill of
1753. Napoleon's convocation of a 'sanhedrin' in Paris in 1807,
and his subsequent attempts to assimilate the Jews into French
life and recruit them for his armies, roused considerable interest.
The Monthly Repository regularly reported these doings in its
intelligence column. The foundation in 1808 and the activities
of the London Society for promoting Christianity among the
Jews, an offshoot of the Evangelical London Missionary Society,
excited further comment, not all of it favourable. The Jews
themselves ungratefully regarded attempts to convert them to
the other religion as an insult to their own. Their Rabbis were
apt to denounce or excommunicate members of their faith who
accepted charity from conversionist societies. Some Christians
also disapproved of the London Society's aims and methods.
Thomas Witherby angrily declaimed against its attempts to
interfere with Providence by converting the Jews before their
return to Palestine, which would herald 'the Second Advent of
our Lord'. ¹ He was also evidently moved by some consideration
for Jewish feelings, for he declared it a perversion of the law of

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