The very name _Yahoodee_, or _Jew_, is tantamount in the East to swindler. Yet it is a most remarkable fact, that fallen and degraded though the race be—their position only equivalent to a state of perpetual serfdom—you never meet with a Jew who gains his livelihood by manual labour, or by begging for his bread. They neither till the ground, nor follow the plough, nor yet exercise themselves in any agricultural pursuits; neither are there amongst them day-labourers, or mechanics; and all this arises from the species of Freemasonry which links these fallen people together, and induces them to assist and support one another in times of the greatest need and difficulty. Hence it arises that every Jew, from an early age is, as it were, launched into the world by the assistance of his co-religionists. They usually begin life in the pastry-cook line; for to sell fruits, would be like carrying coals to Newcastle, in such a country as Syria, where every man has his own garden, or, if he be not possessed of this, the markets are stocked to overflowing. After this, they become petty tradesmen, and with a stock-in-trade of some half-dozen loaves of sugar, a few pounds of coffee, spices, etc., the whole perhaps not exceeding three or four hundred piastres, he migrates to the surrounding villages, barters or sells, comes back again and replenishes his stock, and so goes on adding mite to mite till he is enabled to set up a _Dekkan_ in the bazaar. The wheel of fortune having commenced turning, he climbs up warily, and it may be slowly, yet securely, to an ample independence for his old age; and there are many very wealthy Hebrew families in Syria, whose origin might be traced to such as just I have described. When a Jew has once amassed wealth, it seldom if ever happens that he falls low in the scale again.
In later years, the condition of this persecuted people has been much improved in the Ottoman dominions, and they may be now said to enjoy all those advantages and privileges which are afforded to other foreigners residing within the limits of the Turkish dominions; hence, it is to be hoped, if we may be permitted to judge by the signs of the times, that the day is not far off when they will be again restored to their land, and when in the words of the prophet, it may be said, “_They shall be my people_, _and I will be their God_.” In fact a society has been formed in England for the purchasing of land in Palestine to enable Jews to settle there. But these privileges have not always been enjoyed by this unhappy people; not more than twenty years ago the barbarities practised upon them seem almost incredible. A friend told me of an incident that occurred in Servia when a famine, or a pestilence, had ceased to ravage the country, there was a grand procession and thanksgiving, and in the edict of the Governor, it was not only proclaimed, but carried into execution, that at every quarter of a mile a donkey and a Jew should be sacrificed; thus classing them together, and ruthlessly shedding the blood of two of the most unoffending creatures of the Creator. But the Jews and their sorrows and persecutions are, I trust, passing by, as a firman has lately been obtained from the Turkish government, through the influence of Sir M. Montefiore, which secures the Jews like privileges with the Christians; this boon was presented to them by Col. Churchill, who, in 1841, during his official residence in Damascus, exerted himself strenuously and successfully to relieve them from the consequences of the persecution they had undergone in the well known affair of Padre Thomaso.