HC Deb 20 February 1882 vol 266 cc1098-9
MR. R. POWER

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he has observed a public notification to the effect that a newspaper entitled "Christian and Jew," which has hitherto been secretly printed and circulated in England, and secretly distributed by agents in Germany, Austria, and Russia, and the avowed object of which is to "counsel a crusade against the Jews," is now about to be openly published in England; whether the Government have any legal power to prevent the publication in England of a paper, the avowed purpose of which is to foster hatred between different creeds, and to provoke bloodshed and civil war in friendly countries; and, whether, if the Government have such power, they propose to use it?

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

As my hon. Friend has stated in his Question that this newspaper is "secretly" printed and circulated, he will not be surprised to learn that I knew nothing about it. But I have received some information this morning, for the first time, about the paper from a gentleman who appears to make himself responsible for it. The letter is a long one, and I need not read the whole of it; but the writer seems to be a person of that class whom the late Lord Beaconsfield used to call the "crazy correspondent character." He seems to cherish a number of unfounded prejudices against the Jews. He says they have established all over London cigar shops by which they have ruined the legitimate trade, and usurped the whole of the tailoring trade; but the main head of his indictment against them is that they have entered into a combination to make Baron Henry de Worms Prime Minister of Great Britain. This gentleman, however, does not seem to favour forcible methods of proceeding, for he states that he declined a proposition to join in abducting Sir Nathaniel De Rothschild, and to blow up the Rothschild premises in New Court. Looking at the nature of the project, and the letter by which it is accompanied, I think the best course I can take is to recommend this gentleman's health to the attention of his friends.