But they paid no taxes in the strict sense of
the word, because they were not citizens. The law regarded them in the
light of travellers at an inn. The license to dwell in Rome was
provisional, and for many centuries it was renewed every year. Not
only were they without any political rights, but they were deprived of
even the most elementary civil rights. They could neither possess
property, nor engage in manufactures, nor cultivate the soil: they
lived by botching and brokage. How they lived at all surprises me.
Want, filth, and the infected atmosphere of their dens, had
impoverished their blood, made them wan and haggard, and stamped
disgrace upon their looks. Some of them scarcely retained the
semblance of humanity. They might have been taken for brutes; yet they
were notoriously intelligent, apt at business, resigned to their lot,
good-tempered, kind-hearted, devoted to their families, and
irreproachable in their general conduct.
I need not add that the Roman rabble, bettering the instruction of
Catholic monks, spurned them, reviled them, and robbed them. The law
forbade Christians to hold converse with them, but to steal anything
from them was a work of grace.
The law did not absolutely sanction the murder of a Jew; but the
tribunals regarded the murderer of a man in a different light from the
murderer of a Jew. Mark the line of pleading that follows.
"Why, Gentlemen, does the law severely punish murderers, and
sometimes go the length of inflicting upon them the penalty
of death? Because he who murders a Christian murders at once
a body and a soul.
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