Chapter 376: The Jewish Controversy

Chapter 373 The Jewish Quarrel
In the editorial office of The Cockney, Arthur was discussing feverishly with Dumas and Tennyson the distribution of illegal publications.

After a long discussion and study, these arrogant but incompetent literary creators finally had to choose to re-activate the early underground distribution network of “The Englishman” built by Mr. Elder Carter, the head of the marketing and sales department of “The Englishman”, who was far away in South America.

More accurately, to enlist the help of the old man who appeared on time every Wednesday in the alleyways of Christmas Road in Greenwich to find a sales agent.

After all, when it comes to things like illegal publishing, it’s better to go to a connoisseur to solve the problem.

As for how Arthur should explain to the top, it was also very simple.

Scotland Yard was busy cracking down on prostitutes a while back ……

Oh, no, the prostitutes.

And this time, it’s been busy tackling the cholera epidemic and doing a good job of quarantine control.

So, of course, at this particular time, it’s important to prioritize matters by separating primary and secondary issues. We in the Greater London Police Force cannot do both, much less do both.

However, there are exceptions. If the Treasury is willing to substantially increase Scotland Yard’s funding budget for the next financial year, and the Parliament is willing to continue to expand the powers of the police department, then it is not impossible to mention the matter of catching illegal publications with a vengeance.

And, they did do a lot of great things during this long session. Of course, the most important was the adoption of the Great Protest, which enumerated the crimes of King Charles I, criticized reactionary religious policies, denounced the wrongdoings of high officials, demanded the implementation of freedom of industrial and commercial activity, established a system of ministerial accountability to the Parliament, and limited the power of the bishops.

Since they are in no hurry, a slight release of illegal publications should not be a problem.

And that, in turn, would be the best return Arthur could make to the noble gentlemen for allowing him to retrieve a life from Liverpool.

Is there anything wrong with that?
Of course there’s nothing wrong with it.

But in Arthur’s opinion, it wouldn’t be wrong to leave them all in charge if the councillors were willing to work hard.

Arthur and Dumas and the others agreed, and as the sun was going down, they were about to pack up and go for a drink when they suddenly heard a heated argument from outside the editorial office.

The intentions of the Parliament are all good, it is just that earlier Scotland Yard executed it crookedly, and now Arthur is just putting it right.

After all, in the parliamentarians but every day shouting we have to defend the power of freedom belonging to the people, Britain can not become a dictatorship like France or Prussia, not to mention a police state.

If a guy named Cromwell hadn’t popped up later and forcibly dissolved the long-running parliament by force, this parliament, which had been in session for thirteen years, could have been almost perfect.

Naturally the sharp-voiced Mr. Disraeli and the German cynic Heine.

However, since Parliament can’t run everything, and MPs can’t be on call at the Palace of Westminster 24 hours a day for a full 365 days, that’s why they’ve decided to leave some of the nitty-gritty executive business to the discretion of government departments.

“Mr. Heine, please forgive me for not being able to address you by name affectionately anymore. I must state once more that I consider your insult to the whole Jewish people to be unjust, and that you will never again be able to find from all Europe a people more ancient than the Jews. You have a noble blood running through you, and yet you insult it with your own mouth. You know that the whole nation is suffering, yet what have you done for your countrymen but complain?”

Therefore, he decided to give full play to his subjective initiative and organically combine the two initiatives.

More than that, the councillors also took time out of their meetings to take on some private work, executing the king’s favorites, Strafford and Archbishop Lauder, and incidentally fighting a civil war with the king’s army.

And the first principle of not being able to be a police state is not to pass laws giving too much power to government departments.

Of course, in Arthur’s opinion, getting the Treasury to appropriate funds was a pipe dream, and getting Parliament to expand police powers was nonsense.

The fact that parliamentarians were not happy to meet for a long time now only meant that they were not yet in that much of a hurry.

After all, as a superintendent of Scotland Yard, Arthur absolutely embraced the parliament’s call for the preservation of individual freedom and the crackdown on illegal publications that affected the social climate.

And from the arrogant tone and wording of both sides, it was not hard to tell which two Jews were actually the ones who had gotten into a fight.

After all, Britain did have a long parliament that lasted 3,322 days, from November 1640 to April 1653, at one point in its history.

To put it bluntly, it was a parliament that wanted the government to preferably have to walk through them before doing anything, and vote it through before it could be implemented.

Heine’s tone sounded calm, but seemed to be laced with a few hints of sarcasm.

“And what have you done for them, Mr. Disraeli? Let’s see, what you did for them was to renounce the Jewish faith to become a Protestant Anglican? Or perhaps you mean that you joined the Tory Party, which has always scorned the equal rights of Jews?
I’ve read all about the good things you’ve done in the Tory organ, the Monthly Review, and the Tories are clapping their hands and applauding you. You’ve made history, a new record. I’m afraid you’re the first Jewish MP ever to join the Tory party.

I have to admit, it’s colorful. You’d better draw the line at once with your fellow Jews and with me. I may have complained a little about the scum amongst the Jews, if more bluntly, I was complaining about scum like you.

You take your Jewish heritage to pander to the Tories and sing the praises of their anti-reform stance. In that respect, you do inherit Judah’s Jewish lineage perfectly, and you play the back-stabbing routine to perfection. Who would believe it if you said you were not a descendant of Judah?”

“Heine! You unashamed bastard, you’ll never understand the plans of the truly great; the truly great don’t get hung up on these petty details. That is the difference between you and I. I shall realize my plans, and you ……”

“Whoa! So great men are meant to rise to power by betraying their fellow men? If so, I’d rather be crucified. Come, Mr. Disraeli, do it; the Tories’ silver coin has arrived; where, then, are your nails?”

“You!”

Disraeli flushed red and dropped his hat on his head, and with a roar he tried to pounce on Heine and have a good fight with him.

Arthur and the others, who had heard the news, hurriedly pushed open the door of the editing room and pressed him down on the sofa in the parlor.

Tennyson urged, “Benjamin, calm down!”

“How do you expect me to calm down! This kid can’t do anything but show off his mouth! Yet it’s such a mediocre talent that has the audacity to sneer at me, the one who does the real work!”

“Whoa! What do you call that?”

Heine looked at Disraeli, who had been crushed on the sofa, and merely improvised his little poem by lightly raising his eyebrows.

He reached out to Disraeli with one hand and pressed one to his chest, full of pity.

“You crawled to the cross–

that cross which you despised. Only a few weeks ago.
And you tried to trample it underfoot!
Oh, the books of Schlegel, Haller, Bourke.

You’ve gone astray.
Yesterday you were a hero.
Today you’re a slave!”

When Disraeli heard this, he suddenly seemed to remember something, and laughed in anger, “Are you satirizing me for having converted? If I remember correctly, didn’t you also proselytize? In order to integrate into the upper class, in order to be accepted by this era. If I’m Judas, then you’re still inferior to me, and you actually became my follower.”

Hearing this, Heine, who was originally still full of mockery, instantly reddened her face as well.

He stared wide eyed and reprimanded, “You …… me …… Germany and England are not the same! I once insisted on it, but …… yet it was no longer possible for me to obtain an admission ticket to European culture by any other means than a Christian baptismal certificate. Without that damned document I would not have been able to lecture at the university, nor would I have had any possibility of obtaining a public position, nor would I have been able to work in many of the professions that a normal German can work in. You, a Jew born in England, have no idea how heavily the German Jews were really suppressed, and when it comes to the suffering of an entire people, I have experienced far more than you!”

Yet Disraeli, seeing that his opponent was actually angry in this way, all at once looked as if he had caught the winning hand, and he jeered one after the other, “Admit it, Heinrich, you are a cowardly buffoon. You are not the liberator of the whole German nation, a strong and unyielding freedom fighter, as you boast. I have yet to see any warrior who has surrendered to the enemy even before the start of a war, let alone changed his beliefs in order to be recognized by the other side! You always say that you despise the mercenary nature of the Germans, but you write plainly about yourself!”

When Heine heard these words, it was as if he had been poked in the heart, and this great poet, who had always wished to present himself with an elegant image, finally could not help pulling off his own coat, and intended to meet Disraeli in a real fight.

He grabbed the pleated edges of his shirt and yelled at Disraeli, “A German mercenary Jew is better than an English Jewish narcissist like you! And the things I have done for the entire German nation, vulgar people like you will never know! The long list of censored books I left behind in Prussia and Austria is proof of that!”

Disraeli tried to rise with a carp, but in the end his strength was no match for the French artillery.

Unable to exert himself, he could only roar, “You’re just being sophomoric; with your mercenary nature, if you knew your book would be censored sooner or later, then you wouldn’t have written it!”

Heine only sneered at this, “To tell you the truth, Mr. Disraeli, the book I handed over to The Englishman, Sketches of a Journey, I suspected that it would be censored as early as when the second part was written, and the result has proved my suspicion that it was indeed censored by the authorities.”

Arthur, who had been standing by with the intention of stopping Heine, at last picked up the opportunity to speak, and he took up the conversation in a smooth way, hoping to divert the attention of his two friends, and incidentally to take the edge off.

“So, why did you even insist on writing it out?”

Heine looked at Arthur and returned, word for word, “Because I know my Germans. Although they will just be surprised and ponder after seeing this book, they will not take any action. Although the book will certainly be banned, it is still very necessary to get this book out.

In this age of shallow slavery, I had to do something to make it right. By writing out this book, I am doing my part. I am ashamed of my hard-hearted friends in Germany, who used to want to do something big, but now they are all silent.

If they had assembled and formed a neat line, then even the most timid recruit would have been doubly courageous, and yet it is always the lone man who can show true bravery at the critical moment.”

As soon as Dumas heard these words, he was somewhat moved by Heine’s valor, “Heinrich, I really did not misjudge you, you are indeed an honorable warrior.”

Unexpectedly, Disraeli slapped Dumas on the head when he heard this.

“Alexander, don’t let this kid fool you! Some time ago, Mr. Koda, the great German publisher who represents the publication of Goethe’s and Schiller’s works, came to London to talk to me about distributing an anthology of the Cockney in German territory.

At the time, I happened to mention Heine to him. As a result, Mr. Korda told me that Heine had asked Mr. Korda to present his works to King Ludwig I of Bavaria a few years ago in order to obtain a respectable public position in Bavaria.

And, in his letter to Mr. Coda, he added: ‘It might be of great advantage to me if you would suggest to him that this writer is much milder and kinder than he has shown in his former works, and perhaps has now become quite another person. I think the king is wise enough to judge of the value of a sword according to whether it is sharp or not, and not according to whether it has been used for good or for evil.”

“This ……”

When Dumas heard this, the corners of his mouth twitched twice, how he couldn’t believe that Heine could do such a thing: “Benjamin, are you sure you didn’t make up this story?”

Disraeli just snorted coldly, “Whether it is or not exactly, won’t you just ask Mr. Heine?”

Dumas twisted his head to look at Heine, only to see a face that couldn’t be any whiter.

The confident smile was gone, and there was no more mocking tone of the past, all there was was just a trembling of the shoulders and continuous deep breathing.

Dumas saw this and looked like he wanted to say something.

He already knew the answer, and at a time like this, there was no need to mention it again and cause secondary damage to the person in question.

Heine dropped his lofty head, and the old sharpness disappeared from his body, as if he was not the Jewish boy Heinrich whom the group knew.

He gave a little laugh, and was not sure whether he was laughing at himself or at Disraeli.

He suddenly raised his hand and smoothed back the hair that hung over his forehead, and raised his head against the overcast rain outside the window.

“Alexander, it’s all right, laugh at me if you want, I did do that thing. And more than that, I kept up a relationship with that notorious political adventurer, Werther von Doering, while I was in Bavaria.

As you know, Werther is an asshole, and if I had the power, I would hang him. But he was also a very amiable man in his personal dealings, which often made me forget his vile character. All in all, it was always a great pleasure to spend time with him.

Perhaps it was also because the whole world was against him that I sometimes defended him, which upset many people. But most people in Germany cannot yet understand that a man who wants to promote a noble cause by his words and deeds can often commit minor faults, whether in jest or for personal gain, as long as these bone-deep dishonorable acts do not detract from the great ideas for which he lives.

They fail to understand that these small faults should even be considered praiseworthy if they make us better serve the great ideals for which we live. And it was in Machiavelli’s time, in what is now Paris, that this truth was most deeply understood.

This is my defense of those trivial faults, which, perhaps, I am now interested in going on committing in this life.”

Arthur was finally relieved to hear this.

He picked up the teacup and brought it to his mouth, gently taking a sip, and along with the warm, slightly sweet black tea going down, Arthur simply exclaimed with satisfaction, “Good tea!”

Immediately, he put down the teacup and said, “Since both you and Benjamin agree that people are capable of committing small, insignificant mistakes, then what are you arguing about?”

Heine just leaned against the windowsill with a disdainful tsk.

“I wasn’t even going to accuse Mr. Disraeli of anything, but he suddenly got into a big conversation with me about the Jewish people and the glorious traditions of Judaism. Still, it’s my fault when it comes back. I obviously knew I shouldn’t discuss religion with an Englishman back when I first came to London a few years ago.”

Tennyson was puzzled, “Why?”

Heine commented, “Because, even when talking politics with the stupidest Englishman, the man always talks some sense. But when it comes to religion, even the most intelligent Englishman says nothing but foolish things. What is even more regrettable is that the Germans are almost the opposite.”

Arthur only coughed softly when he heard this, and he stepped on the top of Heine’s foot and whispered, “Heinrich, are you trying to continue to stretch things? I forgot to remind you that Alfred is an unabashedly devout believer.”

(End of chapter)