Thomas Slingsby Duncombe (1796 – 1861),
known as "Honest Tom Duncombe",
a British politician who for decades sought to amend the rules which barred Jews
from sitting in parliament, and friend of Benjamin Disraeli—so no antisemitie.
a British politician who for decades sought to amend the rules which barred Jews
from sitting in parliament, and friend of Benjamin Disraeli—so no antisemitie.
"Honest Tom" stated in the House of
Commons in February 1828:
There is a mystery, althougher about the late change, which I hope yet to see cleared up, by the rising of the curtain which conceals persons of great consequence, corporeal and incorporeal. It has been credibly affirmed, that there is a mysterious personage behind the scenes, who concerts, regulates, and influences every arrangement. There is—deny it who can!— a secret influence behind the throne, whose form is never seen, whose name is never breathed, who has access to all the secrets of the state, and who manages all the sudden springs of ministerial arrangement,—
'At whose soft nod the streams of honour flow. Whose smiles all place and patronage bestow.'
Closely connected with this invisible, this incorporeal person, stands a more solid and substantial form—a new and formidable power, till these days unknown in Europe ; master of unbounded wealth, he boasts that he is the arbiter of peace and war, and that the credit of nations depends on his nod; his correspondents are innumerable; his couriers outrun those of sovereign princes, ministers of state are in his pay. Paramount in the cabinets of continental Europe, he aspires to domination of our own: even the great Don Miguel (King of Portugal) himself, of whom we have lately heard and seen so much, was obliged to have recourse to the purse of this individual before he could take possession of his throne. Sir, that such secret influences do exist is a matter of notoriety; they are known to have been but too busy in the underplot of the recent revolution. I believe their object to be as impure as the means by which their power has been acquired, and I denounce them, and their agents, as unknown to the British constitution, and derogatory to the honour of the crown. I trust that the Duke of Wellington (then Prime Minister), and the right honourable Secretary for the Home Department (Robert Peel), will not allow the finances of this great country to be controlled any longer by a Jew (Nathan Mayer Rothschild), or the distribution of the patronage of the crown to be operated upon by the prescriptions of a physician (meaning William Knighton)."
W. Cooke Taylor. Life and Times of Sir
Robert Peel: Volume 1.
Peter Jackson, Late Fisher, Son, & Co.
London. 1851. pp.325-326.
