So when a grand meeting of protest against the atrocities in Damascus was called for at Mansion House, there was no doubt that it would be packed, as indeed was the case, nor that there would be vocal friends of the Jews to say their piece. The most passionate of all was the Irish ‘Liberator’, the great orator of Catholic emancipation, Daniel O’Connell. ‘Every feeling of humanity,’ O’Connell roared, ‘is contradicted by the foul, the murderous charge . . . was there a being so degraded as to believe that they [the Jews of Damascus] made human blood a part of their ceremonies . . . was not the
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