Benjamin Franklin on the Jews "I fully agree with General Washington, that we must protect this young nation from an insidious influence and impenetration. The menace, gentlemen, is the Jews. In whatever country Jews have settled in any great numbers, they have lowered its moral tone; depreciated its commercial integrity; have segregated themselves and have not been assimilated; have sneered at and tried to undermine the Christian religion upon which that nation is founded by objecting to its restrictions; have built up a state within a state; and when opposed have tried to strangle that country to death financially, as in the case of Spain and Portugal.
"For over 1700 years the Jews have been bewailing their sad fate in that they have been exiled from their homeland, they call Palestine. But, Gentlemen, should the world today give it to them in fee simple, they would at once find some cogent reason for not returning. Why? Because they are vampires, and vampires do not live on vampires. They cannot live only among themselves. They must subsist on Christians and other people not of their race.
"If you do not exclude them from these United States, in this Constitution in less than 200 years they will have swarmed in such great numbers that they will dominate and devour the land, and change our form of government, for which we Americans have shed our blood, given our lives, our substance and jeopardized our liberty.
"If you do not exclude them, in less than 200 years our descendants will be working in the fields to furnish them sustenance, while they will be in the counting houses rubbing their hands. I warn you, Gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews for all time, your children will curse you in your graves. Jews, Gentlemen, are Asiatics; let them be born where they will, or how many generations they are away from Asia, they will never be otherwise. Their ideas do not conform to an American's, and will not even though they live among us ten generations. A leopard cannot change its spots.
"Jews are Asiatics, they are a menace to this country if permitted entrance and should be excluded by this Constitution."
George Washington on the Jews
"They [the Jews] work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America."