His
Extraordinary Character, And The Adventures Of His Life Are Worth A
Brief Notice.
Phillips said he was descended from those York Jews, who,
on refusing to pay a contribution levied on them by one of our most
Christian kings, had a tooth drawn out every morning (without the aid of
chloroform), until they satisfied the cruel avarice of the tyrant.
In
person, Phillips was a smart old gentleman, with the ordinary lineaments
of his race stamped on his countenance. The greater part of his life has
been spent in South America, where he attained the honours of
aide-de-camp to Bolivar. In those sanguinary revolutions, heaving with
the birth of the young republic, he had often been shut up in the
capilla to be shot, and was rescued always by the Jesuit fathers, who
pitied and saved the poor Jew, on his expressing himself favourable to
Christianity. Returning to England, after twenty years' absence, his
mother did not fully recognize him, until he one day got up and admired,
with youthful ardour, a china figure on the chimney-piece, which had
been his toy in his boyhood. On the occurrence of this little domestic
incident, the mother passionately embraced her lost prodigal, once dead,
but now "alive again." Phillips came to Mogador on a military
speculation, and offered to take the command of the Emperor's cavalry
against all his enemies.
This audacity of a Jew filled the Moor with alarm. "How could a Jew, who
was not a devil, propose such an insult to the Commander of the
Faithful, as to presume to take the charge of his invincible warriors!"
Nevertheless, the little fellow weathered the storm, and got appointed
"captain of the port of Mogador," with the liberal salary of about
thirty shillings per month; but this did not prevent our aide-de-camp,
now metamorphosed into a sea captain, from wearing _an admiral's_
uniform, which he obtained in a curious way on a visit to England. He
met in the streets of London with an acquaintance, who pretended to
patronize him. The gentleman jokingly said, "Well, Phillips, I must give
you an uniform, since you are appointed captain of the port of Mogador."
The said gentleman received, a few months afterwards, when his quondam
protege was safe with his uniform strutting about Mogador, to the
amazement of the Moors, and the delight of his co-religionists, a bill
of thirty pounds or so, charged for "a suit of admiral's uniform for Mr.
Phillips, captain of the port of Mogador;" and found that a joke
sometimes has a serious termination.
Phillips, on his first arrival in this country, entered into a
diplomatic contest with the Moorish authorities, demanding the
privileges of a native British-born Jew, and he determined to ride a
horse, in order to vindicate the rights of British Jews, before the
awful presence of the Shereefian Court! About this business, the
Consul-general Hay is said to have written eleven long, and Mr.
Willshire about twenty-one short and pithy despatches, but the affair
ended in smoke.
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