Lionel was moved by the same instincts as his father but was to choose a different path. Between 1830 and 1836 four bills to remove the barriers to Jews entering parliament had failed to become legislation: something more dramatic was needed. In 1847 Lionel was persuaded to stand as a candidate for the City of London.
Lionel is elected to parliament for the City of London
In the 1847 election he came third, with 6792 votes, enough to earn him one of the City's seats in Parliament. He was, in fact, only a few hundred votes behind the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, who was also standing for re-election.
Throughout the campaign, people had been aware that Lionel, if he was elected, would face the problem of having to take an oath on the Bible (both the Old and New Testaments), on 'the true faith of a Christian'. Once Lionel had been elected, Russell, the Prime Minister, introduced a Jewish Disabilities Bill, which would have overcome this problem, softening the requirement for a Christian oath. The Bill was duly passed in the Commons in February 1848, only to be thrown out by the Lords, not once but twice in 1848 and then again in 1849.
