Robespierre on citizenship for French Jews
I won't bother posting this in the original French, since that's already available in several places on the internet, but here are Robespierre's thoughts on the question of citizenship for Jews, as articulated in the Constituent Assembly on 23 December 1789:
"How is it that the persecutions of which they have been the victims among different peoples have been used to oppose the Jews? These are, on the contrary, national crimes that we must expiate by returning to them the imprescriptible rights of man, of which no human power could despoil them. Vices and prejudices are yet imputed to them; sectarian spirit and interest exaggerate them, but to what could we impute them, if not to our own injustices? After having excluded them from every honor, even from the rights to public esteem, we have left them only the objects of lucrative speculations? Return them to happiness, to the patrie, to virtue, by returning to them the dignity of men and citizens; let us consider that it can never be politic, whatever might be said, to condemn a multitude of men who live among us to degradation and oppression. How could the social interest be founded on the violation of the eternal principles of justice and reason, which are the bases of all human society?"