[¹] Afterwards the twenty-fifth Earl of Crawford (1812–1880).
[²] Second son of Mehemet Ali.
The last sentence proves the Biblical character of England’s devotion to Palestine. English thinkers and statesmen particularly appreciated the fact that no country has been the scene of the principal drama of human developments for so many centuries as Palestine, and no other bears upon its memory so many of the scars of those great convulsions that have shaped the main features of history.
He writes on July 24th, 1838:—
“It seems as though money were the only thing wanting to regenerate the world. Never was an age so fertile in good plans, or with apparently more and better men to execute them, but where are the means?... Why money would almost restore the Jews to the Holy Land. Certainly so far as Mehemet Ali is the arbiter of their destinies....
“Anxious about the hopes and destinies of the Jewish people. Everything seems ripe for their return to Palestine; ‘the way of the kings of the East is prepared.’ Could the five Powers of the West be induced to guarantee the security of life and possessions to the Hebrew race, they would now flow back in rapidly augmenting numbers. Then by the blessing of God I will prepare a document, fortify it by all the evidence I can accumulate, and, confiding to the wisdom and mercy of the Almighty, lay it before the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs” (Ibid., p. 310).
It may be observed that the Zionist formula of the Basle programme, demanding a home for the Jewish people secured by public law, is identical with the “guarantee of the Great Powers” suggested by Lord Shaftesbury.
Not only the questions of nationality involved in the realization of this important programme, but also the question of the creation of a spiritual nucleus for the Hebrew genius—one of the cherished aspirations of Zionists—occupied Lord Shaftesbury’s mind quite as much as the political proposition:—
The inherent vitality of the Hebrew race reasserts itself with amazing persistence; its genius, to tell the truth, adapts itself more or less to all currents of civilization all over the world, nevertheless always emerging with distinctive features and a gallant recovery of vigour. There is an unbroken identity of Jewish race and Jewish mind down to our times: but the great revival can take place only in the Holy Land.
He then proceeds to the practical steps.