In a Paper[¹] read before the British Association of Science at Aberdeen, September 16th, 1859, by Major Scott Philipps, on the Resettlement of the Seed of Abraham in Syria and Arabia, it was shown that the small portion they have hitherto possessed, by no means comprises the whole grant of country given to Abraham, but that the whole of Arabia Felix is included in that grant. Their full inheritance is given in Deuteronomy xi. 24: ‘Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the River Euphrates even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.’
[¹] This paper has recently been reprinted.
“Now rule a line from the northern roots of Lebanon to the southern roots of Sinai, and will not a perpendicular thereto point out the uttermost sea to be the East Sea, or Sea of Oman? And the uttermost sea opposite the River Euphrates, is it not the Red Sea?
“Thus the Euphrates, the Mediterranean, the Nile, and the Red Sea are proved to be the boundaries of the Promised Land.”
The Rev. Jacob H. Brooke Mountain wrote in a letter published by Miss Rosa Rame (The Restoration of the Jews, etc., dedicated to the Earl of Shaftesbury. London, 1860):—
“There was a time, when the Duke of Wellington was at the head of affairs, when the Navy of England was absolute on the ocean, and her military glory at its height, and when the Jews would thankfully have paid the whole expense of the expedition, that they might have been put in possession of their own country. And England would have become the first of the nations in Europe—our influence over Turkey, Greece and Egypt rendered paramount—and a devoted ally attached to us. The opportunity was lost; if it is ever vouchsafed to us again, I fervently pray that we may embrace it with zeal and alacrity. The time may yet come, if England has grace to use it.”
VIII. (vol. i., p. 152)
The clause as it is to be found in the General Treaty between Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia and Turkey, signed at Paris, March 30th, 1856, runs as follows:—
“M.T.Maj. the Sultan having in his constant solicitude for the welfare of his subjects, issued a Firman which, while ameliorating their condition without distinction of religion or of race, records his generous intentions towards the Christian population of his Empire,” etc. It is quite clear that the principle was “without distinction of religion or race,” and that the grant of rights to the Christians is only an application of a general principle in a special case.
In the second Protocol of the Conference of the 30th of August, 1860, at Paris, signed by Metternich, Thouvenel, Cowley, Reuss, Kisseleff and Ahmed Vefik, where the autonomy of the Lebanon was decided, reference is made again to this paragraph:—