EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
Diaries of 1830‒40――The first English Vice-Consul for
_Jerusalem_――Lord Lindsay’s travels in Egypt and the Holy Land
――A guarantee of five Powers――Lord Shaftesbury’s conception of
a spiritual centre for the Jewish nation.
THE Zionist idea not only has a long and unbroken history in England;
it links together periods and men of the most widely different
convictions and emotions. This truth is illustrated by the fact that
at the very time when Sir Moses was endeavouring to found a Jewish
Commonwealth in Palestine, another famous man, one of the greatest
Christians in this country, was working in his way and according to
his lights, with similar enthusiasm and strength of conviction, for
precisely the same cause. This was the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury
(1801‒1885), one of the most interesting personalities of the age, a
man of the soundest intellect and the keenest perceptions, sagacious,
far-seeing, of great honesty of purpose, modest and averse from
notoriety, an ardent Christian and a broad-minded philanthropist.¹
¹ In Lord Shaftesbury, the earnest Christian philanthropist,
the world was not slow to recognize the most eminent social
reformer of the nineteenth century. The Duke of Argyll
(1823‒1900) thus described him in a memorable speech
in the House of Lords, and the eulogy was endorsed by
Lord Salisbury (1830‒1903): “The family motto of the
Shaftesburys, ‘Love, serve,’ was well exemplified in the
character of his life. His efforts and his influence were
interwoven with many of the most humane movements of two
generations. Pre-eminently the friend of the poor, the
degraded and the outcast, his generous sympathies and his
ceaseless labours on behalf of the classes in whom he took
so deep an interest, have given him a high place in the
illustrious roll of benevolent Englishmen. The epitaph
which the Eastern _Rabbi_ desired for himself might with
perfect truth be applied to Lord Shaftesbury, ‘Write me as
one who loves his fellow-men.’”
Lord Shaftesbury writes in his _Diaries_¹ on September 29th, 1838:――
¹ Edwin Hodder: _The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of
Shaftesbury_, London, 1886.
“Took leave this morning of Young, who has just been appointed Her
Majesty’s Vice-Consul at _Jerusalem_! He will sail in a day or two to
the Holy Land. If this is duly considered, what a wonderful event it
is! The ancient city of the people of God is about to resume a place
among the nations, and England is the first of the Gentile Kingdoms
that ceases ‘to tread her down.’ If I had not an aversion to writing,
almost insuperable, I would record here, for the benefit of my very
weak and treacherous memory, all the steps whereby this good deed has
been done, but the arrangement of the narrative, and the execution of
it, would cost me too much penmanship; I shall always, at any rate,
remember that God put it into my heart to conceive the plan for His
honour, gave me influence to prevail with Palmerston, and provided a
man for the situation, who ‘can remember _Jerusalem_ in his mirth’”
(vol. i., _p._ 233).
It was, as we see, a sublimely conceived notion of Lord Shaftesbury’s
that _Jerusalem_ was about to resume a place among the nations, and
that England was destined to carry out God’s designs.
He continues on October 3rd, 1838:――
“Lord Lindsay’s¹ ‘Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land’ are very
creditable to him, ... Egypt will yield largely in confirmation of the
Jewish records; and Palestine, when dug and harrowed by enterprising
travellers, must exhibit the past with all the vividness of the
present. The very violences of Ibrahim _Pasha_² (1789‒1848) (the
Scourge of Syria) have opened the first sources of its political
regeneration by offering free access to the stranger in the repression
of native lawlessness; hundreds now go in a twelvemonth when one trod
the way in a quarter of a century, and the Bible is becoming a common
road-book” (_Ibid._).
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.
“August 1st, 1838.――Dined with Palmerston. After dinner left alone
with him. Propounded my scheme, which seemed to strike his fancy;
he asked some questions, and readily promised to consider it. How
singular is the order of Providence! Singular, that is if estimated
by man’s ways! Palmerston had already been chosen by God to be an
instrument of good to His ancient people, to do homage, as it were,
to their inheritance, and to recognise their rights without believing
their destiny. And it seems he will yet do more. But though the
motive be kind, it is not sound. I am forced to argue politically,
financially, commercially; these considerations strike him home; he
weeps not like his Master over _Jerusalem_, nor prays that now, at
last, she may put on her beautiful garments....” (_Ibid._, _pp._
310‒11).
In these few lines we see the Zionist problem in its two aspects: Lord
Shaftesbury dealing with it _sub specie æternitatis_, so thoroughly
infused with the sense of its dignity that the reader’s imagination
is constantly stirred to the same feeling, and Lord Palmerston, the
diplomatist, though of opinion that the scheme, constructed in a mist
of hazy ideas, aspirations and emotions, required more clearness, yet
agreeing in the main and demanding more details regarding the economic
and statistical side of the subject. The difference between the two
men was this: Lord Palmerston was a great political leader, Lord
Shaftesbury was a great Christian.
_The Quarterly Review_ for January, 1839, published a masterly article
by Lord Shaftesbury. It is a review and an appreciation of “Letters
on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land, by Lord Lindsay, 1838.” He writes:
“We have alluded, in the commencement of this article, to the growing
interest manifested in behalf of the Holy Land. This interest is not
confined to the Christians――it is shared and avowed by the whole body
of Jews,... Doubtless, this is no new sentiment among the children
of the dispersion. The novelty of the present day does not lie in
the indulgence of such a hope ... but in their fearless confession
of the hope; and in the approximation of spirit between Christians
and _Hebrews_, to entertain the same belief of the future glories of
_Israel_,... In most former periods a development of religious feeling
has been followed by a persecution of the ancient people of God;...
But a mighty change has come over the hearts of the Gentiles; they
seek now the ... peace of the _Hebrew_ people. One of them ... went a
journey into Poland ... informs us that several thousand Jews in that
country and of Russia have recently bound themselves by an oath, that,
as soon as the way is open for them to go up to _Jerusalem_, they will
immediately go thither,... Dr. [Joseph] Wolff (1795‒1862) (_Journal_,
1833)¹ (_sic_) heard these sentiments from their lips in the remotest
countries of Asia; and Buchanan asserts that wherever he went among
the Jews of India, he found memorials of their expulsion from Judæa,
and of their belief of a return thither.... In Poland, the great focus
of the _Hebrew_ people, the sentiment is most rife that the time is
near at hand for the turning of their captivity:...” (_pp._ 176‒9).
¹ Journal of the Rev. Joseph Wolff for the year 1831.
London:... MDCCCXXXII. (8º. 1 _l._ + 70 _pp._ [B. M.])