Sejarah Zionisme, 1600-1918/Volume 1/Bab 23

CHAPTER XXIII.

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.

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 on September 29th, 1838:—

“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’s ‘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 (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.).

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).