* * *

IV. THE PALESTINE QUESTION AND THE NATIONAL RESTORATION OF THE JEWS.

Until quite recently the question of the national restoration of the
Jews to Palestine did not play a conspicuous part, or, indeed, much of a
part at all, in practical international politics. This is not a little
strange in view of the great mass of religious opinion which has always
been deeply interested in it. It may be profitable to indicate some of
the reasons.

In the first place, from the middle of the second down to the middle of
the nineteenth centuries the Palestine problem, as a political problem,
was exclusively concerned with the custody of the Holy Places of
Christendom. After the failure of the many attempts to oust the Turk,
the question became one of diplomatic accommodation, and under the
Capitulations with France and the Treaties of Carlowitz and Passarowitz
between the Holy Roman Empire and the Grand Signior, various expedients
were adopted by which Christian interests in Jerusalem might be
reconciled with the local political rights of the Ottoman Porte. This
difficult problem absorbed the Oriental activities of European diplomacy
until after the Crimean War, and it left no room for the consideration
of Jewish claims.

In the second place the question during the whole of this period was
always primarily one of eschatology rather than of practical politics.
Even when the Millenarian mystics sometimes crossed the border-line, the
case they presented was not calculated to conciliate sovereign princes.
We have a curious instance of this in the first Zionist book published
in London, "The World's Great Restoration, or Calling of the
Jewes"--(London, 1621)--which was written by Sir Henry Finch, the
eminent serjeant-at-law, although his name does not appear on the title
page.[110] Among other items in Finch's programme was one to the effect
that all Christian princes should surrender their power and do homage
"to the temporal supreme Empire of the Jewish nation." When James I read
the book he was furious. He said he was "too auld a King to do his
homage at Jerusalem," and he ordered Finch to be thrown into gaol.[111]
In 1795 an exactly similar proposal was made by an ex-naval officer, one
Richard Brothers, who announced himself as King of the Jews. He also was
prosecuted, but was found to be a lunatic.[112] A certain political
interest attaches to the case of Brothers; inasmuch as his scheme for
the Na