tional Restoration of the Jews was brought before the House of
Commons by one of his adherents, Mr. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, M.P.,
with a motion for the printing and distribution of Brothers's proposal.
The motion failed to find a seconder.[113]

In the third place, unless the Restoration were favoured by the Ottoman
Government, all schemes to compass it in normal times ran counter to
international law and the comity of nations. This point was actually
decided in this sense by the Law Courts some seventy years ago in the
case of Habershon _v._ Vardon. The case related to a bequest by one
Nadir Baxter for the political restoration of the Jews in Jerusalem. The
bequest was held void, and the Vice-Chancellor, in giving judgment,
said: "If it could be understood to mean anything it was to create a
revolution in a friendly country."[114]

In the fourth place the idea was likely to weaken the doctrine of the
integrity of Turkey, and, for this and other reasons, was inconsistent
with the interests and traditional policy of Great Britain and other
Western States. It was all the more inconsistent because this policy
originally shaped itself in deference to religious considerations far
more precious to Englishmen than the national cause of the Jews. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the struggle between the
Reformation and the Counter-Reformation was at its height, the naval
balance of power in the Mediterranean rested between Spain and Turkey.
Hence a bias towards Turkey on the part of Protestant States was
inevitable. Curiously enough, the Jews, who were then hostile to Spain,
supported the pro-Turkish policy of England, as they did in 1876-78 on
account of their antipathy to Russia. In the time of Cromwell this
consideration was reinforced by our trade interests in the Levant and in
India. A century later the tradition became again imperative owing to
the fear of Russia and afterwards of Napoleon. All this rendered a
strong and friendly Turkey necessary to us, and hence to entertain the
idea of a National Restoration of the Jews to Palestine was to risk
offence to a valued ally.

A fifth reason was the indifference of the Jews themselves. Until the
Zionist movement was founded twenty years ago there was scarcely any
symptom of a Jewish desire for international action on their behalf in
the Palestine question. This was not for want of opportunity or even for
want of suggestion from others. In 1840, when Meheme