ces of the country through their instrumentality must result
in failure. In the first instance, it is rather as landed
proprietors than as labourers on the soil, that I should invite
them to emigrate into Palestine, where they could lease their own
land at high prices to native farmers if they preferred, instead of
lending money on crops at 20 or 25 per cent. to the peasants, as
they do at present."[70]

This is the point to which Mr. Oliphant's fine enthusiasm dwindles
down--the floating of a joint-stock company, limited, with one million
sterling capital, for the purpose of transforming into "landed
proprietors" a number of Oriental Jews, who would neither have the heart
to work themselves nor the skill to direct the labour of others. Those
who have read modern history, or political economy, will not require an
elaborate exposure of a scheme which aims at setting up in Gilead, under
the guise of philanthropy, the rack-renting and ornamental landlording
which have received such severe rebukes in Europe. We refer to the
general outline of Mr. Oliphant's fascinating scheme, inasmuch as he has
reduced to practical shape what others vaguely theorize about.

He gives us a map of the proposed colony, connected by railways and
tram-cars with the outer world. It embraces "the plains of Moab and the
land of Gilead," from the Jabok to the Annon. I know the country well.
It is even more beautiful and fertile than Mr. Oliphant describes it to
be. It is impossible to pass through it without the constant thought of
what it might be in the hands of an Anglo-Saxon race. Mr. Oliphant was
struck with the beauty of the girls of Ajlun, one of whom tried in vain
to remove the vermin from his blankets. Dr. Thomson and I lay on a
grassy slope, a whole afternoon, at the village of es-Souf, watching
the children pelting each other with flowers, and we both agreed that we
had never seen an assemblage of merrier or lovelier children. "I cannot
make them out," said Dr. Thomson, with unwonted enthusiasm; "they seem
to be English children."

Supposing the land for the proposed colony were secured, on Mr.
Oliphant's plan, partly by judicious bribing at Constantinople, and
partly by buying out the interest of the present proprietors, and that
the undertaking proved to be the "sound and practical scheme containing
all the elements of success" which its promoters predict--the very
success of the colony would expose the c