Though far from being the real cause――the real cause is the whole of Jewish history――the sufferings of the Jews have always been a stimulus to Jewish national feeling. The Mortara case in 1860 gave rise to the Alliance Israélite Universelle, the persecutions which began in 1882 to the movement of the “Lovers of _Zion_,” and the Dreyfus affair in 1894 to Herzl’s pamphlet _The Jewish State_, 1896, which heralded modern Zionism. In the same way the Damascus and Rhodes affairs were the immediate cause of Montefiore’s journeys, the representations to Mehemet Ali about both the innocent martyrs and the establishment of Jewish colonies in Palestine, and the societies in England for the support of Palestinian colonization. A number of Jews in several countries, and especially in England, began to ask themselves: What will be the end of all these sufferings? The reply was: Two things are necessary:―― (1) The protection of Great Britain for the Jews in the East. (2) The colonization of Palestine. Public opinion had now taken a different turn; and, what is more important, the character of the difficulties and objections generally raised had become wholly different. People began to inquire about the Jews themselves: would they or would they not be inclined to form a new society for the colonization of Palestine? A greater disposition to follow up this kind of discussion had developed. The political sense of the day required definition, argument, and proof, where religion had been content to appeal merely to the instinct of reverence, and to put the whole matter on the plane of devotional feeling or exalted imagination. Would the Jews go to Palestine? In the nature of things it could not often happen that a nation would undergo rapidly any great, although at the same time peaceful and salutary change. A nation may, indeed, develop almost in a day. Empires have evaporated in fury or exploded in passion. But then such violent changes have usually been vicious and destructive. An utterly demoralized people will abandon itself in a moment to a dream of ambition, turn its ploughshares into swords, and break from its borders to conquer the world. A new field for cupidity or pleasure, the discovery of a continent, the sudden acquisition of a fertile territory or a mine of wealth, has ere now turned an ancient and noble race into a rabble of adventurers. But it is very rare, almost unparalleled, for a _peaceful_ people to find a new opening all at once. There was doubt, then, about the Jewish desire for redemption.