English Jews understood, then, that the relationship of the Jewish people to the Holy Land was a tie of a peculiar character. They understood that in ordinary circumstances the connection between an exiled people and its land would probably have been severed long ago. It could hardly have resisted the influences that had been at work to bring about its dissolution. Everybody knows of numerous instances of such dissolution recorded in history. When a people, or a section of a people, leaves the country which was the cradle of its nationality to live in a distant clime, under the ægis of new institutions, the link that bound it to the ancient soil loosens and gives way in course of time and by force of events. At first old associations assert themselves. Familiar names are resumed on the unfamiliar shore. The followers of Cadmus (_fl._ 1493 _b.c.e._) planted a new Thebes in the land to which they migrated. The Pilgrim Fathers raised a new Plymouth on the shore which the _Mayflower_ touched at the end of its outward voyage from the Plymouth of the motherland. For long years the American exile called the old country his home. But even this feeling scarcely survives the changes of which we are witnesses. Generations pass by. New institutions take root: new feelings prevail, they ripen and burst into fruit. There is no revolution more complete and more enduring than that caused by the transplanting of a nation. But with the Jews and the land of their lost glory the case is wholly different. Elements of a higher character than those of an ordinary historical nature enter into consideration. The Holy Land is the country of their past greatness, present longings and future hopes. It is a bridge which links the past with the future through the span of the present. It is still a land of dreams, but it is to become a land of wakeful activity, it is to be stirred to new life and progress. To carry out such objects combined, sustained and intelligent action is required. How could English Jews, living amongst the greatest colonizing nation in the world, overlook this great necessity? No other country under the sun can unite all the advantages which the restored home of the _Hebrews_ will present, can attract the Jewish people, with the knowledge which it has gained of the ways of the world and its pre-eminence in commerce, can become the home of a Commonwealth which will restore its national greatness.