At the same time, while the Jewish organizations grappled with the problem from the standpoint of charity, the great Zionist idea was again put forth by English Christians. In the first place, Lord Shaftesbury wrote in 1876 a most remarkable Zionist article, from which we quote a few sentences:―― “Is there no other destiny for Palestine but to remain desolate or to become the appendage of an ambitious foreign power? Syria and Palestine will ere long become most important. On the Euphrates and along the coast old cities will revive and new ones will be built: the old time will come back on a scale of greater vastness and grandeur: and bridging the districts the stream will run in the track of the caravans. Syria then will be a place of trade pre-eminence. And who are pre-eminently the traders of the world? Will there, when the coming change has taken place, be any more congenial field for the energies of the Jew? The country wants capital and population. The Jews can give it both. And has not England a special interest in promoting such a restoration? It would be a blow to England if either of her rivals should get hold of Syria. Her Empire reaching from Canada in the West to Calcutta and Australia in the South-East would be cut in two. England does not covet any such territories, but she must see that they do not get in the hands of rival Powers. She must preserve Syria to herself. Does not policy then――if that were all――exhort England to foster the nationality of the Jews and aid them, as opportunity may offer, to return as a leavening power to their old country? England is the great trading and maritime power of the world. To England, then, naturally belongs the rôle of favouring the settlement of the Jews in Palestine. The nationality of the Jews exists: the spirit is there and has been there for 3000 years, but the external form, the crowning bond of union is still wanting. A nation must have a country. The old land, the old people. This is not an artificial experiment: it is nature, it is history.” Needless to say, the political idea, as expounded in these sentences, could not have been put more convincingly by the staunchest Jewish political Zionist. A few years later, two distinguished Englishmen started propaganda work on the same lines as Lord Shaftesbury: Edward Cazalet and Laurence Oliphant.