This author was, no doubt, the agent and mouthpiece of the people behind him. The fact that this “Letter” was published at the suggestion of those then in power in France shows that the scheme suggested in it was in accordance with the views of the Government. This being the tendency of the Government, the appeal addressed by Bonaparte to the Jews of Asia and Africa one year after the publication of the “Letter,” in 1798, appears to be a logical consequence of prevailing opinions. Moreover, the fact that schemes of this kind had gained great currency in England, and that the Restoration of _Israel_ was a favourite idea of the English, could not be unknown in France. It is scarcely necessary to point out what was the fundamental idea of the Egyptian and Syrian campaign. The idea of the Restoration of _Israel_, as suggested in the “Letter of the French Jew” in 1798 and in Bonaparte’s Appeal of 1799, was merely a link in the same chain. To sum up, the situation of affairs, in view of the possibility of great changes in the East, seemed to afford an opportunity for the solution of the Jewish problem on national lines. Bonaparte may also have been anxious to avail himself of the services of the Jews of Asia and Africa. But the essential point is that many influential Christians as well as Jews considered the Jewish problem from a national point of view at the end of the eighteenth century. CHAPTER XII. HAIM FARHI Saul Farhi――Ahmad Jazzár――Saul Farhi’s sons: Haim, Solomon, Raphael and Moses Farhi――Jewish communities in Palestine and Syria――The importance of Palestine in the struggle between Bonaparte and the Ottoman Empire――Haim Farhi’s martyrdom. IN order to grasp the real importance and meaning of Bonaparte’s idea, we have to occupy ourselves with the _dramatis personæ_, and first of all with Haim Farhi. The life of this man was full of romance and of a devotion which has not yet met with such appreciation from Jewish historians as it deserves.