In the first place, from the middle of the second down to the middle of the nineteenth centuries the Palestine problem, as a political problem, was exclusively concerned with the custody of the Holy Places of Christendom. After the failure of the many attempts to oust the Turk, the question became one of diplomatic accommodation, and under the Capitulations with France and the Treaties of Carlowitz and Passarowitz between the Holy Roman Empire and the Grand Signior, various expedients were adopted by which Christian interests in Jerusalem might be reconciled with the local political rights of the Ottoman Porte. This difficult problem absorbed the Oriental activities of European diplomacy until after the Crimean War, and it left no room for the consideration of Jewish claims. In the second place the question during the whole of this period was always primarily one of eschatology rather than of practical politics. Even when the Millenarian mystics sometimes crossed the border-line, the case they presented was not calculated to conciliate sovereign princes. We have a curious instance of this in the first Zionist book published in London, "The World's Great Restoration, or Calling of the Jewes"--(London, 1621)--which was written by Sir Henry Finch, the eminent serjeant-at-law, although his name does not appear on the title page.[110] Among other items in Finch's programme was one to the effect that all Christian princes should surrender their power and do homage "to the temporal supreme Empire of the Jewish nation." When James I read the book he was furious. He said he was "too auld a King to do his homage at Jerusalem," and he ordered Finch to be thrown into gaol.[111] In 1795 an exactly similar proposal was made by an ex-naval officer, one Richard Brothers, who announced himself as King of the Jews. He also was prosecuted, but was found to be a lunatic.[112] A certain political interest attaches to the case of Brothers; inasmuch as his scheme for the National Restoration of the Jews was brought before the House of Commons by one of his adherents, Mr. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, M.P., with a motion for the printing and distribution of Brothers's proposal. The motion failed to find a seconder.[113] In the third place, unless the Restoration were favoured by the Ottoman Government, all schemes to compass it in normal times ran counter to international law and the comity of nations. This point was actually decided in this sense by the Law Courts some seventy years ago in the case of Habershon _v._ Vardon. The case related to a bequest by one Nadir Baxter for the political restoration of the Jews in Jerusalem. The bequest was held void, and the Vice-Chancellor, in giving judgment, said: "If it could be understood to mean anything it was to create a revolution in a friendly country."[114]