MR. HOLMAN HUNT ON THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS.
MR. HOLMAN HUNT, who has the love of a great artist for Palestine and its associations, and of a mystical Christian for the Jewish race, has revived in the Daily Chronicle an idea which, forty years ago, attracted many minds,—that of purchasing the Holy Land, and making of it a Jewish Principality, governed by Jews, owned by Jews, and inhabited by Jews. He thinks that a large sum could be raised by Jewish financiers—he suggests £100,000,000, but that is at least four times too much—that the Sultan, who is in want of financial aid, would sell Palestine for a great, cheap loan ; th it a Council might be appointed through which to govern; that the Jews would flock over from all
quarters of the world ; that the old fertility of the soil could be revived by culture ; that Jaffa could be made a noble port ; and that Judwa, thus renovated, might become a centre of civilisation, and be gradually enlarged until it embraced a considerable portion of Asia Minor. The '' Jewish question," which now perplexes all nations, would then, he thinks, be settled; the international jealousies as to the possession of Syria would be ended ; and the Jewish people, represented by their Council in their ancient home, would be a peacemaking influence throughout the world.
Mr. Holman Hunt is a poet who uses a brash to express his imaginings, and he talks, of course, as poets should talk, with an insight half-hidden by the glow of his fancy ; but as far as his main thought is concerned, be is, we think, sensible enough. If the wealthy Jews of the world took up the project, they could, we doubt not, pur- chase the hereditary Pa,shalik of Palestine from the Sultan, under guarantees which would make a new Prince of Israel—who, curiously enough, would probably be a young Englishman, Osmond Goldstuid, the traditional heir of the Maccabees—as independent as the Prince of Bulgaria. An advising Council could easily be organised; the peasant Jews who exist in Russia, Roumania, and in scattered groups throughout the world, would be attracted to a fertile soil and a beautiful climate, Arabs would flock in both from the oases of Arabia and from Egypt, and with Palestine once divided among two millions of settled cultivators, there would be no lack of revenue to sustain an administration and the army necessary to maintain order and protect the frontier. That army would not, perhaps, be so difficult to organise as at first sight appears. There are plenty of Jewish officers and sub-officers in the world, the Jews of the Continent all sub- mit to the conscription, and could submit to it at home, and the Arabs need nothing but good officers and decent wages to make admirable mercenary soldiers. Thereare fifteen thousand of them in the Deccan who could be hired in a body as an excel- lent force to start with, and an admirable cavalry could be raised within Syria itself. The Jewish immigrants would be submissive folk, the better-class Jews are accustomed in all countries to desire civil order, and as to the intellectual capa- city of the new people for every department of civil work, even such bitter enemies of the race as the author of "The Modern Jew," in the January number of the Quarterly Review, who is so blinded by prejudice that he even denies genius for music to the "sweet singers of Israel," will hardly venture to call it in question. If Europe is willing, and the Jewish financiers are willing, and the Sultan is willing, a Principality of Judaia could be founded easily enough, and in twenty years it would, we doubt not, be self-supporting, and strong enough to be unassailable except by a first-class Power,—as strong, for example, as Holland or Portugal or Greece. External attack on it, indeed, would be very unsafe, for the banks of the country which threatened it would go down with a run, and there is nothing in Syria to make its possession an object of supreme desire to any maritime Power. It is not full of harbours, and it does not sit a-straddle on any one of the world's main routes. The one difficulty which we have heard raised by diplomatists, the passionate feeling in Russia and France as to the safety of the Holy Places, could, we imagine, be met by a European guarantee; and no Jewish Government in its senses would deprive Jerusalem of the wealth derivable from a concourse of pilgrims,—wealth which would be much increased if the Holy Sepulchre and the churches were under the guardianship of thoroughly disciplined and accountable civil police.
Nevertheless, the project is, we believe, a fascinating dream. There is no evidence that the Sultan would be permitted by Mussnlman feeling to sell Jerusalem any more than he would be permitted to sell Mecca; there is no evidence that, outside a limited number of believers in verbal inspiration, the Christian communities would care to exert themselves even diplomatically to raise the status of all Jews ; and there is, lastly, no evidence that the wealthy Jews would submit for such a purpose to a serious drain on their resources. They all perhaps, even the earthiest of them, have some sort of feeling that to rebuild the Temple would be a glorious thing, and that some mystical grace might be poured out upon the Land of the Covenant if restored to its proper owners; but they would none of them care to abandon the bright capitals of Europe for a new, and at first, half civilised city; while
they would all of them be greatly alarmed lest Europe, which is full of latent or avowed anti-Semitic feeling, should snatch at the foundation of a Jewish State as a great oppor t unity, and by a series of legislative enactments declare them to be through- out Europe, Asiatic foreigners incapable of naturalisatior. That would be a tremendous blow to the race, for it wou!d deprive them of some thousands of appointments, and perhaps render their residence in European universities, now sought by all well to-do Jews not too early immersed in trade, intolerably painful. They are, moreover, devoted to accumulation, the only object of ambition which for fifteen hundred years was lebally allowed them, and the idea that Palestine could be made a financial centre or a grand commercial depot is, as they know, an illusion. It never was one even in olden time, except during one generation, when a concurrence of circum- stances enabled Solomon to become the Baring of Asia, levy- ing toll on all produce on its way to Europe, and the com- merce of the world has since then flown to count' ies which, when Solomon became the richest Prince of his time, were either unknown or were filled with long-haired savages, who hunted deer and wild-boars in misty forests of oak and beech. The Sultan has not ordered the extermination of the Jews of his Empire yet, and, except in presence of some calamity of that kind, the leading Jews would see little to induce them to purchase Palestine, which, while enslaved, is more to them of a dream-land than it would be if it were free and prosperous. The body of the nation perhaps feels differently, every Jew taking some sort of senti- mental interest in Judiel; but they have never been ac- customed to act together, they are quite singularly poor and powerless—the notion that the Jews as a nation are rich is an illusion of ignorance—and they are, we imagine, fettered in their own thoughts by a belief which some will describe as a pathetic faith, and some as an idle superstition, a belief that if the destined hour had arrived, Jehovah would restore them to their own land without all this human planning and instru- mentality. We doubt, therefore, whether the Jews, unless moved by some unexpected and irresistible burst of emotion, are capable of the effort required, or of continuing it for the necessary period of time. They are, no doubt, slowly and timidly flowing into the Holy Land, where some of their colonies, we are told, begin to succeed very we ; but they make no pretension to govern it, and though industrious in villages, are in the cities discontented and ill at ease. There is not food enough for their activity in accumulation.
It is difficult to say precisely why so many Christians desire the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. We are con- scious of the feeling ourselves, without, when we reflect, finding it easy to discover a reason, unless it be a vague wish to see another chapter opened in what we must all acknowledge, whether we believe or disbelieve, to be a wonderful and most separate history. This people has borne testimony to the force of the most fundamental of all religious ideas for thirty-six centuries, and to see its own idea of its own destiny realised, would excite in many minds a passionate interest, perhaps deepen religious faith through- out the Christian world. Otherwise, we do not know that there is much to anticipate from such a project. We do not believe, as we have said, that Palestine could become a new and vaster Tadmor, or treasure-house of the world, and we would not crook a finger to accelerate such a peculiarly earthy consummation. The Holy Land as a big store does not appeal to our imaginations, nor do we care one sti a w whether there are or are not banks in Jerusalem or quays and stevedores in Joppa. There are enough and to spare of those luxuries in London and New York. Our sympa- thies, we confess, are with David rather than Solomon ; and the Jewish names that interest us are those of Job and David, Paul and Maimonides, Spinoza and Lassalle, rather than any Rothschild or Bleichroder or Samoa. It is true that the wanderers of any nation, Greek or Roman or Anglo-Saxon, have done little in the way of thought ; and it might be that the Jewish genius once more concentrated in a land which must have helped to make it separate, might once more flower, and give to mankind again some irresistil.,:e impetus upon the road of spiritual progress. The Jew is European as well as Asiatic, and the multiform variety of his experience might fire some brain until the thoughts it pro- duced were such as to remove from human intelligence the harden of some of its great doubts. No man not an Arab, except Buddha, has ever taught mankind any great spiritual thing, and his teaching, beautiful as much of it is, did not enable his disciples to follow even his single counsel, to compel the flesh to subjugate itself to the spirit. A great step for- ward might yet come from a Jew of Jadma, and that would be worth any effort ; but where in the world is any evidence that such a consequence is even probable P God is not the God of one little division of this little planet; and if a Jew has any message to deliver, he can deliver it in London or New York, or, for that matter, Johannesburg, just as well as in Jerusalem. There is a sort of peace everywhere, just as there was round the Mediterranean in the year thirty-seven ; thoughts flow everywhere quite as rapidly as is at all desirable ; and if any one has anything to say, mankind was never readier to listen. We are entirely favourable to any project for the restoration of the Jews ; but the world and the Jews will get on, though every such project failed.
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