Bible and Sword

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Ashley, like the framers of the Balfour Declaration, makes no mention of the possibility of a developing Jewish state. In the Balfour Declaration the omission was deliberate, and, as it proved, it was the fatal error that was to cause all the trouble. But it is doubtful if Ashley ever imagined a self-governing state. On the contrary, he assures Palmerston that the Jews will acknowledge present ownership of the land by its “actual possessors,” being content to obtain interest on it by rent or purchase. He adds: “They will return at their own expense with no hazard but to themselves,” that it will be “the cheapest and safest mode” of colonizing Syria, that no “pecuniary outlay” will be demanded of the guarantors, and that the “benefits to be derived from it would belong to the whole civilized world.”

  This is not Ashley at his best. In trying to be worldly he only succeeds in sounding mercenary. His estimate of the Jews is ludicrous; at least we know it to be so in the light of their subsequent history. But it must be remembered that Ashley was writing at a time when the Jews themselves had not yet conceived the idea of a state. It was another fifty-five years before Herzl’s Judenstaat burst upon his own people, and they gasped with the shock of it. Ashley was writing twenty years before Herzl was even born and forty years before the first Jewish organization for sending colonizers to Palestine was formed. Moreover his peculiar ideas of Jewish submissiveness were not only the product of his time, but also the product of his own thinking, which regarded the Jews as somehow passive agents of the Christian millennium. If Ashley had been more politically minded he might have remembered the Maccabees and how Abbot Aelfric had long ago used their example to inspire the struggle for English nationhood.

  Meanwhile events were hurrying to a climax in Syria. On October 3 Beirut, bombarded by Napier’s squadron, surrendered, and a month later Acre fell and inspired Ashley to see God manifest in the British sailor as he had previously seen Him guiding the hand of the Foreign Secretary: “It is really heart-stirring to read of our successes in Syria, the forward valour, the iron-steadfastness, of our countrymen! One midshipman does more than a hundred Turks.… What materials for greatness! What instruments, should it so please God, for the alliance and protection of His ancient people and for His final purposes on earth!” In his diary Ashley runs true to form.

  In the following months, during which Napier chased Mehemet’s army back to Egypt and forced his return of the Turkish fleet to the Sultan, British influence at the Porte was naturally at its peak. Palmerston was now pursuing Ashley’s plan under his own steam. In November he reminded Ponsonby of Britain’s role as protector of the Jews under Turkish rule. In February 1841 he authorized the ambassador to allow Jews “to transmit to the Porte, through British authorities, any complaints which they might have to prefer against the Turkish authorities.”

  In the same dispatch he again urged Ashley’s project almost in Ashley’s words: “It would be highly advantageous to the Sultan,” wrote the Foreign Secretary, “that the Jews who are scattered through other countries in Europe and Africa, should be induced to go and settle in Palestine, because the wealth and habits of order and industry which they would bring with them would tend greatly to increase the resources of the Turkish Empire and to promote the progress of civilization therein.” The Sultan must be pressed into giving some “real and tangible security,” and as a starter Palmerston suggested that the protégé relationship with British officials be offered for a specific period of twenty years. In April he followed this up with a circular letter to all British consuls stationed in the Turkish Empire, informing them that the Porte had guaranteed equality of treatment to Jewish subjects and had agreed to “attend to” any instance of maltreatment brought to its notice by British officials. He instructed all envoys to make “diligent enquiry” into any such case brought to their attention, to “report fully” on it to the ambassador at Constantinople, and to make it clear to the local Turkish authorities that “the British Government feels an interest in the welfare of the Jews in general.”

  What had sprung from Ashley’s cloud-touched “Evangelical verities” had now hardened into official policy. But Ashley had rubbed his lamp too soon for history; his shortlived dream had but a moment to walk the earth before it was stuffed back into the bottle. The guarantee that he had hoped for was not included in the final five power treaty. Because of the immense difficulty of hammering out an agreement among the five powers with five different axes to grind, the treaty, to be known as the Straits Convention, was confined solely to the question of control of the Bosporus and the Dardenelles. Encouragement of the Jews’ recall to Palestine got no farther than Palmerston’s last dispatch on the subject in February. Ponsonby, cold to the idea, made no effort to pursue it, the Sultan was equally antipathetic, and the ultimate blow came when the jaunty Palmerston, having withstood the roaring of French war threats and accomplished his five power treaty in July, was carried out of office with the defeat of the Whig government on a domestic issue in August. His “intrepidity in jumping into hot water on all occasions,” which won him Punch’s Prize for the Session and delighted the British public (though it sadly vexed the Queen), was replaced at the Foreign Office by the “antiquated imbecility” (Palmerston’s phrase) of Lord Aberdeen.

  Aberdeen regarded his predecessor’s interest in the Jews with frigid distaste, much as Asquith seventy-five years later was to shudder at the “fantastic” scheme for Palestine presented to the Cabinet by Lloyd George. He instructed Young, the consul at Jerusalem, henceforth to limit consular protection to “British subjects, or agents, alone.” Palmerston had of course outreached conventional practice when he authorized protection of Jews who were not British subjects, but he did it deliberately. By encouraging the virtually stateless Jews in the Turkish Empire, ignored by the Turkish authorities and rejected as nationals by the other European consuls, to look to Britain for protection that they could get nowhere else, he was laying the ground for Britain to move in as protector of a future Jewish resettlement of Palestine.

  Aberdeen, however, did not regard it as the proper function of the Foreign Office to have ideas, especially new ideas, and he saw no reason to go beyond the letter of the law. In practice his timidity had little effect on the men on the spot. Both Young and his successor at the Jerusalem consulate, James Finn, the son-in-law of “Rabbi” MacCaul and enthusiastic disciple of Ashley, continued to intervene on behalf of God’s ancient people, whether British subjects or not, whenever occasion arose.

  Indeed, the prospect for Israel’s restoration, from Ashley’s point of view, now looked brighter than ever, despite the change in government. For he had at last succeeded in his dearest wish: the creation by the Church of England of an Anglican bishopric in Jerusalem, with a converted Jew consecrated as its first bishop. This was to be the crowning achievement of the Jews’ Society, the signal for the restoration of the ancient kingdom of Israel as a diocese of the Church of England. It was the receptacle of all Ashley’s hopes, “an accomplishment,” he ardently believed, “of the prophecy of Isaiah.”

  The bishopric had the eager sponsorship of the Protestant king Frederick William of Prussia and of his envoy, Chevalier Bunsen, appointed to England for the special purpose of aiding Ashley in the project. Their utmost joint efforts were required to overcome opposition arising from doctrinal issues, now long since dead, that kept the Victorian atmosphere steaming. The whole Anglo-Catholic party of Tractarians and Puseyites attached to the Oxford Movement, which was trying to reconcile the Church of England to Rome, bitterly resented the bishopric as a step for the advancement of “Low Church” Protestantism. Gladstone, then a powerful young voice of the High Church party, was “beset with scruples,” which he communicates in a twenty-four page letter to Bunsen. It asserts that “the novelty and (as yet) the dimness of the scheme has made it act powerfully on the nerves of my countrymen.”

  Bunsen hurries around to call and tries to exorcise the scruples in a two-hour conversation. He is not above using as an argument
the political advantages to be gained in Syria. “Would you do nothing,” he asks Gladstone, “to avail yourselves of political conjunctures which it is not presumptuous to term providential in their coincidence with these symptoms of Zion’s revival?” Concealed in the Germanic turgidity of this remarkable sentence is a glimmer of realism.

  Next Ashley arranges a meeting between Bunsen and Peel, who will be the new prime minister, anxiously confiding to his diary the hope that Peel will have a heart, “like Solomon’s, large as the sands of the sea,” for here is matter enough to fill it—the opportunity “to plant under the banner of the Cross, God’s people on the mountains of Jerusalem.”

  Peel makes no objections, and a week later (July 19) it is Bunsen’s turn to record, after an interview with Palmerston, who is still in office: “This is a great day … the principle is admitted. So the beginning is made, please God, for the restoration of Israel.”

  Now comes Ashley’s greatest moment as bishop-maker, for Palmerston will accept whomever he designates. MacCaul had been suggested by the King of Prussia but had declined on the ground that the position should go to one of the Hebrew race. Ashley is of the same opinion, and his choice falls upon the Reverend Doctor Alexander, “an Israelite belonging to Church of England” and professor of Hebrew and Arabic at King’s College.

  The choice is accepted and then is followed by a setback when Ponsonby writes from Constantinople that the sultan is sure to refuse permission to build a church in Jerusalem. But Palmerston insists. “I wrote to Lord Ponsonby,” he tells Ashley, “and desired him to put not one shoulder but both shoulders to the wheel”—an injunction that had the desired effect on both the Ambassador and the Sultan.

  On September 23 the Bill creating the Bishopric of Jerusalem is passed by Parliament. Ashley receives a letter telling him of “the prodigious sensation the Jewish Question is creating in Liverpool. Twenty-four sermons on one Sunday in our behalf!” Reclaiming the Jews had indeed become a favorite project of “the mass of English society.” But the zeal was not universal. While the Puseyites opposed it on doctrinal grounds, there were still a few figures who retained an eighteenth-century scorn of all religious fervor and regarded the whole affair as misplaced enthusiasm. “All the young people are growing mad about religion,” grumbled Lord Melbourne, the outgoing Whig prime minister.

  But the new Conservative ministry headed by Peel was swept along in the tide of enthusiasm if not practically blackmailed into acquiescence by Ashley. He told Peel that opposition now from a Conservative government would form “a most pernicious contrast” to the warm support given to the cause by Palmerston, and he warned Aberdeen of the “strong feeling of the country and the consequences of obstruction.” He himself believed that the “love for God’s people” incarnated in the bishopric “is the truest Conservative principle and will save the country.” This seems to have been his recipe for the current crisis brought on by the wheat famine that was then gripping the country.

  At any rate his efforts, for the moment at least, were successful. Peel assured him that he would offer no obstacles, and “even Aberdeen relaxed.” Bunsen confesses being “moved to tears” by the spectacle of his dear friend Ashley, “a future Peer of this realm,” accomplishing so much good. (There is a kind of German sentimental snobbery that becomes transfixed before the image of an English nobleman, of which Bunsen seems to have been the original example.)

  Everything is now ready for the consecration. Letters gush between the King of Prussia, Ashley, and Bunsen. “Never since David has a King uttered such words,” exclaims Ashley on receiving an encouraging message from Frederick William. Even many of the High Church party have come around, including the future Cardinal Manning and, at last, Gladstone. According to Ashley he “stripped himself of a part of his Puseyite garments, spoke like a pious man,” and proposed a toast to the new Bishop. According to Bunsen he made an exquisite speech that flowed like “a gentle and translucent stream,” a most improbable description of Gladstone’s oratory.

  The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is to perform the ceremony, sits together with Ashley “in the library for two hours talking of the Jews. The dear old man is full of Zeal and piety for the cause” and affirms that “the question is deeply rooted in the heart of England.” On November 12 the solemn service takes place. Everyone is overcome with emotion. To Ashley it is the climax of all his labors. He finds it “nearly overwhelming to see a native Hebrew appointed by the Church of England to carry back to the Holy City the truths and blessings which Gentiles had received from it.” Puseyites may ill conceal the fact that “they cannot stomach the notion of a Jew elevated to the Episcopate.… Be it so. I can rejoice in Zion for a capital, in Jerusalem for a church and in a Hebrew for a King.”

  On November 18 Bishop Alexander preaches the first sermon of the “Jewish Church” as Ashley calls it, and on the 29th he starts for Jerusalem. At the last minute a hitch developed when Peel refused a Government steamboat to carry the Bishop to Syria, which Ashley thought the dignity of his position demanded. Peel “talked of provoking the Ottoman Porte—he talked of doing things quietly.

  “ ‘I don’t see,’ said he pettishly, ‘why we should be called upon to give a steam boat.’

  “ ‘I will tell you why,’ I replied. ‘A foreign potentate [the King of Prussia] has contributed half the endowment of an English bishopric, the British public has contributed the other half; there prevails the deepest, most intense interest I ever knew in the country and all we ask of our own government is the loan of a steam boat to carry out the Bishop.’

  “Peel said he would speak to Aberdeen. Thus ended a short interview equally unpleasant and odious, I should think to both parties.” But to his surprise Ashley had prevailed, for three days later Peel issues the necessary orders to the Admiralty enabling the Bishop to embark under government steam.

  Then came news that the Porte had canceled its permission to build a church. But Ponsonby “for once” proved vigorous and sent a “bold and threatening” message to the Sultan, and “even Aberdeen” resented the insult. Later, however, he reverted to his accustomed timidity and ordered Young in Jerusalem to “carefully abstain” from identifying himself, as a servant of the Crown, in any way with the Bishop’s mission or from assisting in any scheme of “interference” with the Jewish subjects of the Porte in which Bishop Alexander might possibly engage.

  But no one paid much attention to Aberdeen, and as far as Ashley was concerned the great object had been attained, “for the consolidation of Protestant truth, the welfare of Israel and the extension of the Kingdom of our Blessed Lord.”

  And what then? What of the great hopes to be realized, the great truths to be propagated, the great light that was to beam upon the world from the Anglican See in the Holy City beckoning home God’s ancient people? The painful fact is that nobody saw it. Popery did not wither away, Protestantism was not visibly advanced, Judaism remained untouched. This extraordinary and now forgotten episode that added so many degrees of heat to Victorian religious controversy found its ultimate epitaph in a report by an English traveler, E. Warburton, author of The Crescent and the Cross. In 1844 he visited Bishop Alexander’s church in Jerusalem and found a total congregation of eight converted Jews and one or two tourists. “The Hill of Zion is not a likely place for a Jew to forsake the faith of his fathers,” a Hebrew told Warburton. No one in England seems to have thought of that.

  Only Ashley, mourning the untimely death of Bishop Alexander in 1845, allowed a sliver of doubt to penetrate his mind. “Have we,” he wondered, “conceived a merely human project and then imagined it to be a decree of the Almighty?”

  *While Victoria was still princess she and her mother had dined at Montefiore’s country home in Kent, where he was a neighbor. In the year of her accession she had consciously broken precedent to knight him, the first professing Jew to receive a title. Before his departure for Damascus the Queen received him in private audience to encourage his mission.

&nbs
p; CHAPTER XI

  PALESTINE IN THE PATH OF EMPIRE

  Yet Ashley had not labored in vain. There was a valid political idea at the core of his scheme, even if there was little sense to the form that he hoped it would take. Through the agitation that his proposals had aroused the British public was gradually made aware of the strategic advantages to be gained from a sphere of influence in the Middle East. Napoleon’s expedition, Nelson’s victory at the Nile, the romantic history of Mehemet Ali’s rise and fall punctuated by the echo of British naval guns, Palmerston’s neat triumph in the Syrian crisis, the visionary prospects aroused by the Evangelical craze for conversion of the Jews and the Jerusalem bishopric, all these events centering in the Holy Land combined to create almost a proprietary feeling about Palestine. The idea of a British annex there through the medium of a British-sponsored restoration of Israel began to appeal to other minds than Ashley’s. His followers, however, invariably stressed the strategic arguments that he had added only half-heartedly to the old religious objectives.