History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

Lord Palmerston was very active on behalf of the Jews, both on general grounds of policy and because his stepfather-in-law, Lord Shaftesbury, believed strongly that the return of the Jews to Jerusalem would hasten the Second Coming.33 Between 1827 and 1839, largely through British efforts, the population of Jerusalem rose from 550 to 5,500 and in all Palestine it topped 10,000 – the real beginning of the Jewish return to the Promised Land. In 1838 Palmerston appointed the first western vice-consul in Jerusalem, W. T. Young, and told him ‘to afford protection to the Jews generally’.34 Two years later he wrote to Lord Ponsonby, British ambassador in Constantinople, instructing him to put pressure on the Turks to allow Jews from Europe to return to Palestine.