Charles Henry Churchill

The correspondence came in the wake of the Oriental Crisis of 1840, the Damascus affair of 1840 and the acceleration of the Eastern Question by the successful Greek War of Independence against Ottoman rule which had concluded ten years earlier.

What a great advantage it would be, nay, how indispensably necessary, when at length the Eastern Question comes to be argued and debated with this new ray of light thrown around it, for the Jews to be ready and prepared to say: "Behold us here all waiting, burning to return to that land which you seek to remould and regenerate.

We only ask a summons from these Powers on whose counsels the fate of the East depends to enter upon the glorious task of rescuing our beloved country from the withering influence of centuries of desolation and of crowning her plains and valleys and mountain-tops once more, with all the beauty and freshness and abundance of her pristine greatness."

There are many considerations to be weighed and examined as the question develops itself — but a beginning must be made — a resolution must be taken, an agitation must be commenced, and where the stake is "Country and Home" where is the heart that will not leap and bound to the appeal?

Your first object would be to interest the Five Great Powers in your views and to get them to advocate your view with the Sultan upon the clear understanding that the Jews, if permitted to colonise any part of Syria and Palestine, should be under the protection of the Great Powers, that they should have the internal regulation of their own affairs, that they should be exempt from military sendee (except on their own account as a measure of defence against the incursions of the Bedouin Arabs), and that they should only be called upon to pay a tribute to the Porte on the usual mode of taxation.

If you think otherwise I shall bend at once to your decision, only begging you to appreciate my motive, which is simply an ardent desire for the welfare and prosperity of a people to whom we all owe our possession of those blessed truths which direct our minds with unerring faith to the enjoyment of another and better world.

On 15 August 1842, he delivered the formal "Proposal of Colonel Churchill" to Montefiore – extract below:[5] Human efforts preceded by prayer and undertaken in faith the whole history of your nation shows to be almost invariably blessed.

It is, I hope, superfluous for me to enlarge upon the incalculable benefit which would accrue to your nation at large were such an important measure to be accomplished, or to allude more than briefly to the spirit of confidence and revival which would be excited in the breasts of your fellow-countrymen all over the world were they to be held and acknowledged agents for the Jewish people resident in Syria and Palestine under the auspices and sanction of Great Britain.

[6] Churchill wrote several important (cultural) historical works on the Middle East, including a major biography of Abd el-Kader, whom he had met during his exile in Damascus.