Lord Shaftesbury was a British politician, Zionist , philanthropist and social reformer of the early to mid eighteen hundreds.
He was an Evangelical Christian — a believer in the “imminent second coming of Christ” dependent on the return of the Jews to Palestine.
His mother in law would go on to marry future Prime Minister Lord Palmerston (there were valid rumours that Palmerston was actually the father of Shaftesbury’s wife as he was having an affair with her mother).
Whatever the truth he had close connections to the future Prime Minister of Britain.
in 1838, Lord Shaftesbury had prepared a memorandum for the Foreign Secretary (at the time), Lord Palmerston, suggesting Jewish settlement in Palestine under British guarantees.
This would actually be the precursor of the Balfour Declaration of November 1917.
In 1876, Shaftesbury again pushed the idea in Parliament:
https://t.me/Anglomania
