Shaftesbury was also a student of Edward Bickersteth and the two men became prominent advocates of Christian Zionism in Britain. Shaftesbury was an early proponent of the Restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land, providing the first proposal by a major politician to resettle Jews in Palestine. The conquest of Greater Syria in 1831 by Muhammad Ali of Egypt changed the conditions under which European power politics operated in the Near East. As a consequence of that shift, Shaftesbury was able to help persuade Foreign Minister Palmerston to send a British consul, James Finn, to Jerusalem in 1838. Shaftesbury became president of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, of which Finn was a prominent member. A committed Christian and a loyal Englishman, Shaftesbury argued for a Jewish return because of what he saw as the political and economic advantages to England and because he believed that it was God's will. In January 1839, Shaftesbury published an article in the "Quarterly Review", which although initially commenting on the 1838 "Letters on Egypt, Edom and the Holy Land (1838)" by Lord Lindsay, provided the first proposal by a major politician to resettle Jews in Palestine: