Yet the fact cannot escape notice, that at this particular time the French were busily laying the foundation of that new colonial dominion with which they have persevered, with admirable results, since the collapse of their oversea power during Napoleon's regime. Though their aptitude for colonisation had been "unhappily rendered sterile by the faults of their European policy,"* (* Fallot, L'Avenir Colonial de la France page 4.) the more far-seeing among their statesmen and publicists did not lose sight of the ideal of creating a new field for the diffusion of French civilisation. They commenced in 1827 that colonising enterprise in Algiers which has converted "a sombre and redoubtable barbarian coast" into "a twin sister of the Riviera of Nice, charming as she, upon the other side of the Mediterranean."* (* Hanotaux, L'Energie Francaise (1902) page 284.)
Lord John Russell was not likely to be regardless of this movement, nor unaware of the strongly marked current of opinion in France in favour of expansion.
Twenty years later Lord John Russell had the position of Australia, as a factor in world politics, brought under his notice again, through a document to which he evidently attached importance, and which is still the legitimate subject of historical curiosity. He was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the second Palmerston Administration (1859 to 1865). A great change had meanwhile taken place affecting the economic value of this large island in the South Seas. Apart from the growth of its commerce and the productive capacity of its great fertile areas, the gold discoveries of the early fifties--the nuggets of Ballarat and the rich auriferous gravels of wide belts of country--had turned the eyes of the world towards the land of whose agricultural and mineral resources so little had been previously known. France, too, had passed through a new series of changes in her very mutable modern history, and a Bonaparte once more occupied the throne, as Napoleon III.
One day the British Foreign Minister received, from a source of which we know nothing--but the Foreign Office in the Palmerstonian epoch was exceedingly well informed--a communication which, having read, he did not deposit among the official documents at Downing Street, but carefully sealed up and placed among his own private papers. His biographer, Sir Spencer Walpole, tells us all that is at present known about this mysterious piece of writing. "There is still among Lord John's papers," he says, "a simple document which purports to be a translation of a series of confidential questions issued by Napoleon III on the possibility of a French expedition, secretly collected in different ports, invading, conquering, and holding Australia. How the paper reached the Foreign Office, what credit was attached to it, what measures were suggested by it, there is no evidence to show. This only is certain. Lord John dealt with it as he occasionally dealt with confidential papers which he did not think it right to destroy, but which he did not wish to be known. He enclosed it in an envelope, sealed it with his own seal, and addressed it to himself. It was so found after his death."* (* Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell 2 177.)
Oddly enough, the period within which Lord John received the piece of information which he carefully kept to himself in the manner described, corresponds with that of the most notorious effort of Napoleon III to assert his power beyond the confines of Europe.
In 1853, the year after the establishment of the second Empire, the Government of Napoleon III had annexed New Caledonia, commencing on this island the policy of transportation in the very year in which Great Britain ceased to send convicts to Australia. Thus for the first time did France secure a footing in the South. This was a safe step to take, as the annexation was performed with the concurrence of Great Britain. But Napoleon's oversea move of nine years later was rash in the extreme.
From 1862 to 1866--after a joint Anglo-French-Spanish movement to compel the Republic of Mexico to discharge her debts to European bondholders, and after a disagreement between the allies which led to the withdrawal of the British and the Spaniards--forty thousand French troops were engaged upon the quixotic task of disciplining Mexican opinion, suppressing civil war, and imposing upon the people an unwelcome and absurd sovereign in the person of Maximilian of Austria. His throne endured as long as the French battalions remained to support it. When they withdrew, Maximilian was deposed, court-marshalled, and shot. The wild folly of the Mexican enterprise, from which France had nothing to gain, illustrated in an expensive form the unbalanced judgment and the soaring megalomaniac propensities of "the man of December." That he should institute such inquiries as are indicated by the document described by Lord John Russell's biographer, even though the preservation of friendly relations with Great Britain was essential to him, was quite in accordance with the "somewhat crafty" character of the man of whom a contemporary French historian has said: "He knew how to keep his own counsel, how to brood over a design, and how to reveal it suddenly when he felt that his moment had come."* (* M. Albert Thomas in Cambridge Modern History 11 287.) It is a little singular, however, that Russell did not allude to the mysterious paper when he wrote his Recollections and Suggestions, five years after the fall of Napoleon III. There was no imperative need for secrecy then, and the passage quoted from his book indicates that the welfare of Australia was under his consideration.
The facts set forth in the preceding pages are sufficient to show that the people of no portion of the British Empire have greater reason to be grateful for the benefits conferred by the naval strength maintained by the mother country, during the past one hundred years, than have those who occupy Australia. Their country has indeed been, in a special degree, the nursling of sea power. By naval predominance, and that alone, the way has been kept clear for the unimpeded development, on British constitutional lines, of a group of flourishing states forming "one continent-isle," whose bounds are "the girdling seas alone."
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
ALARD, Eloge Historique de Francois Péron, redacteur du Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes. Paris, 1811.