Not A Scrap Of Evidence Is Adduced From Memoirs,
Letters, Or State Papers.
To represent Napoleon as obsessed with
magnificent ideas of universal dominion, scanning, like Milton's Satan
from the mountain height,
The immensity of many realms, and aspiring to
rule them all - to do this is to present an enthralling picture, inflaming
the imagination of the reader; and, perhaps, of the writer too. But we
must beware of drawing an inference and painting it to look like a fact;
we must regard historical data through the clear white glass of
criticism, not through the coloured window of a gorgeous generalisation.
The remainder of our task, then, shall be devoted to examining the
origins of Baudin's expedition. We will inquire into the instructions
given to the commander; we will follow his vessels with a careful eye to
any incidents that may point to ulterior political purposes; we will have
regard to the suspicions engendered at the time, how far they were
justifiable, and what consequences followed from them; we will search for
motives; and we will look at what the expedition did, in case there
should by any chance thereby be disclosed any hint of an aspiration
towards territorial acquisition. We will try to regard the evidence as a
whole, the object being - as the object of all honest historical inquiry
must be - to ascertain the truth about it, freed from those jealousies and
prejudices which, so freely deposited at the time, tend to consolidate
and petrify until, as with the guano massed hard on islets in
Australasian seas, it is difficult to get at the solid rock beneath for
the accretions upon it, and sometimes not easy to discriminate rock from
accretion.
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