"My Intention Certainly Is," He Said To Thibaudeau, "To Multiply The Works Of Peace.

It may be that in the future I shall be better known by them than by my victories." The

Memoires of the shrewd observer to whom the words were uttered, give us perhaps a more intimate acquaintance with the Consular Bonaparte than does any other single book; and it is impossible to study them without deriving the impression that he was at this time far more than a great soldier. He was, faults notwithstanding, a very noble and high-minded man. It was easy for the savants of the Institute to show him what a fine field for enterprise there was in the South Seas; and though there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that, in acquiescing in the proposition, he yielded to any other impulse than that of securing for France the glory of discovery, there may yet have been at the back of his mind, so to speak, the idea that if good fortune attended the effort, the French nation might profit otherwise than in repute. To say so much, however, is not to admit that there is any justification for thinking that the acquisition of dominion furnished a direct motive for the expedition. If Bonaparte entertained such a notion he kept it to himself. There is not a trace of it in his correspondence, or in the memoirs of those who were intimate with him at this period. One cannot say what thoughts took shape at the back of a mind like Napoleon's, nor how far he was looking ahead in anything that he did. One can only judge from the evidence available. On some of Flinders' charts there are dotted lines to indicate coasts which he had not been able to explore fully. He would not set down as a statement of fact what he had not verified. History, too, has its dotted lines, where supposition fills up gaps for which we have no certain information. There is no harm in them; there is some advantage. But we had better take care that they remain dotted lines until we can ink them over with certainty, and not mistake a possibly wrong guess for a fact.

It is also necessary to distinguish between the exalted motives of which we may think the First Consul capable in 1800, and for a year or two after, and the use he would have made five, eight, or ten years later of any opportunities of damaging the possessions and the prestige of Great Britain. In the full tide of his passionate hatred against the nation that mocked and blocked and defied him at every turn of his foreign policy, he would unquestionably have been delighted to seize any opportunity of striking a blow at British power anywhere. He kept Decaen at Mauritius in the hope that events might favour an attempt on India. He would have used discoveries made in Australasia, as he would have used Fulton's steamboat in 1807, to injure his enemy, could he have done so effectually.

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