The Consequences Of The Suspicion That Napoleon Intended To Seize A Site In Australia, Were, However, Quite As Important As If He Had Formally Announced His Intention Of Doing So.

What men believe to be true, not what is true, determines their action; and there was quite enough in the circumstances that occurred to make Governor King and his superiors in England resolve upon decisive action.

King having communicated his beliefs to Ministers, Lord Hobart, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, in June 1803, wrote a despatch in which he authorised the colonisation of Van Diemen's Land by the removal of part of the establishment at Norfolk Island to Port Dalrymple - "the advantageous position of which, upon the southern coast of Van Diemen's Land, and near the entrance of Bass Straits, renders it, in a political view, particularly necessary that a settlement should be formed there."* (* See Backhouse Walker, Early Tasmania page 22.) It will be observed that the Secretary of State's geographical knowledge of the countries under his regime was quite remarkable. A man who should describe Glasgow as being on the southern coast of England, near the eastern entrance of the Channel, would be just about as near the truth as Lord Hobart managed to get.* (* Froude's amusing story of Lord Palmerston, when, on forming a Ministry, he thought he would have to take the Secretaryship of State for the Colonies himself, comes to mind. He said to Sir Arthur Helps, "Come upstairs with me, Helps; we will look at the maps, and you shall show me where these places are." Froude's Oceana page 12.)

King moved immediately. He despatched the Lady Nelson and the Albion on August 31 to establish a settlement on the river Derwent, with Lieutenant John Bowen in charge; and in September 1803 the first British colony in Tasmania was planted. It had a variety of adverse experiences before at length the beautiful site of the city of Hobart, at the foot of Mount Wellington, was determined upon; but here, at all events, was a beginning, and the tale from that time forward has been one of steady progress.

As soon as the imagined threat of French invasion lost its impulsion, the colonising energy of the governing authorities subsided. The Tasmanian settlement remained and grew, but Trafalgar removed all fear of foreign interference. Hence it was that nearly forty years elapsed before any real effort was made to settle the lands within Port Phillip. Then the first energies that were devoted towards creating the great state of Victoria were not directed by the Government, which no longer had any political motive for forcing matters, but were made by enterprising stock-owners searching for pastures. It was not till 1835 that John Batman pushed up the river Yarra, found the site of the present city of Melbourne, and said, "This will be the place for a village!" Trafalgar and the security which it gave to British possessions oversea made all the difference between the early occupation of Tasmania for fear the French should take it, and the leisurely and non-official settlement of the Port Phillip district, when it was quite certain that no foreign power could set a foot upon it without British permission.

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