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.
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