The Admiralty Was In Later Years Severely Blamed For Compliance.
Circumstances That Have Been Narrated In Previous Pages Generated The
Suspicion that the real purpose of the expedition was "to ascertain the
real state of New Holland, to discover what
Our colonists were doing, and
what was left for the French to do, on this great continent in the event
of a peace, to find some port in the neighbourhood of our settlements
which should be to them what Pondicherry was to Hindustan, to rear the
standard of Bonaparte on the first convenient spot."* (* Quarterly Review
4 43. There can be no doubt that this Quarterly article had a great
influence in formulating the idea which has been current for nearly a
century regarding Napoleon's deep designs. Paterson's History of New
South Wales (1811) repeated portions of the article almost verbally, but
without quotation marks (see Preface page 5), and many later writers have
fed upon its leading themes, without submitting them to examination.) The
fact that this sweeping condemnation was made in a powerful organ of
opinion bitterly hostile to the administration which it meant to attack,
would minimise its importance for us, a century later, were it not that
more recent writers have adopted the same assumption. To accept it, we
have not merely to disregard the total absence of evidence, but to
believe that Spencer was befooled and that Otto deceived him. The
application was, it was urged, "grounded on false pretences," and the
passports were "fraudulently obtained." It would have been a piece of
audacity of quite superb coolness for the French diplomatist to ask for
British protection for ships on ostensible grounds of research, had their
secret purpose been exactly opposite to the profession; and the British
Minister would have been guilty of grave dereliction of duty had he not
assured himself that Otto's representations were reliable.
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