It
Was Promoted By An Academic Organisation Of Learned Men For Scientific
Objects; It Was Not An Isolated Effort, But
One of a series made by the
French, which had their counterpart in several expeditions despatched by
the British, for
The collection of data and the solution of problems of
importance to science; its equipment and personnel showed it to be what
it professed to be; and the work it did, open to serious criticism as it
is in several aspects, indicated that purposes within the scope of the
Institute of France, and not those with which diplomacy and politics were
concerned, were kept in view throughout. So much, it is claimed, has been
demonstrated. But the whole case is not exhausted in what has been
written; and in this final chapter will be briefly set forth a sequence
of reasons which go to show that Bonaparte in 1800 had no thought of
founding a new fatherland for the French in Australasia, or of
establishing upon the great southern continent a rival settlement to that
of the British at Port Jackson.
It may legitimately be suggested that though all the French expeditions
enumerated in a previous chapter, including Baudin's, were promoted for
purposes of discovery, the rulers of France were not without hope that
profit would spring from them in the shape of rich territories or fields
for French exploitation. It is, indeed, extremely likely that such was
the case. Governments, being political organisations, are swayed chiefly
by political considerations, or at any rate are largely affected by them.
When Prince Henry the Navigator fitted out the caravels that crept
timidly down the west coast of Africa, penetrating farther and farther
into the unknown, until a new ocean and new realms at length opened upon
the view he was inspired by the ideal of spreading the Christian religion
and of gaining knowledge about the shape of the world for its own sake;
but he was none the less desirous of securing augmented wealth and
dominion for Portugal.* (* See Beazley, Henry the Navigator pages 139 to
141; and E.J. Payne, in Cambridge Modern History 1 10 to 15.) It was not
solely for faith and science that he:
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