There Is Perhaps Some Warrant For Believing That The French Government,
When It Sent Out Freycinet In The Uranie And
The Physicienne from 1817 to
1820, and the Baron de Bougainville in the Esperance and the Thetis from
1824 to
1826, desired to collect information with a possible view to
colonise in some part of Australasia; though the fear that these
commanders were themselves commissioned to "plant" a colony was quite
absurd, and the express exploratory purpose of their voyages was
abundantly justified by results. Lord John Russell, in after years,
related that "during my tenure of the Colonial office, a gentleman
attached to the French Government called upon me. He asked how much of
Australia was claimed as the dominion of Great Britain. I answered, 'The
whole,' and with that answer he went away."* (* Russell's Recollections
and Suggestions (1875) page 203.) Lord John Russell was at the head of
the Colonial Office in the second Melbourne Administration, 1839 to 1841,
a long time after the French explorers had gone home and published the
histories of their voyages. But it is still quite possible that the
researches made by Freycinet and the Baron de Bougainville prompted the
inquiry of the Colonial Secretary's visitor. The phrase, "a gentleman
attached to the French Government," is rather vague. The question was
clearly not asked by the French Ambassador, or it would have been
addressed to the Foreign Secretary, who at that time was Lord Palmerston,
and whose reply would certainly not have fallen short of Lord John's,
either in emphasis or distinctness.
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