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.
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