The Article Also Alluded To Another
Chart Of Part Of The Coast In The Neighbourhood Of Cape Leeuwin, As Not
Conveying Much Information.* (* It Was "Figuree Assez Grossierement Et
Sans Details.") These Statements Are Useful As Enabling Us To Understand
Why Baudin Was So Shy About Showing His Charts To Flinders.
If they gave
little satisfaction to the writer of the Moniteur article, we can imagine
what a critic who had been over the ground himself would have thought
about them.
These considerations scarcely afford reason for inferring that the
Government had formed a prejudice against the work of the expedition
before making a complete examination of its records, though it is very
probable that dissatisfaction was expressed about the charts. Hamelin,
also, would be fairly certain to intimate privately what he knew to be
the case, that Flinders had been beforehand with the most important of
the discoveries. Indeed, the Moniteur article expressly mentioned that
when Baudin met Flinders, the latter had "pursued the coast from Cape
Leeuwin to the place of meeting." The information that the English
captain had accomplished so much, despite the fact that he had left
England months after Baudin sailed from France, was not calculated to
give pleasure to Ministers. It was to this feeling that Sir Joseph Banks
referred when, in writing to Flinders, he said that he had heard that the
French Government were not too well pleased with Baudin's work.* (*
Girard, writing in 1857, stated that rumours about Baudin's conduct,
circulated before the arrival of Le Geographe, induced the public to
believe that the expedition had been abortive, without useful results,
and that it was to the interest of the Government to forget all about it.
F. Peron, page 46. But Girard cites no authority for the statement, and
as he was not born in 1804, he is not himself an authoritative witness.
He merely repeated Freycinet's assertions.)
The distinguished men of science who stood at the head of the Institute
of France were best qualified to judge of the value of the work done; and
they at least spoke decisively in its praise. The collections brought
home by Le Naturaliste had included one hundred and eighty cases of
minerals and animals, four cases of dried plants, three large casks of
specimens of timber, two boxes of seeds, and sixty tubs of living
plants.* (* Moniteur, 14th Messidor, Revolutionary Year 11 (July 3,
1803).) On June 9, 1806, a Committee of the Institute, consisting of
Cuvier, Laplace, Bougainville, Fleurieu, and Lacepede, furnished a report
based upon an examination of the scientific specimens and the manuscript
of the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes, which, in the meantime,
had been written by Peron. They referred in terms of warm eulogy to the
industry which had collected more than one hundred thousand specimens; to
the new species discovered, estimated by the professors at the Musee at
two thousand five hundred; and to the care and skill displayed by Peron
in describing and classifying, a piece of work appealing with especial
force to the co-ordinating intelligence of Cuvier. They directed
attention to the observations made by the naturalist upon the British
colony at Port Jackson; and their language on this subject may be deemed
generous in view of the fact that England and France were then at war.
"M. Peron," reported the savants, "has applied himself particularly to
studying the details of that vast system of colonisation which is being
developed at once upon a great continent, upon innumerable islands, and
upon the wide ocean. His work in that respect should be of the greatest
interest for the philosopher and the statesman. Never, perhaps, did a
subject more interesting and more curious offer itself to the meditation
of either, than the colony of Botany Bay, so long misunderstood in
Europe."* (* The colony was not at Botany Bay, though the mistake was
common enough even in England. But the champion error on that subject was
that of Dumas, who, in Les Trois Mousquetaires, chapter 52 - the period,
as "every schoolboy knows," of Cardinal Richelieu - represents Milady as
reflecting bitterly on her fate, and fearing that D'Artagnan would
transport her "to some loathsome Botany Bay," a century and a quarter
before Captain Cook discovered it! Dumas, however, was a law unto himself
in such matters.) Never, perhaps, was there a more shining example of the
powerful influence of laws and institutions upon the character of
individuals and peoples. To transform the most redoubtable highwaymen,
the most abandoned thieves of England, into honest and peaceable
citizens; to make laborious husbandmen of them; to effect the same
revolution in the characters of the vilest women; to force them, by
infallible methods, to become honest wives and excellent mothers of
families; to take the young and preserve them, by the most assiduous
care, from the contagion of their reprobate parents, and so to prepare a
generation more virtuous than that which it succeeds: such is the
touching spectacle that these new English colonies present."
The passage may be compared with Peron's own observations on the same
subject, given in Chapter 9. A more erroneous view of the effects of
convict colonisation could hardly have been conveyed; but the paragraph
may have been written to catch the eye of Napoleon, who was a strong
believer in transportation as a remedial punishment for serious crime,
and had spoken in favour of it in the Council of State during the
discussions on the Civil Code.* (* See Thibaudeau, Memoires sur le
Consulat, English edition, translated by G.K. Fortescue, LL.D., London
1908 page 180. Transportation, said Napoleon, "is in accord with public
opinion, and is prescribed by humane considerations. The need for it is
so obvious that we should provide for it at once in the Civil Code. We
have now in our prisons six thousand persons who are doing nothing, who
cost a great deal of money, and who are always escaping. There are thirty
to forty highwaymen in the south who are ready to surrender to justice on
condition that they are transported.
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