He Was, Faults Notwithstanding, A Very
Noble And High-Minded Man.
It was easy for the savants of the Institute
to show him what a fine field for enterprise there
Was in the South Seas;
and though there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that, in
acquiescing in the proposition, he yielded to any other impulse than that
of securing for France the glory of discovery, there may yet have been at
the back of his mind, so to speak, the idea that if good fortune attended
the effort, the French nation might profit otherwise than in repute. To
say so much, however, is not to admit that there is any justification for
thinking that the acquisition of dominion furnished a direct motive for
the expedition. If Bonaparte entertained such a notion he kept it to
himself. There is not a trace of it in his correspondence, or in the
memoirs of those who were intimate with him at this period. One cannot
say what thoughts took shape at the back of a mind like Napoleon's, nor
how far he was looking ahead in anything that he did. One can only judge
from the evidence available. On some of Flinders' charts there are dotted
lines to indicate coasts which he had not been able to explore fully. He
would not set down as a statement of fact what he had not verified.
History, too, has its dotted lines, where supposition fills up gaps for
which we have no certain information. There is no harm in them; there is
some advantage. But we had better take care that they remain dotted lines
until we can ink them over with certainty, and not mistake a possibly
wrong guess for a fact.
It is also necessary to distinguish between the exalted motives of which
we may think the First Consul capable in 1800, and for a year or two
after, and the use he would have made five, eight, or ten years later of
any opportunities of damaging the possessions and the prestige of Great
Britain. In the full tide of his passionate hatred against the nation
that mocked and blocked and defied him at every turn of his foreign
policy, he would unquestionably have been delighted to seize any
opportunity of striking a blow at British power anywhere. He kept Decaen
at Mauritius in the hope that events might favour an attempt on India. He
would have used discoveries made in Australasia, as he would have used
Fulton's steamboat in 1807, to injure his enemy, could he have done so
effectually. But to do that involved the possession of great naval
strength, and the services of an admiral fit to meet upon the high seas
that slim, one-armed, one-eyed man whose energy and genius were equal to
a fleet of frigates to the dogged nation whose hero he was; and in both
these requirements the Emperor was deficient.
Indeed, we can scarcely realise how much Australia owes to Britain's
overwhelming strength upon the blue water at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. But for that, not only France but other European
powers would surely have claimed the right to establish themselves upon
the continent. The proportion of it which the English occupied at the
time was proportionately no more than a fly-speck upon a window pane. She
could not colonise the whole of it, and the small portion that she was
using was a mere convict settlement. Almost any other place would have
done equally well for such a purpose. It needed some tremendous exertion
of strength to enable her to maintain exclusive possession of a whole
continent, such as Spain had vainly professed regarding America in the
sixteenth century. From the point of view of Australian "unity, peace,
and concord," the Napoleonic wars were an immense blessing, however great
an infliction they may have been to old Europe. In an age of European
tranquillity, it is pretty certain that foreign colonisation in Australia
would not have been resisted. Great Britain would not have risked a war
with a friendly power concerning a very distant land, the value and
potentialities of which were far from being immediately obvious. The
Englishman, however, is tremendously assertive when threatened. He will
fight to the last gasp to keep what he really does not want very much, if
only he supposes that his enemy wishes to take a bit of it. It was in
that spirit of pugnacity that he stretched a large muscular hand over the
whole map of Australia, and defied his foes to touch it. Before the great
struggle it would have been quite possible to think of colonising schemes
in the southern hemisphere without seriously contemplating the danger of
collision with the British. But the end of the Napoleonic wars left the
power and prestige of Great Britain upon the sea unchallengeable, and her
possessions out of Europe were placed beyond assail. This position was
fairly established before Napoleon could have made any serious attempt to
annoy or injure the English settlement in Australia. Traced back to
decisive causes, the ownership of Australia was determined on October 21,
1805, when the planks of the Victory were reddened with the life-blood of
Nelson.
The remaining points to be considered are the following.
The Treaty of Amiens was negotiated and signed in 1801 and 1802, while
Baudin's expedition was at sea. Had Napoleon desired to secure a slice of
Australia for the French, here was his opportunity to proclaim what he
wanted. Had he done so, we can have no reasonable doubt that he would
have found the British Government compliant. His Majesty's Ministers were
in a concessionary mood. By that treaty Great Britain surrendered all her
maritime conquests of recent wars, except Trinidad and Ceylon. She gave
up the Cape, Demerara, Berbice, Essequibo, Surinam, Martinique,
Guadeloupe, Minorca, and Malta.* (* Cambridge Modern History 9 75 et seq;
Brodrick and Fotheringham, Political History of England 11 9 et seq.) She
was eagerly desirous for peace.
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