The praise thus officially bestowed upon Freycinet's work will be felt to be deserved by any one who studies the atlas of 1812; but admiration of the workmanship will not commit the careful student to an equally cordial opinion concerning the completeness and accuracy of the charts as representations of the coasts traversed by the expedition. The south coast--the most important part, since here the field was entirely fresh--was very faulty in outline, and in other parts where Baudin's vessels had opportunities for doing complete work, important features were missed. And at the back of it all there looms the shadow of Matthew Flinders, the merit of whose own work shines out all the brighter for the contrast.* (* A remarkable example of the way to avoid difficult questions by ignoring them is afforded by Girard's book on Peron, which, throughout its 278 pages, contains no reference whatever to Flinders. It devotes forty pages to the voyage, but absolutely suppresses all reference to the Encounter Bay incident, the imprisonment of Flinders, and other questions concerning him. Yet Girard's book was "couronne par la Societe d'emulation de d'Allier." There should have been some "rosemary, that's for remembrance," in the crown.)
CHAPTER 12. CONCLUSIONS AND CONSEQUENCES.
Further consideration of Napoleon's purposes. What Australia owes to British sea power. Influence of the Napoleonic wars. Fresh points relative to Napoleon's designs. Absence of evidence. Consequences of suspicions of French intentions. Promotion of settlement in Tasmania. Tardy occupation of Port Phillip. The Swan River Settlement. The Westernport scheme. Lord John Russell's claim of "the Whole" of Australia for the British. The designs of Napoleon III. Australia the nursling of sea power.
The question of paramount interest connected with the events considered in the foregoing pages is whether or not the expedition of 1800 to 1804 had a political purpose. It is hoped that the examination to which the facts have been subjected has been sufficient to show that it had not. 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.
