Yet the fact cannot escape notice, that at this particular time the French were busily laying the foundation of that new colonial dominion with which they have persevered, with admirable results, since the collapse of their oversea power during Napoleon's regime. Though their aptitude for colonisation had been "unhappily rendered sterile by the faults of their European policy,"* (* Fallot, L'Avenir Colonial de la France page 4.) the more far-seeing among their statesmen and publicists did not lose sight of the ideal of creating a new field for the diffusion of French civilisation. They commenced in 1827 that colonising enterprise in Algiers which has converted "a sombre and redoubtable barbarian coast" into "a twin sister of the Riviera of Nice, charming as she, upon the other side of the Mediterranean."* (* Hanotaux, L'Energie Francaise (1902) page 284.)
Lord John Russell was not likely to be regardless of this movement, nor unaware of the strongly marked current of opinion in France in favour of expansion.
Twenty years later Lord John Russell had the position of Australia, as a factor in world politics, brought under his notice again, through a document to which he evidently attached importance, and which is still the legitimate subject of historical curiosity. He was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the second Palmerston Administration (1859 to 1865). A great change had meanwhile taken place affecting the economic value of this large island in the South Seas. 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. He enclosed it in an envelope, sealed it with his own seal, and addressed it to himself. It was so found after his death."* (* Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell 2 177.)