1110 



PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 



(or Centenary) Celebrations would have secured to New South 

 Wales an enduring renown worthy of the completion of her 

 Century, more lasting than Statues of Bronze or Parliament 

 Houses, or these other celebrations which leave no more stable 

 a memorial than that famous spirit did which departed "with a 

 strong smell of sulphur and a melodious twang." The British 

 Government decline, and very properly decline, to take part in a 

 Joint Stock Exploration. On the same grounds we New South 

 Walesmen also should shrink from confederate action where the 

 terms and conditions of the confederacy are informal and indefinite. 

 Let Victoria by herself or South Australia Ijy herself, or Tas- 

 mania or (more logically) let New South Wales assume the inception, 

 the contrivance, and the pi'osecution of this enterprise, and the 

 other young States which we call colonies may assist. But 

 let us have no divided councils. Let the authority be One, and 

 let the responsibility rest upon One. We know well enough how 

 confidently the most unfit persons will compete for the direction 

 of an exploring expe lition or any other perilous business ; we 

 know also unhappily, how the least fit are quite as likely to be 

 appointed to take charge of the health and lives of men, to say 

 nothing of the possible results of exploration, as those are whose 

 lives have been devoted to enterprises of the same kind; and we 

 therefore also know that a .Joint Exploration Committee, with its 

 representatives from four or five diflferent states, will go to pieces 

 from the want of an absolute and definite command, a full and 

 recognised responsibility. Whatever is badly planned and so 

 breaks down, or whatever fails, whtither from want of sufficient 

 foresight, or because new and unexpected conditions, quite out of 

 ordinary calculations, have intervened, cannot be entei'ed against 

 the account of any membrsr of the committee. Or at best the 

 least useful, the least energetic hangers on to the labour and luck 

 of others, will escape censure in case of disaster, and will absorb 

 all credit in the improbable event of success. 



No, gentlemen, if an exploratory expedition into the Antarctic 

 regions is to have any fair chance of success, it must start from one 

 of these Southern States, and must be entirely under the control 



