president's address. 23 



The adoption of a proposal so one-sided would certainly have 

 been somewhat unfair to Captain Cook. Scarcely more so, how- 

 ever, than the position which 8ir Waiter Besant takes up in his 

 ver}'- interesting sketch ' Captain Cook ' (English Men of Action 

 Series, 1894). After enumerating the scanty honours, according 

 with the fashion of the time, that were paid to the great navi- 

 gator, he goes on to say : — "The immeasurable importance of the 

 gifts which Cook had bestowed upon his country was such as to 

 require the prophetic gift — the supreme wisdom — to recognise it; 

 and surely there vvas little of that wisdom in the statesmen of 

 1770. He had given to his country Australia and New Zealand 

 — nothing less; he had given to Great Britain Greater Britain." 



It is no detraction from the merits of the justly celebrated 

 Cook to say that this proposition also is one-sided and somewhat 

 unfair to Banks. The fundamental fact in the history of Aus- 

 tralia as an integral part of the British Empire is — Cook and 

 Banks, each being the complement of the other : not Cook or 

 Banks, as if they had been rivals and there were room for insti- 

 tuting invidious comparisons between them. Cook's discoveries 

 made Greater Britain possible; but Banks was the antidote to 

 the unwisdom of the statesmen of the period; and his influence 

 more than that of any one else was instrumental in converting 

 possibility into actuality. It is no depreciation of Sir Joseph's 

 merits, that ev^en his influence, great and far-reaching hs it was, 

 needed to be fortified by a national stress of circumstances result- 

 ing from the necessity of finding a fresh outlet for the criminal 

 population, before the inertia of the official mind could be wholly 

 overcome. 



Cook's share in the series of historic transactions has not been 

 allowed to go altogether unappreciated; because it has been 

 recorded pretty fully and is well-known. The publication of the 

 ' Voyages,' of Kippis' ' Life,' of Besant's ' Captain Cook,' of 

 Admiral Wharton's ' Cook's Journal,' of the ' Official History of 

 New South Wales,' and especially of the first volume of the 

 ' Historical Records of New South Wales,' has made known to 

 the world almost all there is to be known. 



