BY JAMES B. WALKKH. 99 



possessions in America, though sho (>n her side liad 

 dealt us a return blow in assisting to tear from England 

 her North American Colonies. 



But the struggle was not over, and it was destined to 

 yield yet wider triumphs for the Eiiglisii race. 'I'he very 

 humiliation Avhich France had hol))ed to inflict on her 

 rival was to prove a potent factor in the further ex])ansion 

 of "Greater Britain." It is probably no exaggeration 

 to say that it is to the hostility of France, and her action 

 in America, that we owe in no small measure the Bi-itish Expansion of 

 colonisation of Australia — a work which must ever stand '"^'''"*' 

 as the most momentous event of our century. 



The secession of her North American provinces had well 

 nigh left England without a colonial empire. English- 

 men straightway set themselves to search for a com- 

 pensation for their lost possessions, and to find a new 

 outlet for their energies and for their surplus population. 

 A new world lay ready to their hand. As David 

 Livingstone, in our own days, has called into existence 

 a new realm in the dark continent of Africa, so in the 

 days of our great grandfathers, the genius of Captain 

 Cook, England's greatest circumnavigator, had opened 

 up a new realm in the unknown and mysterious seas 

 of the South. But in these Southern seas, as formerly 

 in America and India, England and France were, and 

 indeed still are, I'ivals. In exploration each nation can 

 boast of distinguished names. The English navigators, 

 Anson, Vancouver, Cook, Furneaux, and Flinders, had 

 active competitors in the Frenchmen, Bougainville, 

 Marion, Surville, La Perouse, D'Entrecasteaux, and 

 Baudin. Nor were the English the first to entertain the 

 design of colonising tiie new lands. So far back as the 

 year 1756, an eminent and learned French advocate, 

 M. le President Charles de Brosses, in his Histoire des 

 Navigations aux Terres Australes, had strongly urged 

 upon the Government of France the wisdom of establishing 

 a Frencii colony in the South Seas. In the ,vork cited, the 

 author passes in review the rohitive advantages of various 

 portions of the Southern world, and concludes that some 

 part of Australasia* offers the best })r()spect for settle- 

 ment, the country being favourable, and access easy, with 



*De Brosses was President of the Parliament of Dijon. To hiin 

 we owe the invention of tlio nuuic Australasia. Nuv. aux Torres 

 Au6t.,i.,80. 



