NEW HEBRIDES. 



539 



to the Colonial Office, which laid it before the 

 governments of the Australian colonies. They 

 refused to accede to such an arrangement. 



The French Occupation. In 1885 the natives 

 had attacked French plantations in the New 

 Hebrides, and killed and wounded several 

 persons. On June 1, 1886, a French naval 

 vessel that had been sent by the authorities at 

 Noumea without the knowledge of the Gov- 

 ernment at Paris, arrived at Havanna Harbor, 

 in the island of Exate, and landed 100 French 

 marines, who established there a military post, 

 and raised the French flag. Immediately 

 afterward another force took possession of 

 Port Sandwich, and established there a similar 

 post. The occupation of the islands by France 

 excited the indignation and anger of the Aus- 

 tralians, who were already greatly stirred up 

 over the French recidivist law. The aim of 

 French legislators in regard to their penal set- 

 tlement in the Pacific was not simply to rid 

 France of habitual malefactors, but, by remov- 

 ing criminals from the associations and con- 

 ditions which prevented even those who desired 

 to live an honest life from reforming, to give 

 them every opportunity and incentive to be- 

 come prosperous agriculturists. Quite as base- 

 less as the expectations of the French reformers 

 was the anxiety and dread produced in Aus- 

 tralia by the humanitarian legislation of the 

 French Parliament. There have been rare in- 

 stances of convicts from New Caledonia escap- 

 ing in open boats, crossing the 700 miles of 

 intervening ocean, and landing on the coast of 

 Queensland. After performing such a feat of 

 daring and endurance, they have sometimes 

 been succored and concealed from the authori- 

 ties by Queenslanders who admired their cour- 

 age and pitied their sufferings. Thus a few 

 transported felons have escaped into Australia. 

 The military occupation of the New Hebrides 

 by the French was interpreted in only one way 

 by the Australians, whose minds were filled 

 with the dread of an influx of French criminals 

 kept up by the factitious agitation of the re- 

 cidivist question. They supposed that, since 

 the land available for reformed criminal settle- 

 ments in New Caledonia was now occupied, 

 the French Government intended to extend 

 these settlements to the New Hebrides. Such 

 a project was, in fact, entertained by a benev- 

 olent society in France. The Imperial Gov- 

 ernment had declined to annex the various un- 

 occupied islands of the Pacific when urged to 

 do so by the Australian. Recently it had been 

 impelled by the exigencies of European politics 

 to acquiesce in the occupation of the northern 

 coast of Papua by the Germans. Similar mo- 

 tives might now induce it to assent to the 

 French annexation of the New Hebrides, if it 

 had not done so already. The colonial con- 

 ference that was held in London in the spring 

 of 1887, had two animated debates over the 

 New Hebrides question, in which the feelings 

 of the Australian colonists were so vigorously 

 expressed that the Government omitted this 



part of the proceedings in the Blue Book con- 

 taining the minutes of the conference. 



The French ministers, in effect, perceiving 

 the awkward situation in which the British 

 Government was placed by the action of the 

 French colonial authorities, which was at first 

 discountenanced, but on inquiry was justified, 

 by the Government at Paris, determined to use 

 the New Hebrides question as a means of ob- 

 taining a favorable settlement of the Egyptian 

 question. The French had gone tot he New 

 Hebrides to protect the lives and property of 

 colonists. They remained there in violation of 

 their pledges, as the English had in Egypt, 

 and replied to the representations of the Brit- 

 ish Foreign Office with the same sort of ex- 

 planations and assurances that they were used 

 to receiving from London with regard to the 

 British occupation of the Nile valley. M. 

 Flourens assured the English ambassador, after 

 the French military had been quartered in 

 substantial barracks for nearly a year at the 

 ports of the New Hebrides, that France had no 

 intention of permanently occupying the islands, 

 and no definitive character ought to be at- 

 tributed to her action. As soon as satisfactory 

 arrangements could be made for policing the 

 islands so that Europeans would be preserved 

 from outrage, he promised that the French 

 troops should be withdrawn. Soon after the 

 French force landed, the British Government 

 sent a naval vessel to the New Hebrides. The 

 English Cabinet, as soon as the French position 

 was explained through diplomatic channels, 

 proposed a system of joint naval protection. 

 To this the French Government replied with 

 a counter-proposal, which was declined on 

 Nov. 26, 1886. The French Government in- 

 sisted that the negotiations in regard to the 

 New Hebrides and those relating to the neutrali- 

 zation of the Suez Canal should proceed pari 

 passu. When asked to name a date for the 

 evacuation of the New Hebrides, M. Flourens 

 replied that he could not give a precise answer 

 so long as England did not make known her 

 intentions regarding Egypt and the Suez Canal. 

 The subject was treated by the French Cabinet 

 in connection with other territorial questions 

 in regard to Pacific islands, and was not finally 

 settled till October, 1887, when the British 

 Government agreed also to the Suez Canal 

 convention. 



The New Hebrides Convention. The convention 

 that was concluded between the British and 

 the French government contains five articles. 

 A joint naval control of the islands was agreed 

 on, and a date was fixed for the withdrawal of 

 the French troops. The English Government 

 agreed to abrogate the treaty made in 1847 be- 

 tween Lord Palmerston and the Comte de 

 Jarnac regarding the neutrality of the Leeward 

 Islands, and allow the French to extend the 

 Tahiti protectorate to the islands of Huahine, 

 Raiatea, and Borabara, and the small islands 

 adjacent thereto. This concession was em- 

 bodied in the Newfoundland fisheries conven- 



