become owners of land in the new territory. We know that no such desire existed as regarded Australia when Pitt resolved to occupy the scene of Cook's discoveries. The intention being good, he deserves well of his country who avails himself of the only practical means of accomplishing his purpose, and there can he no doubt that Pitt's object was patriotic,[1]
A colony such as the world had never before seen had been rent from England in spite of warnings from his father. A jealous continent was banded together to aid the insurgent colonists; only the kindred race of the Germany abstaining from unfriendliness. The sun of England was said to be setting, her humiliation complete. Submitting herself not to the gusts of popular passion, nor to the exigencies of party, but to the genius of a man who rose above party and dared to keep his equal way despite the clamour of the crowd, England was able, before the federation of the United States was completed in 1789, to found a new state into which, within three generations, her children were to be absorbed by millions, and where they may yet flourish, as her children, till some ill-omened North or Grenville shall be permitted, while public atten-
- ↑ "In the "History of N S W. from the Records" the Editor devotes
many pages to the disparagement of Pitt's claim to any credit for the
settlement of Australia. He admits that "the proposal to occupy the
territory necessarily required the sanction of the Prime Minister," but
thinks that "there was nothing in it that appealed to his imagination or
stirred the current of his ambition." He adds (p, 381) that "there does
not appear to be any foundation for the idea, to which some writers have
given expression^ that the scheme for the settlement waft matured by Pitt,
still lees that it originated with lujn in a patriotic desire to create new
colonies in place of the old. " The writers alluded to are not named, but
surely they may urge that Pitt's object in adopting the scheme was patriotic, and that by adoption of it he founded a new state which nothing
but wickedness or folly can detach from the United Kingdom. Mr. Barton
hints in several passages that there was really no idea of founding an
Australian colony as an equivalent for the states in America, but in one
passage he generously proves that the idea existed. He quotes these lines
published in 1786: —
"Let no one think much of a trifling expense;
Who knows what may happen a hundred years hence?
The loss of America what can repay?
New colonies seek for at Botany Bay!"Assuredly the satirist of 1786 might have wondered if he had been told that in a hundred years a writer would assert that the satirist invented the "idea" in order to quiz it.
