Further consideration of Napoleon's purposes. What Australia owes to British sea power. Influence of the Napoleonic wars. Fresh points relative to Napoleon's designs. Absence of evidence. Consequences of suspicions of French intentions. Promotion of settlement in Tasmania. Tardy occupation of Port Phillip. The Swan River Settlement. The Westernport scheme. Lord John Russell's claim of "the Whole" of Australia for the British. The designs of Napoleon III. Australia the nursling of sea power. The question of paramount interest connected with the events considered in the foregoing pages is whether or not the expedition of 1800 to 1804 had a political purpose. It is hoped that the examination to which the facts have been subjected has been sufficient to show that it had not. It was promoted by an academic organisation of learned men for scientific objects; it was not an isolated effort, but one of a series made by the French, which had their counterpart in several expeditions despatched by the British, for the collection of data and the solution of problems of importance to science; its equipment and personnel showed it to be what it professed to be; and the work it did, open to serious criticism as it is in several aspects, indicated that purposes within the scope of the Institute of France, and not those with which diplomacy and politics were concerned, were kept in view throughout. So much, it is claimed, has been demonstrated. But the whole case is not exhausted in what has been written; and in this final chapter will be briefly set forth a sequence of reasons which go to show that Bonaparte in 1800 had no thought of founding a new fatherland for the French in Australasia, or of establishing upon the great southern continent a rival settlement to that of the British at Port Jackson. It may legitimately be suggested that though all the French expeditions enumerated in a previous chapter, including Baudin's, were promoted for purposes of discovery, the rulers of France were not without hope that profit would spring from them in the shape of rich territories or fields for French exploitation. It is, indeed, extremely likely that such was the case. Governments, being political organisations, are swayed chiefly by political considerations, or at any rate are largely affected by them. When Prince Henry the Navigator fitted out the caravels that crept timidly down the west coast of Africa, penetrating farther and farther into the unknown, until a new ocean and new realms at length opened upon the view he was inspired by the ideal of spreading the Christian religion and of gaining knowledge about the shape of the world for its own sake; but he was none the less desirous of securing augmented wealth and dominion for Portugal.* (* See Beazley, Henry the Navigator pages 139 to 141; and E.J. Payne, in Cambridge Modern History 1 10 to 15.) It was not solely for faith and science that he: