There is perhaps some warrant for believing that the French Government, when it sent out Freycinet in the Uranie and the Physicienne from 1817 to 1820, and the Baron de Bougainville in the Esperance and the Thetis from 1824 to 1826, desired to collect information with a possible view to colonise in some part of Australasia; though the fear that these commanders were themselves commissioned to "plant" a colony was quite absurd, and the express exploratory purpose of their voyages was abundantly justified by results. Lord John Russell, in after years, related that "during my tenure of the Colonial office, a gentleman attached to the French Government called upon me. He asked how much of Australia was claimed as the dominion of Great Britain. I answered, 'The whole,' and with that answer he went away."* (* Russell's Recollections and Suggestions (1875) page 203.) Lord John Russell was at the head of the Colonial Office in the second Melbourne Administration, 1839 to 1841, a long time after the French explorers had gone home and published the histories of their voyages. But it is still quite possible that the researches made by Freycinet and the Baron de Bougainville prompted the inquiry of the Colonial Secretary's visitor. The phrase, "a gentleman attached to the French Government," is rather vague. The question was clearly not asked by the French Ambassador, or it would have been addressed to the Foreign Secretary, who at that time was Lord Palmerston, and whose reply would certainly not have fallen short of Lord John's, either in emphasis or distinctness. It may well be, however, that the Government of King Louis Philippe--whose chief advisers during the period were Thiers (1839 to 1840) and Guizot (from July 1840)--desired to make their inquiry in a semi-official manner to avoid causing offence. Yet the fact cannot escape notice, that at this particular time the French were busily laying the foundation of that new colonial dominion with which they have persevered, with admirable results, since the collapse of their oversea power during Napoleon's regime. Though their aptitude for colonisation had been "unhappily rendered sterile by the faults of their European policy,"* (* Fallot, L'Avenir Colonial de la France page 4.) the more far-seeing among their statesmen and publicists did not lose sight of the ideal of creating a new field for the diffusion of French civilisation. They commenced in 1827 that colonising enterprise in Algiers which has converted "a sombre and redoubtable barbarian coast" into "a twin sister of the Riviera of Nice, charming as she, upon the other side of the Mediterranean."* (* Hanotaux, L'Energie Francaise (1902) page 284.) Lord John Russell was not likely to be regardless of this movement, nor unaware of the strongly marked current of opinion in France in favour of expansion.