From 1862 to 1866--after a joint Anglo-French-Spanish movement to compel the Republic of Mexico to discharge her debts to European bondholders, and after a disagreement between the allies which led to the withdrawal of the British and the Spaniards--forty thousand French troops were engaged upon the quixotic task of disciplining Mexican opinion, suppressing civil war, and imposing upon the people an unwelcome and absurd sovereign in the person of Maximilian of Austria. His throne endured as long as the French battalions remained to support it. When they withdrew, Maximilian was deposed, court-marshalled, and shot. The wild folly of the Mexican enterprise, from which France had nothing to gain, illustrated in an expensive form the unbalanced judgment and the soaring megalomaniac propensities of "the man of December." That he should institute such inquiries as are indicated by the document described by Lord John Russell's biographer, even though the preservation of friendly relations with Great Britain was essential to him, was quite in accordance with the "somewhat crafty" character of the man of whom a contemporary French historian has said: "He knew how to keep his own counsel, how to brood over a design, and how to reveal it suddenly when he felt that his moment had come."* (* M. Albert Thomas in Cambridge Modern History 11 287.) It is a little singular, however, that Russell did not allude to the mysterious paper when he wrote his Recollections and Suggestions, five years after the fall of Napoleon III. There was no imperative need for secrecy then, and the passage quoted from his book indicates that the welfare of Australia was under his consideration. The facts set forth in the preceding pages are sufficient to show that the people of no portion of the British Empire have greater reason to be grateful for the benefits conferred by the naval strength maintained by the mother country, during the past one hundred years, than have those who occupy Australia. Their country has indeed been, in a special degree, the nursling of sea power. By naval predominance, and that alone, the way has been kept clear for the unimpeded development, on British constitutional lines, of a group of flourishing states forming "one continent-isle," whose bounds are "the girdling seas alone." BIBLIOGRAPHY. ALARD, Eloge Historique de Francois Peron, redacteur du Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes. Paris, 1811. Almanac de Gotha, 1811, contains a good narrative of the Baudin expedition, founded on Peron's first volume, giving an account of the discoveries claimed to have been made. Annual Register, 1800 to 1814. Various References. AUDIAT, Louis, Peron, sa vie, ses voyages (en Oceanie) et ses ouvrages. Moulins, 1855. AULARD, A., Paris sous le Consulat. 5 volumes. Paris, 1903. BANKS, THOMAS, System of Universal Geography. 2 volumes. London, 1790.