and 1884 were probably that nobody in New South Wales with the status or persuasive ability of Service, Paton
and the Argus used the convict issue as an argument in favour of British annexation of the group, and that the Government, major political leaders and leading newspapers failed to support Victoria's policy. Many of the principal reasons for this failure have been summarised by Serie: free trade beliefs, reluctance to embarrass Britain, an isolationist republican movement not present in Victoria, lack of Presbyterian influence in government circles and the political strength of Roman Catholicism, and the fact that the issue of land reform occupied the centre of the political stage.^ In New
South Wales there were also no branches of the Australian Natives' Association which deprived the colony of one of
the annexationist minded pressure groups in Victoria; and the colony's economic interests discouraged an
aggressive imperialistic policy and, for some, prompted a favourable view of foreign annexation of Pacific islands.
(b) 1886-1887
The Government of Sir Patrick Jennings, which took office in February 1886, converted the New Hebrides
1 Serie, 'The Victorian Government's Campaign', p p .54-6.
policy of the Stuart administration into approval of France's offer to cease convict transportation to the Pacific in return for permission to annex the group."*" This policy was probably partly due to the personal
preferences of Jennings and his chief lieutenant, Dibbs, for French control of the group as long as no convicts were stationed there. Dibbs had made his position clear
2
in Parliament in 1884, and Jennings, at a dinner given by Sydney's French club in October 1886, spoke of the
'great boon to Australia to have the French nation
settled in the Pacific' and how it seemed to him 'a narrow and dangerous policy to endeavour to stir up strife
between France and England upon so small a question as 3
that of the New Hebrides,' with which Dibbs expressed 4
his complete agreement.
A suggested reason for Jennings' attitude is 5
that he was a Roman Catholic. It is difficult, however, to determine whether his religion would have made him
1 See McCullough, 'The Australian Reaction', p.50; and Serie, 'The Victorian Government's Campaign', p.26. 2 See above, p.131.
3 S,M,H., 20 September 1886, p.4. 4 Ibid.
favourable towards the presence of France in the Pacific. Anti-clericalism was the prevailing spirit among the
rulers of the French Republic, and the Freeman1 23s Journal in 1886 declared that 'the French are the most irreligious people in Christendom'. ^ On the other hand all Catholic
2
missionaries then in Melanesia were French, and, with the blessing of the French Government, and at the behest of the Compagnie Caledonienne des Nouvelles-Hebrides, the French Marist Fathers had decided to send four missionaries to the New Hebrides at the time Jennings
3 made his speech.
Jennings and his colleagues were probably influenced by a genuine desire to seize what seemed a golden opportunity to rid their colony of the menace of French convicts. Jennings told Governor Loftus that this seemed to him 'so great and unexpected an advantage
1 Freeman's Journal, 10 April 1886.
2 For this information I am indebted to Mr (now Dr) Hugh Laracy (now of the Department of History, University of Auckland).
3 A. Martin, Superior General of the Society of Mary, to J. Higginson, 18 October 1886, Correspondence
with Higginson, OE 208, Archives of the Marist Fathers, Rome (microfilm), Morrell, Britain in the Pacific
to be obtained in exchange for permitting France to exercise authority over islands which England has no idea whatever of colonising, that...it should be immediately taken
advantage of.'^ And he cabled to his Agent-General in London, Samuel, that in approving of France's wish to
annex the New Hebrides: 'the great desire of Government was to secure total cessation of transportation of French
convicts to the Pacific'.12 34
There were other probable reasons for the New South Wales Government's New Hebrides policy in 1886. Jennings wrote that his Cabinet was impressed by the
British Government's suggestion that Rapa - a potentially valuable island for the commerce of the eastern Pacific - might be ceded by France to Britain if the French offer
3
were accepted, and by the fact that France had promised to guarantee that no restrictions would be placed on
4
British missionaries and traders in the group. The trading interests of New South Wales in the Pacific were
1 Jennings to Loftus, 22 March 1886, N.C.S.O., Special Bundles, 4/866.
2 Jennings to Samuel, 6 May 1886, ibid.
3 Jennings to Australasian Premiers or Colonial Secretaries, 29 March 1886, ibid.
stated as an argument in favour of the policy by another member of the Government, Henry Copeland, when he
reminded Parliament of the economic advantages of French control of the New Hebrides, witnessed by the 'fact that, notwithstanding that New Caledonia is a French territory, we did within a few pounds as much trade with her in 1884
as we did with Fiji, which is British territory, in the same period.''*' A desire to accede to Britain's wishes, a factor in New South Wales attitudes to the New Hebrides question in 1883, was indicated by Jennings' statement to Loftus that he was influenced by the fact that Britain
2
had recommended the French offer. And New South Wales' political isolation from the Australian colonies that had
joined in the Federal Council of Australasia, which 3
strongly opposed the French proposal, was reflected in Jennings' petulant remark in Parliament that on this
issue he and his colleagues 'were not going to be squeezed 4 between the Melbourne Argus and the Federal Council.'
Given the relative lack of interest in the New Hebrides question in New South Wales in 1883, the colony's