SKETCH. The relation in which Banks stood towards the colony from that time corresponded with the position he occupied in the initial stages of the movement. His interest in it might be described as a paternal one ; his right to be consulted in every measure concerning it was freely recognised by successive Ministers ; and there is no exaggeration in saying that, during the active portion of his life, no measure of any importance was adopted without his opinion having been taken on the subject. It is not easy to find a parallel instance in the history of colonisation ; but if we suppose that Sir Walter Raleigh's attempts to found a colony in North America had succeeded, we can imagine how anxiously he would have watched its progress, how steadily he would have used his influence with Burleigh to promote its interests, and how confidently he would have foretold its success in future years. The fact that he held a proprietary interest in Virginia would not justify the cynical belief that he looked upon it as a mere mer- cantile speculation ; we may credit hira with an unselfish desire to extend the dominions and the power of his country, at the same time that he hoped to profit by the results of a venture in which he had sunk £40,000 in days when money was very scarce in England. Banks, on the other hand, had no commercial objects of his own in view when he proposed the colonisation of New South Wales, and therefore his position in the matter, from first to last, was wholly free from the suspicion of self-seeking. The two men might be taken as types of their respective ages ; each was an Englishman of the heroic stamp, whose national instinct taught him to look beyond the seas for the true source of his country's greatness. Banks was bom to rule; no one can look at the lion-Kke head and figure of the man, as we see it in his portrait, without feeling that nature destined him for a throne of some kind. The only visible sceptre he held belonged Digitized by Google
