In the early 1850s New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania were all permitted to draft new constitutions for themselves, embodying the principle of responsible self-government. In both New South Wales and Victoria the drafting committees made reference to the possibility of federation in their reports, but in each case the actual colonial draft constitutions that were prepared contained no such provisions.
In 1854 William Wentworth, a prominent member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, went to London to see their draft constitution safely through the British Parliament, and while there he participated in the formation of a body calling itself the General Association for the Australian Colonies. Both the General Association and Wentworth as an individual urged the Colonial Office to legislate for the federal union of the colonies at the same time as the constitutions were approved.
However, mindful of Grey's experience a few years earlier, the British authorities replied that they could take no action until the initiative came directly from the parliaments of the colonies. In 1857 fresh overtures from Wentworth, now living in London, through the General Association for the Australian Colonies, met with the same response.
For a few years there seemed to be a possibility that the colonial parliaments might indeed themselves take up the idea of federation in earnest. A select committee of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, appointed at the instigation of Edward Deas Thompson recommended co-operation with the other colonies to secure federal union.
In the same year a select committee of the Victorian Legislative Assembly under the chairmanship of Charles Gavan Duffy reported in favour of federation and suggested that an inter-colonial conference be called to determine what kind of federation would be most suitable.
In South Australia, there was an immediate response, select committees of both Houses of Parliament reporting in November 1857 that federation seemed premature but that a conference would be justified.
In Tasmania, the House of Assembly recorded it's willingness to be represented and at one stage actually appointed delegates.
Later, in 1860, the Colonial Secretary of the newly created colony of Queensland expressed misgivings about federation but agreed to recommend participation in a conference.
However this appearance of unanimity was deceptive, for the colonies were in fact diverging from each other rather than drawing together; nothing came of all the reports and correspondence, and the proposed conference did not take place.
Duffy, the most ardent federalist of the period, laid the responsibility for this at the door of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales since that House did not respond to the call for a conference. Its leading members were busy jockeying for office and were in any case suspicious of any proposal emanating from Victoria.
Had there been a conference it is most unlikely that anything would have come of it, for there were few true federalists in any of the colonies. The newer colonies were proud of their independence and afraid that federation might allow New South Wales to regain hegemony over them. New South Wales was jealous of the spectacular progress of Victoria and afraid that it might be outvoted in a federal assembly by a combination of the smaller colonies. While it was true that all colonies had a great deal in common, they were far more conscious of their differences and preoccupied with working out the implications of their new constitutions. There was, in short, a great deal of local patriotism and no wider feeling of Australian nationality.
The absence of national sentiment puzzled and frustrated Duffy, who had come to Australia after years of unavailing political activity as an Irish nationalist, but most of the other early spokesmen for federation were moved mainly by the desire for greater administrative convenience.