334 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



moment greatly to the disappointment of the other delegates, South 

 Australia decided to stand out. Mr. Service was unanimously 

 appointed chairman, but it was soon realised that so long as the 

 Council represented scarcely one-half of the population of Austral- 

 asia, it could only be a deliberative body practically helpless to 

 carry out its own decisions. It held half a dozen bi-annual sessions, 

 and dealt with several matters of intercolonial, and even inter- 

 national importance, but the expectation of its founders that its 

 powers would be enlarged in course of time, by natural accretion 

 and growing sentiment, were not realised. The keen opposition of 

 New South Wales, and the contempt with which Sir Henry Parkes 

 derided the Council's claims, gradually alienated public sympathy, 

 and when the strong personality of Mr. Service ceased to be as- 

 sociated with its deliberations, its anticipated influence grew more 

 visionary and it finally succumbed to popular indifference. 



Some three years after the first meeting of the Federal Council 

 Sir Henry Parkes once more intervened. He was stirred to action 

 by a Report on the Defences of the Colonies recently submitted by 

 Major-General Edwards, an expert sent by the British War Office 

 to investigate the position of the local forces. In October, 1889, 

 Sir Henry wrote to Mr. Gillies, Premier of Victoria, on this defence 

 question, and suggested a " national convention " for the purpose of 

 devising an adequate scheme of Federal Government. While he 

 thus lightly ignored all that had gone before, his correspondent had 

 a much more lively sense of the weary meetings that had resulted 

 from previous invitations to talk at large. Therefore, Mr. Gillies 

 besought Sir Henry to join the Federal Council, and work from that 

 established basis, enlarging and uplifting it. But the veteran could 

 hardly stoop to associate himself with an institution he had con- 

 tinuously denounced as abortive, so he declined, but continued to 

 press his original application until Mr. Gillies gave way, and the 

 Federation Conference of 1890 was held in Melbourne on the 6th of 

 February. It comprised the leading members of the Ministries of 

 all the Colonies, and the result of its deliberations was a resolution 

 to recommend to their respective Parliaments the appointment of 

 a " National Australasian Federation Convention," to be held in 

 Sydney early in the following year. 



