Having received draft constitutions from four Australian colonies, Britain entered the final phase of granting responsible government, and with it, transferring control of Aboriginal policy. During this time, British governments had become preoccupied with major upheavals in New Zealand, British North America, southern Africa and Jamaica, as well as the Crimean War. This chapter traces the steps by which British governments withdrew from Aboriginal policy in Australia, contrasting this with their far messier withdrawal of responsibility in New Zealand and Canada. Once self-government was granted to most of the colonies in the mid 1850s, British government and public attention to Australian Aboriginal people dramatically declined, and most British politicians now considered it more important to maintain British military strength closer to home. Self-government provided a rationale for insisting that the colonies pay their own defence costs including those arising from conflicts with Indigenous people. Yet despite British disengagement from Australian Aboriginal people and their welfare, there were two arenas in which British interest in Australian Aboriginal people continued – in the emerging field of racial science, and to some degree in the monarchy and its representatives. This chapter explores this curious mix of British political disengagement, scientific interest, and royal connection