A certain outrecuidance; that was the aristocratic Prime Minister's private view of the presumption and audacity of ‘Greater Britain’, especially those very vocal Victorians. At the behest of his Colonial Secretary, Lord Salisbury had put aside other matters of state to address the Colonial Conference at its opening on 4 April 1887. He spoke again on 26 April in his capacity as Foreign Secretary, when the vexatious question of French designs in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) was under discussion. On this second occasion he came unprepared and gave an impromptu talk, full of politesse and generalities, on the grave business of running an Empire and the need for unity, emphasising that where imperial and ‘local’ interests clashed, the ‘general good of the Empire’ should prevail.

As he sat down to hear the responses of the grateful colonials, Salisbury was even less prepared for what followed. The first speaker, from New South Wales, thanked the Prime Minister with ‘bated breath and whispering humbleness’, as Deakin characterised it in the Federal Story, for explaining the situation, and spoke in glowing terms of Empire. Even the ‘cool and dignified analysis’ which followed from Griffith of Queensland implied an acceptance of the status quo.