The Colonial Conference was an important incident of the Jubilee year. Mr Chamberlain, the new colonial secretary, made the chief address and laid before the members the proposals for discussion. He suggested the desirability of setting up an Imperial Council, with more than advisory power, and bound 'to develop into something still greater.' But, as only the prime ministers of New Zealand and Tasmania gave any sympathy, the suggestion was not pressed. He spoke in laudatory terms of the contribution of the Australasian colonies towards the British navy, and invited the other colonies to make similar offers. As to trade relations, the colonial ministers decided to consider whether they could follow Canada's example of a free preference. No definite step by Great Britain towards _zollverein_ or protection and preference was suggested. Fruitful {180} discussion took place on Asiatic immigration, the Pacific cable, and imperial penny postage. All these discussions, though without immediate results, served to outline the problems which were to face the Colonial Conference in the future--after the Boer War had given a new turn and a new insistence to these problems. It was not until then, and not until Australia spoke with one voice rather than with six, that the Colonial Conference was to come into its own as an established body for inter-imperial discussion. Outside the Conference there was much discussion of imperial relations. It was for the most part vague and rhetorical, but it showed clearly the new-born interest which was stirring wide circles in the United Kingdom. As yet Imperial Federation was the only scheme for closer union which had been at all clearly formulated, and, though it had been discredited by the failure of its advocates to find and agree upon any feasible plan, its phraseology still held the field. Sir Wilfrid himself sometimes expressed his vision in its formulas. In a striking passage in his first speech at Liverpool he pictured Macaulay's New Zealander coming not to gaze upon the ruins of St Paul's but to knock for {181} admission upon the doors of Westminster. Yet even these earlier speeches forecast the newer conception of the Empire as a partnership of equal states. 'A colony,' he described Canada, 'yet a nation--words never before in the history of the world associated together.' Making a dramatic contrast between the rebellion and discontent which marked the beginning of the Queen's reign in Canada, and the willing and unquestioned allegiance which marked it now, he showed that the secret lay in the ever-wider freedom and self-government which had been claimed and granted.