Recalling to the House the contributions of Dadabhai Naoroji and Mancherjee Bhownagree, Indian MPs serving in the House of Commons, Hedderwick mooted the possibility that an autonomous India might one day be represented in an Imperial Parliament.
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While Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1895 to 1903, was sympathetic to the idea, his proposals for a permanent Imperial Council or Council of the Empire which would be a kind of Imperial Parliament passing policies that would bind colonial governments, was rejected at the 1897 Colonial Conference and 1902 Colonial Conferences due to fears that such a scheme would undermine the autonomy of colonies.
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Many of these original contributors were believers in the idea of an "imperial federation in which the British Empire would be united by a new centralized Imperial Parliament. However, after the First World War, this scheme appeared less realistic and the Round Table members became more drawn to a conception of the empire as a "Commonwealth of Nations".
His address, "Three Great Federations: Australasian, National and Racial" (London, 1890), delivered to the A.N.A. at Ballarat, met with approval insofar as he urged Australian Federation; but his advocacy of Imperial Federation and, ultimately, a federation of the British races aroused heated opposition.
; The Imperial Federation League in Victoria after Australian Federation (B.A. Hons thesis, Monash University, 1979)
Francis Labilliere, William Westgarth and John Dennistoun Wood served on a committee of six to draft the prospectus of the Imperial Federation League.