Report of the inaugural meeting in South Australia, held at the Town Hall, Adelaide on Thursday , August 1st, 1895.

Abstract

The Australasian Federation League was established in Sydney in July 1893 to promote the cause of Federation, Victoria forming its own League the following year. This pamphlet records the inaugural meeting held at the Town Hall in Adelaide on 1 August 1895 to establish the League in South Australia, at which proceedings commenced with the playing of Carl Linger's Song of Australia as well as Rule Britannia and The watch on the Rhine - three patriotic songs united in one grand organ peal, 'the symbol and expression of the union ... of the people of this great continent' in the words of J.H. Symon, who chaired the meeting. Symon spoke in rousing terms of the League's aim - no less than 'the making of a nation' and to 'bind together the scattered fragments of Australasia and present a homogeneous whole to the astonished gaze of not only Christendom, but of heathendom' - as well as on the benefits of federation to the commercial interests of South Australia. Sir Richard Baker and D.M. Charleston, a Labour member of the Legislative Council, also spoke in support, although both emphasising the economic advantages of federation rather than the patriotic. The audience carried overwhelmingly the formal motion 'That in order to promote the present and future prosperity of the Australasian Colonies their federation on a broad basis of justice and honour is imperative, that the time is ripe for such a federation, and that we pledge ourselves to do all in our power to secure it.' The League subsequently contributed to the cause with the publication of two broadsides, Why federate? and Federation commercially considered (1895).