In the late 1830s, the prospects for representative government received a boost from unrest in Britain's Canadian possessions that put the issue firmly on the imperial agenda, and from growing criticism in Britain of the transportation system. In the Australian colonies, the campaigns for more representative government in the early 1840s were often voiced in terms of nationhood and race – that British colonists had the rights of Britons everywhere and should be governed accordingly. Colonists argued that they had proven their ability to govern themselves by building a thriving civilised British society in a land where there had been only “barbarism” before; they had, they claimed, successfully displaced a savage with a civilised people. In Britain, questions of Aboriginal policy and settler self-government became more closely entwined; Aboriginal protection bodies began to fear that if representative government were granted, the settlers’ anti-Aboriginal views would reign supreme. Progress towards representative government was slower than colonial campaigners wished; NSW’s 1842 constitution Act embodied only modest changes, South Australian colonists felt their unique rights and respectability were being ignored, and no new political representation was planned for settlers in Western Australia or Van Diemen’s Land.