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There were four principal aspirations or beliefsethnocentrism, racism, liberalism, and the desire to maintain the British character of the community-underlying the response of British to non-British people in the colony. Depending on differences between the three major non-British groups in physical appearance, conformity to British social norms, numbers, and economic role, different responses to each resulted. Disagreement over the proper response to a particular group occurred either because one or more of these aspirations or beliefs was not held, or because the character of the non-British group in question was variously judged.

The responses to Aborigines after dispossession was complete were primarily of contempt and indifference. Aborigines were a poverty-stricken, socially outcast, and politically powerless minority, believed to be racially inferior and" doomed to extinction". From the 1870's greater efforts were made to isolate and materially assist them, and to impart to them some of the habits of the British way of life.