The mainstream media always gets excited by significant changes in government. This was particularly so at the beginning. This from the Sydney Morning Herald, 22 May 1856:
The youth of the colony will cherish the memory of this day. They, if spared for the term of human life, will see still greater organic changes. They will see the colony expand into a nation. A few troops multiplied into an army, the Government raised into a federal State… This patriotic and national feeling the New Constitution is calculated to arouse. It calls us all to the highest duties of citizenship, and confers upon us its full privileges. The subordination to the parent State exists only with things Imperial. With regard to the internal administration of the colony’s affairs we are independent. The colonists of New South Wales may make what they please out of the colony. They may adopt whatever system of law, of police, of government, of taxation that they like. They may make any new experiments and develop any new line of policy that they may think adapted to their circumstances. On themselves entirely rests the duty of directing the course of Government. Their own will be the glory of success – their own the disgrace and disaster of failure.