The dominions
Britain did not treat her white subjects overseas in the same way as her black and Asian ones. The loss of the American colonies taught her a lesson. She learned that it was wiser to share power with the colonists than to fight them. Before 1900, though, no-one in Britain thought that the same was true of subjects who were not white.
Canada was in two parts, one British and one French. Each of them got the right to govern itself in 1791. But after a revolt in 1837, the two parts were joined together. And an act passed in 1867 made Canada a dominion. This meant that it was almost free from British control. (The Queen of England was still Queen of Canada.)
Britain began sending convicts to Australia in 1787. But far more settlers went there of their own free will than in chains. Some went to look for gold, but most of them went as sheep-farmers. The wool they sent home kept the Yorkshire mills running. In 1850, there were 265,000 people in New South Wales, and thirteen million sheep!
The colonies in Australia got the right to govern themselves between 1856 and 1861. But it was not until the 1890s that they talked about joining together. In the end, they did so, and became a dominion, like Canada, in 1901. (New Zealand became a single state with the right to rule itself in 1876.)
Walter Robson: Britain 1750 – 1900; Oxford University Press, 1993/2002, page 76