State President and Commandant-General. (4) This Government
will always be prepared to take into consideration such friendly
suggestions regarding the details of the Franchise Law as Her Majesty's
Government, through the British Agent, may wish to convey to it. (5) In
putting forward the above proposals Government of South African Republic
assumes: (_a_) That Her Majesty's Government will agree that the present
intervention shall not form a precedent for future similar action and
that in the future no interference in the internal affairs of the
Republic will take place. (_b_) That Her Majesty's Government will not
further insist on the assertion of the suzerainty, the controversy on
the subject being allowed tacitly to drop. (_c_) That arbitration (from
which foreign element other than Orange Free State is to be excluded)
will be conceded as soon as the franchise scheme has become law. (6)
Immediately on Her Majesty's Government accepting this proposal for a
settlement, the Government will ask the Volksraad to adjourn for the
purpose of consulting the people about it, and the whole scheme might
become law say within a few weeks. (7) In the meantime the form and
scope of the proposed Tribunal are also to be discussed and
provisionally agreed upon, while the franchise scheme is being referred
to the people, so that no time may be lost in putting an end to the
present state of affairs. The Government trust that Her Majesty's
Government will clearly understand that in the opinion of this
Government the existing franchise law of this Republic is both fair and
liberal to the new population, and that the consideration that induces
them to go further, as they do in the above proposals, is their strong
desire to get the controversies between the two Governments settled, and
further to put an end to present strained relations between the two
Governments and the incalculable harm and loss it has already occasioned
in South Africa, and to prevent a racial war from the effects of which
South Africa may not recover for many generations, perhaps never at all,
and therefore this Government, having regard to all these circumstances
would highly appreciate it if Her Majesty's Government, seeing the
necessity of preventing the present crisis from developing still further
and the urgency of an early termination of the present state of affairs,
would expedite the acceptance or refusal of the settlement here offered.

_21st August._

_Si