them.

Her Majesty's Government seem to think that this Municipality does not
answer its purpose, in the first place because half of the members must
be naturalized burghers (not fully enfranchised burghers as the dispatch
under reply erroneously contends), and in the second place because the
financial powers of the town council are restricted.

With regard to the first objection, it is impossible that this should be
a great grievance, because a residence of two years in the Republic is
sufficient for naturalisation; as a matter of fact, more than the
necessary half of the members are burghers; this shows conclusively that
the requirement of burghership is in no sense an obstacle. The objection
as to the restriction of the financial powers of the council is not
conclusive, because there is no Municipality in the world the financial
powers of which are not restricted by the law under which they are
created, and the restrictions in the case of the town council of
Johannesburg are the usual ones in such cases.

The Advisory Board recommended by the Industrial Commission would have
proved inefficient because the laws with the administration of which
that body would have had to concern itself can be carried out in a
better and more efficient way by an official like the State Attorney,
who has almost unlimited power and means of doing so. This is exactly
what has happened. All complaints with regard to gold thefts have
actually disappeared; one no longer hears of complaints as to the
operation of the pass law; while latterly, as Her Majesty's Government
must be well aware, the Chamber of Mines and other bodies of the
Witwatersrand have repeatedly expressed their satisfaction with the
stringent way in which the liquor law has been upheld. No local body,
however well informed, would have been able to do what the State
Attorney has done in this matter, and that is sufficient justification
of the action of both Government and Volksraad in refusing to establish
such an Advisory Board.

The Government now passes on to the discussion of the administration of
justice, of which so much is made in the dispatch under reply.

With regard to these allegations, this Government perceives that much
importance is attached in the dispatch to the so-called Lombard
incident, the so-called Edgar case, and the so-called Amphitheatre
occurrence.

A brief consideration of the facts referring to these three matters will
show how unfounded are