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.