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 the accusations of Her Majesty’s Government.

With reference to the Lombard incident, this Government wishes to point out that no complaint was lodged with any official in this Republic for a full month after the illtreatment of Cape coloured people was alleged to have taken place, and that neither the Government nor the public was aware that anything had taken place.  The whole case was so insignificant that some of the people who were alleged to have been illtreated declared under oath at a later period before a court of investigation that they would never have made any complaint on their own initiative.  What happened, however?

About a month after the occurrence the South African League came to hear of it; some of its officials sent round to collect evidence from the parties who were alleged to have been illtreated, and some sworn declarations were obtained by the help of Her Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Johannesburg (between whom and this League a continual and conspicuous co-operation has existed).  Even then no charge was lodged against the implicated officials with the judicial authorities of the country, but the case was put in the hands of the Acting British Agent at Pretoria.