and to sell them at a price nearly 200 per cent. over that at which they could be imported.  It was found upon investigation after some years of agitation that the factory at which this ‘manufacture’ took place was in reality merely a depot in which the already manufactured article was manipulated to a moderate extent so as to lend colour to the President’s statement that a local industry was being fostered.  An investigation held by order of the Volksraad exposed the imposition.  The President himself stated that he found he had been deceived and that the terms of the concession had been broken, and he urged the Raad to cancel it—­which the Raad did.  The triumph was considerable for the mining industry and it was the more appreciated in that it was the solitary success to which the Uitlanders could point in their long series of agitations for reform.  But the triumph was not destined to be a lasting one.  Within a few months the monopoly was revived in an infinitely more obnoxious form.  It was now called a Government monopoly, but ‘the agency’ was bestowed upon a partner of the gentleman who had formerly owned the concession, the President himself vigorously defending this course and ignoring his own judgment on the case uttered a few months previously. Land en Volk, the Pretoria Dutch newspaper, exposed the whole of this transaction, including the system of bribery by which the concessionaries secured their renewal, and among other things made the charge which it has continued to repeat ever since that Mr. J.M.A.  Wolmarans, member of the Executive, received a commission of one shilling per case on every case sold during the continuance of the agency as a consideration for his support in the Executive Council, and that he continues to enjoy this remuneration, which is estimated now to be not far short of L10,000 a year.  Mr. Wolmarans, for reasons of pride or discretion, has declined to take any notice of the charge, although frequently pressed to take action in the matter.  It is calculated that the burden imposed upon the Witwatersrand Mines alone amounts to L600,000 per annum, and is, of course, daily increasing.

[The Franchise Laws.]

The question of the franchise, which has achieved the greatest prominence in the Uitlander agitation, is one with which few people even in the Transvaal are familiar, so many and peculiar have been the changes effected in the law.  Lawyers differ as to whether certain laws revoke or merely supplement previous ones, and the President himself—­to the grim amusement of the Uitlanders—­frequently goes astray when he speaks on franchise.  The first law on burgher and electoral rights is No. 1 of 1876, which remained in force until 1882.  By it the possession of landed property or else residence for one year qualified the settler for full burgher privileges.  Law No. 7 of 1882 was the first attempt of the restored Republic to deal with the question.  It was then enacted that an alien could be naturalized and enfranchised after five years’ residence, such residence to be proved by the Field-cornet’s books of registration.  It has already been explained that these records in nine cases out of ten were either improperly kept or non-existent.