Now I address you with full confidence! Strengthen the hands of the Government, and work together with them to make this Republic a country where all inhabitants, so to say, live fraternally together. For months and months I have thought which alterations and emendations would be desirable in the Government of this State, but the unwarrantable instigations, especially of the Press, have kept me back. The same men who now appear in public as the leaders have demanded amendments from me in a time and manner which they should not have dared to use in their own country out of fear of the penal law. Through this it was made impossible for me and my burghers, the founders of this Republic, to take your proposals into consideration. It is my intention to submit a draft law at the first ordinary session of the Volksraad, whereby a municipality with a Mayor at its head will be appointed for Johannesburg, to whom the whole municipal government of this town will be entrusted. According to all constitutional principles, such a municipal council should be appointed by the election of the inhabitants. I ask you earnestly, with your hand upon your heart, to answer me this question: Dare I, and should I, after all that has happened, propose such to the Volksraad? What I myself answer to this question is, I know that there are thousands in Johannesburg to whom I can with confidence entrust this right to vote in municipal matters. Inhabitants of Johannesburg, make it possible for the Government to appear before the Volksraad with the motto, 'Forget and Forgive.' (Signed) S.J.P. KRUGER, _State President_. One would think that anyone gifted with even a moderate sense of humour would have been restrained by it from issuing a second proclamation on top of the elaborate fooling of the first. Is it possible to imagine any other community or any other Government in the world in which the ruler could seriously set to work to promulgate two such proclamations, sandwiching as they did those acts which may be regarded as the practical expression--diametrically opposed to the published expression--of his intentions?