The report of the Commission created a very favourable impression. The majority of people believed that although it might not be entirely acted upon, yet it would be quite impossible for the President and the Volksraad to disregard suggestions made by so influential a group of officials as those forming the Commission, and that at any rate most of the recommendations would be accepted. The unbelieving few who knew their President Kruger, however, waited for something to be _done_. Presently ominous rumours went round about differences in the Executive. Then came the scenes in the Volksraad, when the President revealed himself and charged Mr. Schalk Burger with being a traitor to his country for having signed such a report, followed by the usual fight and the usual victory for the President, and the usual Committee constituted mainly of extreme Conservatives appointed to report upon the other Commission's report; and then the usual result: Something for nothing. The Netherlands Railway made an inconsiderable reduction in rates, which it appears was designed to buy off, and did succeed in buying off, further scrutiny of its affairs. With regard to the two big monopolies, Dynamite and Railway, it appears that the Volksraad Commission accepted the private assurances of the monopolists as sufficient warrant for reversing the conclusions of the Industrial Commission. The proposed Local Board for the goldfields was promptly ruled out as an unthinkable proposition, a government within a government, and was so denounced by the President himself. But the report of the Volksraad Committee contained one supreme stroke of humour. It adopted the recommendations of the Industrial Commission to remit the duties upon certain articles of consumption so as to make living cheaper, but as a condition it stipulated that in order that the State revenue should not suffer, the duty upon other articles of consumption should be increased so as to rather more than counterbalance the loss. That was one result which the Uitlanders had in the beginning confidently expected: Something for nothing. But the other result upon which they had also calculated was a valuable one. They had put their case on record and for the future the task of justifying the Uitlanders' cause was to be reduced to the formality of pointing to the Industrial Commission's report.