"It is my intention to submit a draft law at the first ordinary session of the Raad, whereby a municipality, with a mayor at the head, would be granted to Johannesburg, to whom the control of the city will be intrusted. According to all constitutional principles, the Municipal Board will be elected by the people of the town.
"I earnestly request you, laying your hands on your hearts, to answer me this question: After what has happened, can and may I submit this to the representatives of the people? My reply is, I know there are thousands in Johannesburg and the suburbs to whom I can intrust such elective powers. Inhabitants of Johannesburg, render it possible for the Government to go before the Volksraad with the motto, 'Forgotten and Forgiven.'"
Mr. Kruger's political platform is based on one of the paragraphs of a manifesto which he, as Vice-President of the Triumvirate, sent to Sir Owen Lanyon, the British Resident Commissioner, on Dingaan's Day, 1880, when the Boers were engaged in their second struggle for independence. The paragraph, which was apparently written by Mr. Kruger, reads:
"We declare before God, who knows the heart, and before the world: Any one speaking of us as rebels is a slanderer! The people of the South African Republic have never been subjects of Her Majesty, and never will be."
The President's hatred of the English was bred in the bone, and it will never be eradicated. To see his country free from every English tie is the aim of his existence, and every act of his political career has been born with that thought. His own political aggrandizement has always been a secondary thought. He himself has declared that there is no one in the republic who is able or willing to complete the independence of the republic with such little friction as he, and that, such being the case, he would be a traitor to desert the cause in the hours of its gravest peril. He considers personal victories at the polls of his own country as mere stepping-stones toward that greater victory which he hopes to secure over the English colonial secretary, and the day that England renounces all claim to suzerainty over the Transvaal Mr. Kruger will consider his duty done, and will go into the retirement which his great work and the fulness of his years owe him.
For a man whose education has been of the scantiest, and whose people were practically unheard of until he brought them into prominence, Paul Kruger has received from foreign sources many remarkable tributes to the wisdom with which he has conducted the affairs of the country under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty.
That which he received from Emperor William, of Germany, several days after the repulse of the Jameson raiders, was perhaps the finest tribute that Mr. Kruger has ever received, and one that created a greater sensation throughout the world than any peaceful message that ever passed between the heads of two governments. The cablegram, of which the text follows, is one of the most priceless treasures in Mr. Kruger's collection:
"Received January 3d, 1896.
"From Wilhelm I. R., Berlin.
"To PRESIDENT KRUGER, Pretoria.
"I tender you my sincere congratulations that, without appealing to the help of friendly powers, you and your people have been successful in opposing with your own forces the armed bands that have broken into your country to disturb the peace, in restoring order, and in maintaining the independence of your country against attacks from without.
"WILHELM I. R."