31 MARCH 1906, Page 2

A Committee composed of Sir West Ridgway, Lord Sand- hurst,

Sir Francis Hopwood (Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade), and Colonel Johnston, R.E. (Director- General of the Ordnance Survey), has been appointed by the Government to "inquire and report on certain matters connected with the future Constitutions of the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies," and the letter of instructions to the Chairman was published in the Press last Saturday. The chief duties of the Committee will be to inquire and report on the effect upon the representation of (a) the Witwatersrand district, (b) towns outside that district, and (c) purely rural districts, of the division of the Transvaal into sixty single-Member constituencies according to different bases of representation; to consider and report on the effect of substituting manhood suffrage for the 210 fran- chise prescribed by the Letters Patent of 1905; to consider and report on any proposals for representation other than the single-Member system of divisions, and on the effect on that division of a marginal discretion larger than has been hitherto proposed.