As gunpowder answers to the spark so the indignation of the Uitlander community broke out.  The State Attorney to whom the facts were represented by the British Agent in Pretoria immediately ordered the re-arrest of the policeman on the charge of murder.  The feeling of indignation was such among British subjects generally, but more especially among Edgar’s fellow-workmen, that it was decided to present a petition to her Majesty praying for protection.  British subjects were invited to gather in the Market Square in order to proceed in a body to the office of the British Vice-Consul and there present the petition, but in order to avoid any breach of the Public Meetings Act they were requested to avoid speech making and to refrain in every way from any provocation to disorder.  Some four or five thousand persons gathered together.  They listened to the reading of the petition and marched in an orderly manner to the office of the British Vice-Consul where the petition was read and accepted.

This was the first direct appeal to her Majesty made by British subjects since the protests against the retrocession eighteen years before.  Not very many realized at the time the importance of the change in procedure.  There could be no “As you were” after the direct appeal:  either it would be accepted, in which event the case of the Uitlanders would be in the hands of an advocate more powerful than they had ever proved themselves to be, or it would be declined, a course which would have been regarded as sounding the death-knell of the Empire in South Africa.  The time was one of the most intense anxiety; for the future of the Uitlanders hung upon the turn of the scale.

It was late one night when those who had been called to Pretoria to receive the reply of her Majesty’s Government returned to the Rand.  The real reply then was known only to three men; it was simply, point blank refusal to accept the petition.  There were no reasons and no explanations.  It was done on the authority of Sir William Butler, the Commander-in-Chief in South Africa and acting High Commissioner; for Sir Alfred Milner was at that time in England, as also was Mr. Conyngham Greene.  But the faith was in these men that it could not be true, that it could not have happened had Sir Alfred Milner not been absent, and thus came the suggestion to ‘explain it away.’  On the following day British subjects on the Rand learned that a breach of diplomatic etiquette had been committed, that the petition should never have been published before being formally presented to her Majesty, and that thus it would be necessary to prepare and present another in proper form.  The petition was redrawn and in the course of the following weeks upwards of 21,000 signatures were obtained by that loyal and enthusiastic little band of British subjects who form the Johannesburg branch of the South African League.