The raid was past and the reform movement was past, but the causes which produced them both remained.  It is hardly conceivable that a statesman who loved his country would have refrained from making some effort to remove a state of things which had already caused such grave dangers, and which must obviously become more serious with every year that passed.  But Paul Kruger had hardened his heart, and was not to be moved.  The grievances of the Uitlanders became heavier than ever.  The one power in the land to which they had been able to appeal for some sort of redress amid their grievances was the law courts.  Now it was decreed that the courts should be dependent on the Volksraad.  The Chief Justice protested against such a degradation of his high office, and he was dismissed in consequence without a pension.  The judge who had condemned the reformers was chosen to fill the vacancy, and the protection of a fixed law was withdrawn from the Uitlanders.

A commission appointed by the State was sent to examine into the condition of the mining industry and the grievances from which the newcomers suffered.  The chairman was Mr. Schalk Burger, one of the most liberal of the Boers, and the proceedings were thorough and impartial.  The result was a report which amply vindicated the reformers, and suggested remedies which would have gone a long way towards satisfying the Uitlanders.  With such enlightened legislation their motives for seeking the franchise would have been less pressing.  But the President and his Raad would have none of the recommendations of the commission.  The rugged old autocrat declared that Schalk Burger was a traitor to his country for having signed such a document, and a new reactionary committee was chosen to report upon the report.  Words and papers were the only outcome of the affair.  No amelioration came to the newcomers.  But at least they had again put their case publicly upon record, and it had been endorsed by the most respected of the burghers.  Gradually in the press of the English-speaking countries the raid was ceasing to obscure the issue.  More and more clearly it was coming out that no permanent settlement was possible where the majority of the population was oppressed by the minority.  They had tried peaceful means and failed.  They had tried warlike means and failed.  What was there left for them to do?  Their own country, the paramount power of South Africa, had never helped them.  Perhaps if it were directly appealed to it might do so.  It could not, if only for the sake of its own imperial prestige, leave its children for ever in a state of subjection.  The Uitlanders determined upon a petition to the Queen, and in doing so they brought their grievances out of the limits of a local controversy into the broader field of international politics.  Great Britain must either protect them or acknowledge that their protection was beyond her power.  A direct petition to the Queen praying for protection was signed in April 1899 by twenty-one thousand Uitlanders.  From that time events moved inevitably towards the one end.  Sometimes the surface was troubled and sometimes smooth, but the stream always ran swiftly and the roar of the fall sounded ever louder in the ears.