[Footnote 50: "On the Sunday night before Christmas, a British subject named Tom Jackson Edgar was shot dead in his own house by a Boer policeman. Edgar, who was a man of singularly fine physique, and both able and accustomed to take care of himself, was returning home at about midnight, when one of three men standing by, who, as it afterwards transpired, was both ill and intoxicated, made an offensive remark. Edgar resented it with a blow which dropped the other insensible to the ground. The man's friends called for the police, and Edgar, meanwhile, entered his own house a few yards off. There was no attempt at concealment or escape; Edgar was an old resident and perfectly well known. Four policemen came.... The fact, however, upon which all witnesses agree is that, as the police burst open the door, Constable Jones [there are scores of Boers unable to speak a word of English who, nevertheless, own very characteristic English, Scotch, and Irish names] fired at Edgar and dropped him dead in the arms of his wife, who was standing in the passage a foot or so behind him."--FITZPATRICK'S _The Transvaal from Within_.]
[Footnote 51: For particulars of these events the reader is referred to _The Transvaal from Within_.]
Within three months of his return Lord Milner cabled the masterly statement in which he endorsed the petition of the Uitlanders[52] with the memorable words: "The case for intervention is overwhelming." Like the Graaf Reinet speech, this despatch of May 4th was written at white heat, but the opinions which it expressed were in no less a degree the mature and measured judgments of a mind fully informed upon every detail germane to the issue. So much is this the fact that all that is essential for the full comprehension of the second Reform Movement at Johannesburg--the salient features of which have been outlined above--is to be found within the limits of this brief and notable State document:
[Footnote 52: The petition, with its 21,684 signatures, reached Lord Milner through Sir W. (then Mr.) Greene, the British Agent at Pretoria, on March 27th. It was forwarded by the High Commissioner to England in the mail of March 29th. The same ship, the _Carisbrook Castle_, carried Dr. Leyds, who was returning to Europe after a visit to Pretoria. Sir W. Greene had returned to South Africa in the same ship with Lord Milner (February 14th), and had stayed at Government Cottage (Newlands) with him for some days, discussing Transvaal matters, before proceeding to Pretoria on February 19th.]