Executive that the proposed extension of the
dynamite contract in its new form (_i.e._ as, in effect, a "privileged
importation by one firm," although nominally "a State undertaking")
was held by the law officers of the Crown to be as much a violation of
the Convention as the original monopoly, which had been cancelled on
the representations of the Imperial Government in 1892. Mr. Reitz's
reply, which Lord Milner transmitted to the Colonial Office not long
after his arrival at Capetown, was a blunt assertion that, in the
opinion of his Government, the Imperial Government had no right to
interfere. But in the meantime the whole question of the position of
the British residents in the Transvaal had been raised directly by the
agitation which had arisen out of the shooting of Edgar at
Johannesburg on December 18th, 1898.[50] This event was followed by
the petition for protection, which Sir William Butler (who was
General-in-Command, and during Lord Milner's absence Acting High
Commissioner) refused to transmit to the Secretary of State (January
4th, 1899); by the arrest of Messrs. Webb and Dodd and the breaking up
of the Amphitheatre meeting (January 14th); by the attempt of the
Pretoria Executive to buy off the capitalists (February 27th-April
14th); by the presentation of the second petition to the Queen (March
24th); by the agitation on the Rand in favour of the reforms for which
it prayed; and lastly by the public meetings held in the Cape Colony
and Natal for, and against, the intervention of the Imperial
Government.[51]

[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 p