This reply was telegraphed to New York, and Mr. Pierrepont Edwards, Her Britannic Majesty's Consul-General, was one of the first to receive it. He acted with the usual force and promptness with which British interests and the lives of British subjects are protected by British officials abroad. That is to say, he first telegraphed to the British Minister at Washington, Mr. West, requesting, that the three great ironclads, "Devastation," "Orion" and "Agamemnon," all of which were then in Hampton Roads, be at once sent to New York. Then he prepared a formal protest against the proposed action of the Spanish Admiral, which all the other foreign consuls at once signed, and which was delivered aboard the Spanish flag-ship by a boat bearing the British flag before three o'clock that afternoon. The Spanish admiral took the protest into consideration to the extent of granting forty-eight hours' time. The consuls protested again at this as not being sufficient, and demanded five clear days. The admiral refused to grant more than three; but when, before the three days had expired, the trio of English war-ships made their appearance, and calmly moved between his fleet and the shore, he changed his mind and granted the desired time--which was wise, seeing that the English vessels could blow his squadron out of water with little trouble and not much injury to themselves. The railroads which go out of New York, while perhaps adequate for all purposes of traffic in time of peace, are scarcely equal to the removal from the city of several hundred thousand women, children, sick and aged persons within a period of even five days. People of this description cannot be moved as easily as armies; and hence, when the morning of the fifth day dawned, fully one-half of the non-combatant population was still in the city. This, however, was attributable not only to the inadequacy of the means of transportation, but to the singular apathy--it was not fearlessness--of the people themselves. In the great tenement districts, it became necessary to send soldiers into the houses to drive people out of them. Among the Irish and Germans there was actual rioting, when force was thus used. The impression was general that the missiles of the enemy could not reach the populated parts of New York. The crowds, however, at the Grand Central Dépôt, trying to leave the city, were enormous. People were placed in cattle-cars, on wood cars--in fact, every sort of conveyance adapted to the tracks was pressed into service. The Thirtieth Street Dépôt, on the west side, also was crowded, and trains were leaving thence every few minutes.