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PRICE SIXPENCE NET 
 
 THE FUTURE 
 OF THE CONGO 
 
 An Analysis and Criticism of the Belgian 
 Government's proposals for a reform of the 
 condition of affairs in the Congo, submitted ^ 
 to His Majesty's Government on behalf of 
 the Congo Reform Association. 
 
 WITH APPfeNDIGES 
 
 By E. D. MOREL 
 
 Author of ' Great Britain and the Congo,' etc. 
 
 NOVEMBER 1909 
 
 iSMITH, ELDER & CO., IS Waterloo Place, London, S.W. 
 
THE FUTURE OF THE CONGO 
 
THE 
 
 UTUREOFTHE CONGO 
 
 AN ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM OF THE BELGIAN 
 
 rOVERNMENT'S PROPOSALS FOR A REFORM OF THE 
 
 CONDITION OF AFFAIRS IN THE CONGO 
 
 SUBMITTED TO HIS MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT 
 
 ON BEHALF OF THE CONGO REFORM ASSOCIATION 
 
 (WITH APPENDICES) 
 
 BY 
 
 E. D. MOREL 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'great BRITAIN AND THE CONGO* ETC. 
 
 NOVEMBER 1909 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1909 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 
2 THE CONGO REFORM BILL" 
 
 by hideous outrages, since the medium whereby 
 it has been enforced has consisted of a savage and 
 often uncontrolled soldiery, feeding upon the 
 country, frequently recruited by armed raids and so 
 poorly paid that unlimited licence to gratify every 
 lust has been the main incentive to loyalty. 
 
 History can record few, if any, instances of 
 a crime so comprehensive, so dehberate, and 
 affecting so large a number of human beings ; and 
 no instance of one of such character occurring, and 
 continuing for seventeen years, in a territory 
 surrounded by special safeguards for the just 
 treatment of its native races elaborated at a solemn 
 Congress of civihsed Governments. 
 
 The determining features of the System devised 
 to carry out this policy have been these. The 
 natural products of the country having commercial 
 value on the world's markets have been claimed 
 by the Belgian rulers of the Congo on the ground 
 that the native tribes and communities have no 
 rights in the land upon which these products grow, 
 and the inhabitants of the country have been 
 driven by compulsory labour to collect these pro- 
 ducts for their self-constituted alien owners. 
 
 The System has consisted, therefore, of three 
 interdependent parts : 
 
 1. The claim to the negotiable wealth of the 
 land. 
 
 2. The definition of all land bearing the 
 articles forming this negotiable wealth as " Vacant," 
 i.e., without lawful native owners. 
 
 3. Compulsory labour impressed upon the 
 native inhabitants of the land. 
 
 ' If the objects the System was created to pro- 
 mote have centred upon its first part, and if effect 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 3 
 
 has been given to those objects by its third part, 
 the key to the System has ever resided in its second 
 part. And it is that second part which has ever 
 been evoked to defend the System as a whole. For 
 without it, without the subtleties of juridical 
 argument by which its true significance could be 
 concealed in a maze of theoretical disquisition, the 
 System was incapable of defence. It was confessed 
 piracy imposed by violence. 
 
 In August 1908 the Belgian Government sub- 
 stituted itself for the personal rule of the Belgian 
 King (which had been morally supported by 
 successive Belgian Governments) in the administra- 
 tion of the Congo. It was perfectly aware of the 
 character of the policy pursued since 1892 and of 
 the nature of the System invented to give effect to 
 it. Public opinion in this country supported the 
 proposed substitution, of which H.M. Government 
 had expressed approval. But it did so on the one 
 and only understanding, indicated by H.M. Govern- 
 ment themselves in the declaration made by the 
 Secretary of State to the Deputation which waited 
 upon him in November 1906, that the transfer of 
 authority would produce 
 
 " not a mere list of reforms, but an entire change of 
 the System of Government of the country." 
 
 That such a System could have been tolerated 
 for a single day by a civilised Government in the 
 opening years of the twentieth century may well 
 have appeared unhkely to H.M. Government, and, 
 doubtless, a considerable section of public opinion 
 held similar views. 
 
 As the time for annexation approached, the 
 Belgian Government, desirous of avoiding a cate- 
 
4 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 gorical demand on the part of H.M. Government 
 for guarantees that the System should disappear 
 concurrently with annexation, was profuse in the 
 professions it conveyed to H.M. Government. For 
 example, it declared that 
 
 " the question of improviag the lot of the natives is 
 not less a matter of solicitude in Belgium than it is in 
 England. It is one of the loftiest preoccupations of our 
 country, which is fully sensible of the importance of the 
 civiHsing mission which falls to its lot in Africa. ... In 
 any case, the priaciple of individual liberty laid down in 
 the draft Colonial Law is free from any further restriction 
 whatever." * 
 
 " The Cabinet of Brussels intends to issue and give 
 effect to the said measures for improving the lot of the 
 natives, as soon as ever the annexation of the Congo and 
 the Colonial Law have been voted by Parliament. It 
 has promised the Chamber of Eepresentatives to do so on 
 more than one occasion ; it has confirmed this promise to 
 the British Government in writing ; it can only to-day 
 repeat its promise with the same earnestness as before." f 
 
 The fact remains, however, that fifteen months 
 have passed since annexation and the System still 
 endures. 
 
 The Association's case is, therefore, that for 
 fifteen months the Belgian Government has main- 
 tained in being, and maintains to-day a System of 
 rule which the Secretary of State has described 
 upon various occasions as " Slavery," " Slavery 
 pure and simple," " indistinguishable from 
 Slavery," and as having " forfeited aU right to 
 international recognition " ; and that the Bud- 
 getary Committee of the Belgian Chamber passed 
 a few days ago by twelve votes to five and two 
 
 * Memo., April 25, 1908. t Despatch, July 12, 1908. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 5 
 
 abstentions a Budget which provides that out of a 
 total revenue for next year of £1,589,812, native 
 labour in one form or another shall supply 
 £839,900.* 
 
 And this huge amount is to be wrung, four-fifths 
 of it admittedly — ^the whole of it probably — by 
 compulsion, out of a miserable population ex- 
 hausted, partially decimated and racked (in many 
 regions) by disease following seventeen years of 
 infamous misrule ! 
 
 Such is the prospect which the year 1910 offers 
 to the native people of the Congo, who require above 
 aU things breathing time in which to repair their 
 shattered Uves, some respite from " taxation " in 
 which to rebuild their towns and villages, to extend 
 their food-crops (for, as H,M. Government know 
 well from the reports of their Consuls, the natives 
 are, in many parts, actually short of food),! and to 
 reconstruct their social system violently uprooted, 
 dislocated and trampled under foot. 
 
 It wiU, perhaps, facihtate my efforts [if haply 
 such may be their effect] to present to H.M. Govern- 
 ment an intelligible criticism on the proposals of the 
 Belgian Government which I now beg leave to 
 approach, if the subject matter be divided into 
 five sections, although all the problems these pro- 
 posals raise are necessarily correlative and a dividing 
 line cannot, in practice, be too severely drawn 
 between them. 
 
 * Rubber, £535,900 ; ivory, £18,000 ; copal, £11,200, " taxes " 
 in kind. Gold, £100,800, worked for Government account by native 
 labour ; silver, £80,000, tax in coin ; rubber, ivory and copal, 
 £94,000, profits from shares in ooncessionnaire companies' 
 operations. 
 
 t Ft«fe Section C. II. 
 
6 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 Section A. The System in its tlireefold aspect : 
 (1) Products. (2) Land. (3) Compulsory Labour 
 for revenue purposes. 
 
 Section B. Finance. 
 
 Section C. Problems incidental to the applica- 
 tion of the System, which will include (1) The native 
 army, and (2) The question of food supplies. 
 
 Section D. The new policy of Government 
 rubber plantations. 
 
 Section E. Restrictions upon freedom of trade. 
 
 Before discussing Section A. of this somewhat 
 arbitrary method of classification, there is one 
 point to which attention may be drawn. The 
 Colonial Minister's statement opens with a 
 " solemn " afl&rmation 
 
 " that the charges of cruelty or oppression brought 
 against the Belgian Colonial administration are contrary 
 to truth {a la veriU des fails)." 
 
 I would merely beg leave to remark in regard 
 to this statement that as the Belgian Colonial 
 Minister denied from his seat in the Chamber, both 
 as a private member and afterwards as a Cabinet 
 Minister, the truth of the charges levelled at the 
 Congo Grovernment, his denial of the charges 
 levelled at the " Belgian Colonial Administration " 
 — ^in the teeth of the evidence which has been forth- 
 coming in the last twelve months, and which con- 
 tinues to be received * — is but proof that his recent 
 voyage to the Congo would not appear to have con- 
 tributed materially to his knowledge of the problem 
 he is called upon to handle. 
 
 * Appendix H., III., IV. and VI. 
 
SECTION A.— THE SYSTEM IN ITS 
 THKEEFOLD ASPECT 
 
 The Belgian Government's Proposals 
 
 After pointing out that the situation of the 
 Congo to-day, as the dependency of " a rich and 
 industrious metropolis," entails " profound changes 
 in economic policy," the Declaration proceeds 
 to repeat the arguments adduced by the Congo 
 Government in regard to land. The question is 
 dismissed in less than a page. " The Government," 
 it is said, " thinks that the vesting of the owner- 
 ship of vacant lands in the State is juridically 
 beyond attack and is a condition of order and pro- 
 gress." A different policy would " fatally lead to 
 stagnation, and would prove an insurmountable 
 obstacle to the work of civilisation." Not one 
 word is said by way of explanation or definition of 
 what the Belgian Government imderstands by 
 " vacant " lands, nor is the least indication given 
 [save the inferential one given below] that the 
 " Belgian Colonial Administration " proposes to 
 construe the word " State " in a manner differen- 
 tiated from the iaterpretation given to it by the 
 Congo Government, which, imder the pretence of 
 observing the niceties of jurisprudence, deliberately 
 sacrificed the native races of the Congo to the 
 
8 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 desolating consequences of arbitrary power directed 
 to the sole end of amassing wealth. 
 
 Pursuing the line of argument adopted by the 
 Congo Government, the Declaration goes on to say 
 that " The right of full ownership carries with it, 
 for the owner, the right of exploiting his property," 
 but that, after careful consideration, the Belgian 
 Government proposes to cease exercising the latter 
 right and intends to 
 
 " abandon in successive stages to private enterprise the 
 harvesting of the products of the domain, which are 
 principally rubber and copal." 
 
 The Declaration proceeds : 
 
 " By the application of the new rules, ia all the regions 
 where the exploitation of the domain is abandoned, the 
 natives will have the right to harvest the products of 
 the domain, rubber and copal, and to sell them to 
 individuals . . ." 
 
 This process is to be carried out in three stages. 
 A map attached to the Declaration illustrates them. 
 From that map and the accompanying text, it 
 appears that, roughly speaking, one-half of the 
 Congo is to be thrown open to freedom of trade on 
 July 1, 1910, the portion thus affected including the 
 Kasai and the Katanga. For the other half, one- 
 third of it, roughly speaking, is to be thrown open 
 on July 1, 1911, and another third on July 1, 1912. 
 As for the remaining third, which comprises the 
 Grands Lacs Concession, the A.B.I.R. and Anver- 
 soise Concessions, and the Lomami and Bussira 
 properties belonging to the SociStd Anonyme Beige 
 du Haul Congo, no time limit is indicated, the 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 9 
 
 Declaration contenting itself with the brief inti- 
 mation that 
 
 " the Government will examine later on the advisa- 
 bility of coming to fresh arrangements with the interested 
 parties." 
 
 The only explanation vouchsafed for the fore- 
 shadov?ed successive delays in the execution of this 
 change is the following : 
 
 " The Government proposes to bring aboat the reform 
 in three stages, because it would be impossible to apply 
 it to the whole territory and abruptly open the domain 
 to private enterprise without creating a condition of 
 dangerous disorder and without bringing about a crisis 
 from which the State, the natives and trade would alike 
 suffer." 
 
 Taxes will be demanded of the natives in silver, 
 we are told in one place ; in another that the 
 diffusion of silver coinage and the extension of 
 trade 
 
 " will permit of the decision that in principle the native 
 tax shall be levied in silver coinage, exception being 
 made of measures which the interests and the peace of the 
 native peoples may, in certain cases, render necessary." 
 
 While, further on, the following additional com- 
 ment is made in the course of a passage the exact 
 meaning of which is obscure : 
 
 " Pending the complete apphcation of the new system, 
 the natives must be authorised in default of silver coin to 
 pay (their tax) in produce in the regions not abandoned 
 (to freedom of trade) or to remit the produce against a 
 cash remuneration which could be reckoned by the value 
 (of the produce ?) and not by the equivalences." 
 
lo THE CONGOIREFORM BILL 
 
 Such are the new proposals as they afiect the 
 System in its threefold aspect — products, land, and 
 compulsory labour for revenue requirements. 
 
 The Belgian Government's Proposals 
 Examined 
 
 I. — Products 
 
 The Association has already identified itself 
 publicly* with the satisfaction expressed by the 
 Prime Minister at the intentions of the Belgian 
 Government in so far as they mark the abandon- 
 ment in principle of the exercise of its claim to the 
 products of the land which are now actually 
 negotiable, viz. rubber and copal,t and conse- 
 quently to free, for purposes of trade, the monopoly 
 laid upon those products. Indeed, the Association 
 may be said to have even p*|ceded the Prime 
 Minister in this respect. J If 1 venture to call 
 attention to this circumstance, it is only for the 
 purpose of demonstrating that the Association has 
 no desire to approach the Belgian Government's 
 proposals in a spirit of unreasonable hostility. 
 I shall have occasion, however, to comment upon 
 the untenable contention which underlies this 
 abandonment and which cannot but give rise to 
 deep anxiety for the future. 
 
 But it is my duty, on behalf of this Associa- 
 tion, energetically to protest against the delays 
 which it is proposed to bring to the reaUsa- 
 
 * Vide Kesolution of November 14, referred to on page 1. 
 
 t The question of ivory is treated in this communication under 
 the head of Section E. 
 
 % Vide speech by ita Hon. Secretary, the writer, at Newcastle, 
 on November 8. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILU n 
 
 tion in practice of this theoretical abandonment 
 of a mediaeval conception of government. His 
 Majesty's Government are asked, in eflEect, to 
 acquiesce in the prolongation of one part of a 
 system which in its entirety they themselves 
 have denounced as " slavery pure and simple," 
 and wt-ose existence for a single day is a flagrant 
 breachw" international treaty obligations, for 
 periods Vcf ying from seven months to two and a 
 half years, or even longer.* In other words. His 
 Majesty's Government are asked to allow that the 
 Belgian Government should maintain itself on the 
 Congo by subjecting the inhabitants of that ter- 
 ritory to a system of slAfery for a further length 
 of time, and that the Belgian Government should 
 for that further length of time continue to violate 
 international treaty obhgations. 
 
 From whatever point of approach, this demand 
 appears to the Association as not only inadmissible 
 but preposterous. That the claim to Government 
 ownership of the natural articles of trade on the 
 Congo, which constitute at the present moment 
 the only commercial wealth of the native popula- 
 tion, should have been maintained and enforced 
 since annexation took place down to this day — 
 a period of fifteen months — ^the Association regards 
 as justifying in itself the most strenuous protest 
 in view of the assurances given to His Majesty's 
 Government by the Belgian Government before 
 aimexation. The action of the Belgian Govern- 
 ment in so maintaining this claim is also, needless 
 to say, an imquestionable breach of the inter- 
 national agreements which regulate the Belgian 
 
 * No time limit, as I have pointed out, being assigned to its 
 cessation in certain ooncessionnaire areas. 
 
12 ,THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 position in Africa. Persistence in this attitude 
 for a further period is, in the view of the Associa- 
 tion, therefore, but an aggravation of the offence. 
 I may venture to point out that neither the Anglo- 
 Congolese Convention, nor the Berlin Act, gave 
 any option to the rulers of the Congo in this matter, 
 and if to-day it be recognised that Belgium has 
 any just right to infringe the provisions of those 
 treaties, then the whole case against the Belgian 
 Government, so far as it is specifically founded 
 upon those diplomatic instruments, falls to the 
 ground. 
 
 That, in the view of the Association, is the 
 fundamental point. Turning to the reasons given 
 by the Belgian Government for these delays, I 
 would submit that they will not bear investiga- 
 tion. In the first place there can be no question 
 of an " abrupt " abandonment of a policy when 
 that policy has already been enforced for fifteen 
 months. Again, why should " a condition of 
 dangerous disorder " be involved in the throwing 
 open of the Crown domain territory (where it is 
 proposed to retain the system until July 1911) 
 and the Welle district (where it is proposed to 
 retain the system until July 1912) if that con- 
 dition is not anticipated by throwing open the 
 Kasai and Katanga next July ? Once more, if 
 the word " State " be construed in the sense in 
 which civilised Governments apply it to the 
 African tribes and communities placed under their 
 protection, how can those tribes and communities 
 " suffer " through being released now and at once, 
 instead of one year or two years hence, from the 
 thraldom of a system which has converted them, 
 where it has been imposed, to a condition of 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 13 
 
 miserable slavery ? The Belgian Government 
 would seem, however, to draw a distinction be- 
 tween the " State " and the natives of the country, 
 for it speaks of the 
 
 " State, the natives and trade " 
 
 suffering. Does the " State " mean, then, in the 
 eyes of the Belgian Government, the " Belgian 
 Colonial Administration" and not the people of 
 the land ? If so, it is undoubtedly the fact that 
 the revenues of that administration would " suffer " 
 by recognising that the natives have rights in the 
 produce of the land. But even from this point of 
 view the contention is a singularly embarrassing 
 one for the Belgian Government. For does not 
 the Belgian Colonial Minister teU us in one and 
 the same breath that the Congo is henceforth 
 dependent upon a " rich and industrious metro- 
 poUs," thus able and wilhng, one would have 
 imagined, to make sacrij&ces on behalf of its 
 African colony, even if considerations of honour 
 did not imperatively demand such sacrifices, in 
 order to remove the stigma attaching to the 
 continued prevalence in that colony of an odious 
 form of slavery enforced by its rulers. As for the 
 argument that " trade " would " suffer " by being 
 permitted to exist in regions whence these pro- 
 posals provide that trade shall be excluded for a 
 considerable time to come, the Association fails to 
 comprehend it. 
 
 II. — Land 
 
 If the Association could feel assured that the 
 abandonment, in principle, of that part of the 
 system which attributes to the Belgian Govern- 
 
14 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 ment the ownership of the negotiable products of 
 the land, afforded real proof that the system in 
 its entirety was to be permanently replaced by 
 normal rule, the Association would feel that its 
 labours were on a fair way to being no longer 
 required. And, subject to its emphatic protest 
 against the inadmissible delays foreshadowed, the 
 Association would feel that a new era had, indeed, 
 begun to dawn for the long-persecuted and out- 
 raged native races of the Congo. 
 
 It was with a strong hope that such would 
 prove to be the case that the Belgian proposals 
 were eagerly examined in so far as they bore upon 
 the main factors upon which the intentions of 
 the Belgian Government could be tested, the 
 factor of land and the factor of finance. 
 
 I have already had the honour to submit that 
 the key to the System has ever resided in the land 
 question. On January 15 last I had the honour 
 of communicating to His Majesty's Government 
 a comprehensive memorial on native rights in 
 land and produce on the Congo, and I was privi- 
 leged to receive an acknowledgment thereto, in 
 which it was stated that the document in question 
 would be of "great assistance to His Majesty's 
 Government in their efforts to secure the restora- 
 tion to the natives of their rights." It was with 
 grave perplexity, therefore, that five months 
 later * the Association noted in the Secretary of 
 State's despatch to the Belgian Government the 
 following sentence : 
 
 " His Majesty's Government feel, however, that it 
 would be undesirable to delay their recognition of the 
 
 VJunell, 1909. 
 
5THE CONGO REFORM BILL 15 
 
 annexation of the Congo by Belgium tilt an exact 
 agreement has been reached on this (the land) question." 
 
 I can only express the trust and belief that 
 the word " exact " may have referred to matters 
 of detail and not to the fundamental issue, because 
 if that fundamental issue be left unsolved, there 
 is no future security for the native races of the 
 Congo under any conceivable scheme of reform 
 which the Belgian Government may introduce. 
 
 If the Association has ever attached capital 
 importance to this question of the land,* the 
 efforts of the Congo Government, and of both its 
 ministerial and unofficial defenders in Belgium 
 have ever been consistently turned in a like 
 direction. The Leopoldian interpretation of 
 " vacant " land has been, as I have pointed out, 
 the sole arguable defence of the system of which 
 it is the key ; the panoply of the defensive armour 
 to an ingenious form of slavery. If it were chal- 
 lenged by one of the great Powers morally re- 
 sponsible for the well-being of the native races of 
 t^e Congo and rejected by an international Con- 
 ference of the Powers before which that challenge 
 would inevitably precipitate it, the whole system 
 imposed upon the Congo would stand out as naked 
 piracy and fall to pieces. For that reason I 
 have made bold repeatedly to urge His Majesty's 
 Government, as representing the nation most 
 responsible after Belgium for the well-being of the 
 
 * The objects of its foundation, in March 1904, were thus 
 declared in its pubUo manifesto : "To secure for the natives in- 
 habiting the Ciongo State territories the just and humane treatment 
 which was guaranteed to them under the Berlin and Brussels Acts 
 by the restoration of their rights in land and in the produce of the 
 soil of which pre-existing rights they have been deprived by the 
 legislation and procedure of the Congo State." 
 
i6 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 native races of the Congo, to issue such, a challengej 
 and I repeat that prayer to-day. 
 
 For it is clear from the above-quoted extracts 
 from the Declaration of the Colonial Minister, as 
 from his public utterances before and since that 
 Declaration was made, as, too, from the Belgian 
 despatches, that the Belgian Government persists 
 in maintaining that interpretation. 
 
 The land of the Congo is " vacant," the whole 
 of it, except where the natives have built their 
 villages or where they cultivate their food planta- 
 tions. As owner (" proprietaire ") of that 
 " vacant " land, the Belgian Colonial Administra- 
 tion is the owner of the natural wealth which it 
 can be made to yield from native labour, and is 
 entitled to call upon native labour for the purpose. 
 Under the pressure of public opinion, the Belgian 
 Government abandons, in principle, its claim to 
 the natural wealth of the land, but maintains ita 
 claim to the land itself. That is the present 
 position. 
 
 Are the native races, then, secure for the 
 future ? Absolutely not. How, I submit, can 
 they be ? If anyone in 1884 had predicted the 
 Decrees of 1891-2, he would have been charged 
 with impugning the good faith of the Belgian 
 monarch. If anyone suggests to-day that faihng 
 this question of the land of the Congo being de- 
 finitely set at rest, the abandonment in principle 
 of the Belgian claim to the natural wealth of the 
 land may be rescinded five years hence, he will, 
 doubtless, be accused of impugning the good faith 
 of the Belgian Government. But past experience 
 suggests prevention for the future, and it is, I 
 submit, obvious that if the Belgian Government 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 17 
 
 is permitted to retain its claim to ownership over 
 the land, the economic rights of the natives remain 
 perennially at the mercy of a mere decree which 
 might once more sweep them as wholly out of 
 existence, as the retention by the Belgian Govern- 
 ment of the claim to land sweeps out of existence 
 tribal and communal tenure. 
 
 Moreover, the tardy restoration of an inherent 
 natural right to the land's products is made to 
 appear in the Belgian Government's proposals as 
 a condescension on the part of the Belgian owner 
 of the land, and the ink on these proposals is hardly 
 dry before we have the Belgian Colonial Minister 
 talking of granting " concessions " in the Kasai.* 
 This is a situation in which, the Association holds, 
 it would be the gravest dereliction of duty on the 
 part of this country to leave the native races of 
 the Congo. 
 
 I need not recapitulate here the overwhelming 
 proofs I had the honour to lay before His Majesty's 
 Government, in the memorial above referred to, 
 of the existence on the Congo of a well-defined 
 system of native land tenure. To deny the 
 validity of these native rights in land can only be 
 described as a return to conceptions of mediaeval 
 barbarism. It is, assuredly, a more barbarous 
 denial of human rights than any failure of a 
 primitive people to attain to the theoretical 
 standard of twentieth-century civilisation can by 
 any stretch of imagination be said -to be. 
 
 The Association has never attempted to deny 
 that it is legitimate for a civilised Administration 
 in tropical Africa to claim, in the exercise of its 
 
 * Discussion in the Budget Committee of the Belgian Chamber, 
 November 14. 
 
 C 
 
i8 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 trusteeship on behalf of the native communities 
 owning allegiance to its flag, such lands as are 
 " vacant " in the true sense of the term ; and it 
 has never denied that such lands may be found 
 to exist in the Congo. Indeed, it would be as- 
 tonishing if that were not the case, seeing that 
 the Congo Grovernment's policy has succeeded in 
 making waste places of regions formerly flourishing 
 and populated. But to treat all land as " vacant " 
 because it is not held in individual ownership ; to 
 wipe out tribal and coramunal tenure by a simple 
 stroke of the pen — ^this the Association regards as 
 the most monstrous travesty of " civilisation " 
 which has occurred in modern times. 
 
 The Association contends further that even 
 If all the Governments owning possessions in 
 tropical Africa had so acted, as the Belgian 
 Government does not hesitate imprudently and 
 inaccurately to advance, even then the European 
 rulers of the Congo, whoever they might be, 
 would have no right to do so. The Belgians owe 
 their position in Africa to-day, as the United 
 States Government pointed out in its last published 
 despatch to the Belgian Government,* to the 
 treaties concluded by Stanley and his assistants 
 on behalf of the International Association. It 
 was on the strength of these treaties that King 
 Leopold II. secured the recognition of the United 
 States, of Germany, Great Britain, and, later, 
 of the Powers collectively at Berlin. In so far 
 as those treaties are publicly accessible, they and 
 the written accounts of their negotiators show 
 conclusively t that the treaties were treaties of 
 protection and trade, of over-lordship and suze- 
 
 * January 1909. f Memorial on Congo land tenure, op, oit. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 19 
 
 rainty, and that tke native chiefs who signed them 
 in no way surrendered their rights and the rights 
 of their people in the land, which rights, indeed, 
 are in many cases specifically, and in all cases 
 indirectly, acknowledged. 
 
 So long, then, as the Belgian Government 
 upholds its claim to ownership of the land of the 
 Congo, it can hardly afiect surprise if its proposals 
 are received with suspicion in this country. That 
 suspicion the Belgian Grovernment can very largely 
 remove by abandoning a position inconsistent 
 with historical records, at variance with ascertained 
 facts, and curiously out of harmony with the 
 professions of lofty motive to which its representa- 
 tives incessantly give expression. The Associa- 
 tion would fain hope that the Belgian Government 
 will do so because, if its intentions are sincere, 
 there would seem to be no comprehensible reason 
 why it should not. 
 
 III. — Compulsory Labour for Revenue Purposes 
 
 So much for the two integral parts of the 
 system — the land and its products — as they are 
 affected by the Belgian Government's proposals. 
 The question of compulsory labour for revenue 
 purposes depends to a considerable extent not 
 only upon the solution which may be given to the 
 two interdependent parts of the system dealt 
 with above, but upon the financial provisions in 
 the Budget. The qxiestion is also affected by the 
 new foreshadowed system of Government rubber 
 plantations and the constitution and character of 
 the native army. I shall beg leave to discuss the 
 latter points under their several headings. 
 
 03 
 
20 THE CONGO" REFORM BILL 
 
 Meanwhile, and without pausing to do more 
 tlian place on record : 
 
 (a) That the imposition of a direct tax m silver 
 currency upon a native population deprived, by 
 being forbidden to trade, of the means of acquiring 
 wealth, is not taxation at all, but slavery ; 
 
 (&) That the imposition of such a tax may give 
 rise, under certain conditions, such, for example, 
 as scarcity of tokens and high incidence, to great 
 abuses ; * 
 
 (c) That the tax demanded of the native in the 
 Congo is out of all proportion higher in amount 
 than the imposts levied by other European Adminis- 
 trations in the African tropics ; 
 
 {d) That the women are taxed as well as the 
 men, which, in the Association's view, is an un- 
 mitigated evil ; ' 
 
 three conclusions can at once be drawn from 
 the Belgian Government's proposals. First, that 
 an increased amount of silver coinage in circulation 
 with which taxes can be paid is almost whoUy 
 contingent upon the re-introduction of trade and 
 its growth. Secondly, that, in actual practice, it is 
 proposed for a considerable time yet to come to 
 acquire a substantial proportion of the revenue by 
 a continuation of compulsory labour in the collection 
 of natural products. Thirdly, that for next year 
 this compulsory labour, in so far as it is directly 
 imposed by the ofl&cials of the " Belgian Colonial 
 Administration," is estimated to jdeld no less than 
 £565,100 (in rubber, ivory and copal) out of a total 
 revenue of £1,589,812, this proportion being, as 
 
 * Vide the petition of the native chiefs of Thysvllle presented 
 to M. Renkin and oommunioated to His Majesty's Government on 
 September 29 last. See Appendix. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 21 
 
 H.M. Grovernment will observe, exclusive of a 
 further sum — ^£100,800 — represented by the gold 
 obtained from the Kilo mine, which this Association 
 is advised is worked by compulsory labour, although 
 this is not, apparently, the opinion of H.M. Govern- 
 ment, judging from a recent reply given by the 
 Secretary of State to a question in the House of 
 Commons.* Equally important is it to note that 
 the " Belgian Colonial Administration " anticipates 
 obtaining in 1910 from its share in the profits on the 
 sale of the rubber, ivory and copal obtained by the 
 concessionnaire companies the sum of £94,000. 
 That compulsory labour is employed to secure those 
 profits no longer needs demonstration. In this 
 connection a comparison of the Budgetary estimates 
 for 1910 with the Budgetary estimates for 1909 
 discloses the extremely significant fact that the 
 amount the Belgian Government anticipates re- 
 ceiving under this head is identical for both 
 years. This is not precisely calculated to suggest 
 that the " Belgian Colonial Administration " con- 
 templates putting any pressure upon the Kasai 
 Company (from whose territory the bulk of the 
 rubber exported from the Congo is at this moment 
 derived and whose methods of enforced Slave- 
 labour have been comprehensively exposed by 
 Consul Thesiger) to change its methods. 
 
 So far, therefore, as next year — 1910 — is con- 
 cerned the Belgian Government's proposals come to 
 this, that the enforcement of compulsory labour 
 
 * It should be easy to obtain positive information on the 
 subject since the Kilo mines are situate within a few miles of the 
 Uganda frontier. Indeed, the Association is informed that the 
 bulk of gold now being shipped to Antwerp is not obtained from 
 the Kilo mine itself, but from a mine just over the border in British 
 territory. 
 
22 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 is to be maintained to such good purpose that it is 
 estimated to produce, in rubber, ivory and copal, 
 no less than £659,100, out of a total revenue of 
 £1,589,812, i.e. more than 40 per cent. The 
 Association cannot believe that H.M. Government 
 can dwell upon this prospect — knowing as they do 
 what those two words " compulsory labour " mean 
 on the Congo, in actual practice — with feelings 
 other than those of condemnation, and the Associa- 
 tion is persuaded that when public opinion is fuUy 
 acquainted with the fact, indignation will be freely 
 expressed. 
 
 And what of the future ? I cannot, for my 
 part, speaking for the Association, profess to 
 grasp the exact meaning of the quoted paragraph 
 from the Declaration as to the natives being 
 authorised to " pay (their taxes) in produce in the 
 regions not abandoned (to freedom of trade)." 
 The obvious fact is that the' natives have nothing 
 but produce with which to pay their so-called taxes. 
 But in any case it is clear that compulsory labour 
 in the collection of forest products, with all its 
 attendant and inevitable horrors and sufEerings, 
 is to go on for eighteen months longer in the old 
 Crown domain territory, for two and a half years 
 longer in the Welle territory and along the left bank 
 of the Lualaba from Stanleyville to the 6th degree 
 of latitude S., and for an unspecified period of time 
 in the Grands Lacs, Anversoise and A.B.I.E. 
 territories and in the properties of the Societe 
 Anonyme Beige, whose monstrous treatment of the 
 natives (in the Bussira property) has recently been 
 exposed by Dr. Doerpmghaus (whose depositions 
 are, doubtiiess, in the possession of H.M. Govern- 
 ment).* 
 
 * See Appendix VI, 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 23 
 
 And neitlier is this a prospect which those who 
 have entrusted me with the duty of making these 
 representations to H.M. Grovernment can con- 
 template with equanimity. 
 
 My observations on this aspect of the matter 
 would be incomplete if I failed to draw the atten- 
 tion of H.M. Government to several points in 
 connection with the regions where it is proposed to 
 continue this system of slavery — ^to describe it in 
 more accurate language — which appear to me to 
 be invested with extreme significance. The great 
 Aruwimi forest which is included, in part, in the 
 Grrands Lacs concession is very rich in rubber, but 
 sparsely populated, and it is worthy of note that 
 one of the regions (directly controlled by the 
 officials of the Administration) marked out as 
 subject to the existing regime for two and a half 
 years longer, should consist precisely of a broad 
 band of territory running parallel with that 
 Concession, whence, doubtless, it is reckoned labour 
 can be drawn ofE to the Aruwimi forest. Even 
 more noteworthy is the circumstance that the bulk 
 of the region marked out as subject to the existing 
 regime for two and a half years longer should include 
 the WeUe country, which, in its greater part, has 
 hitherto escaped the full pressure of the rubber 
 " tax " for the reason, amongst others, that the 
 tribes inhabiting it are more warlike than the 
 majority of the native peoples of the Congo, that 
 the region is very rich in ivory, and that the Congo 
 Administration has hitherto bent its energies upon 
 securing as much of this article as possible in ex- 
 change for guns and ammunition, which it has sold 
 for many jrears to the native chiefs, this practice 
 having given rise, it may be mentioned incidentally, 
 
24 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 to frequent protests on the part of the French 
 officials on the north bank of the Ubanghi and 
 M'Bomu, The Welle is, therefore, a more or less 
 virgin field for rubber, and it is well known in Boma 
 that before proceeding to take up his duties early 
 this summer the new District Commissioner for 
 the Welle coimtry received official instructions to 
 enforce vigorously the rubber tax in the region 
 under his jurisdiction, where, the Association is 
 informed, 1,400 soldiers are stationed, or were, 
 early this year. 
 
 In view of these circumstances it is not unreason- 
 able to suggest that what the natives of the regions 
 to be thrown open to freedom of trade on July 1, 
 1910, may be expected to gain (when traders enter 
 therein, assuming the conditions to be such as will 
 justify traders taking the risk)* from a relaxation 
 of compulsory labour in the collection of forest 
 products for revenue, will be paid for in full measure 
 by the natives of the Welle and of the old Crown 
 domain district in the shape of an intensified 
 pressure upon them. That, in short, the grjp upon 
 native labour may be slackened here only to be 
 tightened there. 
 
 So far as the concessionnaire areas are concerned 
 where no time limit is suggested for a cessation of 
 this compulsory labour (imposed for private profit 
 and Government revenue combined) it has already 
 been enforced in two of them — the notorious 
 A.B.I. E. and Anversoise — by the officials of the 
 Congo Government from September 1906 to August 
 1908, and by the officials of the Belgian Government 
 since that date. The Belgian Government holds 
 half the stock of these companies. No argument 
 
 , , , , . * FicZe Section E. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 25 
 
 can, therefore, I submit, be admitted that the 
 Belgian Government is powerless to deal with the 
 situation created by these concessions, which it 
 has wholly controlled since annexation and in 
 which it holds a paramount financial interest. 
 The directors of the A.B.I.R. and Anversoise have 
 violated with impunity for years every written law 
 of the Congo Grovernment, to say nothing of their 
 original charters, by their treatment of the natives, 
 and thereby forfeited what " rights " they ever 
 possessed. The Bussira and Lomami properties be- 
 longing to the Societe Anonyme Bdge are relatively 
 restricted in area, and in the Bussira property, at 
 least, the agents of that Company are now seen to 
 have violated both Congo law and Belgian law in 
 the same respect. The concessions, then, cannot be 
 invoked as an obstacle to the Belgian Government's 
 abandonment of compulsory labour in the part of 
 the Congo afiected by them. The Belgian Govern- 
 ment's resolve to itself maintain that System in the 
 old Crown domain and in the Welle constitutes a 
 far more disturbing element in the situation. 
 
 I beg leave to sum up, in brief, the observations 
 here submitted upon that portion of the Belgian 
 Government's proposals which concern the System 
 in its threefold aspect. 
 
 Products. — An abandonment, in principle, of 
 the claim to ownership over the natural products 
 of the soil actually negotiable, which in itself is 
 satisfactory, but accompanied by delays that, in 
 the view of this Association, are inadmissible : 
 doubly so when the Belgian Government's attitude 
 as to land and compulsory labour for revenue 
 purposes is considered, an' attitude which gives no 
 guarantee of future security for the native races. 
 
26 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 ZfflwcZ.— Persistence in the policy of the Congo 
 Government, a policy which, treats all land as 
 " vacant," regards it as the property of the Belgian 
 Grovemment, and denies the validity of tribal and 
 commimal ownership : a policy which, in the view 
 of the Association, is a revival of barbarism and 
 inadmissible. 
 
 Labour. — Maintenance of compulsory labour 
 for revenue purposes (and private profit) in a con- 
 siderable section of the Congo during 1910, esti- 
 mated to produce over 40 per cent, of the total 
 revenue, and in further sections for periods ranging 
 from one year and a half to two years and a half 
 and unspecified, which, in the view of the Associa- 
 tion, is inadmissible. 
 
SECTION B.— FINANCE 
 
 It will not, I venture to affirm, be disputed that 
 if the key to the System resides in the land question, 
 the test by which the Belgian Government's inten- 
 tions as a whole must be judged lies in the financial 
 provision of next year's Budget. There and there 
 alone can the only real guarantee of a radical 
 change of poUcy be sought. In this respect the 
 Association recalls the undernoted Declaration of 
 the Secretary of State in the House of Commons 
 on February 26, 1908, and, with due regard to the 
 distinction between that time and this, viz. : that 
 the assurances given by the Belgian Government 
 before annexation remain unfulfilled and that no 
 guarantee was exacted from the Belgian Govern- 
 ment before annexation became an accomplished 
 fact, the Association takes its stand to-day where 
 the Secretary of State took his stand then. It 
 asks for a guarantee, and, as I respectfully insist, 
 with all the greater justification, in view of what 
 has occurred — and what has not occurred — since 
 annexation. 
 
 These were the words pronounced by the 
 Secretary of State : 
 
 " But I go further, and say that we agree that it must 
 be a condition precedent to any transfer of the Congo to 
 another authority, that that authority should take it 
 over on terms which will place it in a position to give 
 
28 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 assurances, and to guarantee that those assurances shall 
 be carried out, and the treaty obligations of the Congo 
 should be fulfilled." 
 
 It is from that double standpoint, that of the 
 necessity of a guarantee and of the fact that the 
 financial provisions of the Budget can alone furnish 
 such guarantee, that the Belgian Government's 
 proposals in their financial aspect are approached. 
 
 Justification for the first standpoint need not 
 here be argued since H.M. Government have them- 
 selves recognised it, beyond remarking that an 
 abandonment of that position would, it is self- 
 evident, involve an abandonment of the entire case 
 for the natives. Justification for the second stand- 
 point can be stated in four sentences. The Congo 
 Government maintained itself to the extent of 
 some 50 to 60 per cent, of its admitted revenues 
 upon the proceeds of compulsory labour, euphe- 
 mistically so-called, " Slavery pure and simple," 
 as H.M. Government have accurately termed it. 
 The " Belgian Colonial Administration " has fol- 
 lowed suit since August 1908 on the plea that 
 this period has been a period of transition. If the 
 " Belgian Colonial Administration " now intends 
 to manage the Congo on civilised and normal lines 
 in accordance with international treaty obligations, 
 and not as a slave farm, it must substitute the 
 revenues obtained from compulsory labour by 
 other revenues until an increase in Customs dues 
 following upon the development of trade between 
 the Congo and the outer world, coupled with an 
 annual poU-tax of moderate dimensions (imposed 
 upon a population which would be thenceforth in 
 a position to enrich itself by trade and labour), 
 royalties from mining enterprises, &c., yield between 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 29 
 
 them a revenue sufficient to meet expenditure. 
 In other words, the Belgian Government must 
 make inroads upon the national exchequer of 
 Belgium. 
 
 Being told in the opening pages of the Colonial 
 Minister's Declaration, as previously recorded, 
 that the Congo is now dependent upon " a rich and 
 industrious metropolis " and, further on, that the 
 " preservation and development of the population 
 are one of the essential interests of the Colony," 
 and, again, that the programme sketched out in 
 these proposals will " add a glorious page to the 
 annals " of Belgium, the Association turned with 
 eagerness to an examination of what this " rich 
 and industrious metropolis " proposed to do by 
 way of alleviating the crushing burden laid for so 
 many years upon the shoulders of the unfortunate 
 native races of the Congo. And with the greater 
 confidence that the contribution of this " rich and 
 industrious metropohs " would be generous and 
 substantial, inasmuch as within the last eleven 
 years — not to go further back — the Congo natives 
 have poured into this " rich and industrious 
 metropolis " twenty-one millions sterling of raw 
 produce forced out of them at the end of the lash 
 and at the muzzle of the rifle, by every form of 
 brutality and oppression. 
 
 But the Association fails to trace that this 
 " rich and industrious metropolis," anxious to 
 inscribe a page of glory upon its annals, proposes 
 to subscribe one penny-piece to the Congo from 
 its national exchequer. The Association finds that 
 this " rich and industrious metropohs " designs to 
 extract in the coming year from the labour of a 
 wretched population, dying off rapidly from misery. 
 
30 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 over- work, lack of food, and disease, a further hugfe 
 sum, in revenue alone, of £839,900. The Asso- 
 ciation notes that while this " rich and industrious 
 metropolis " cannot spare a centime to relieve the 
 native of his intolerable task of filling a bottomless 
 sack of revenue from which he derives not the 
 faintest benefit, it has no difl&culty in raising a 
 loan of £1,340,671 — on which the Colony, i.e. in 
 the ultimate resort, the native, is called upon to 
 pay the interest,* — to be spent, inter alia, in the 
 following manner : 
 
 £ 
 Various enterprises connected in part 
 with organising the Belgian occupa- 
 tion of the Katanga .... 958,182 
 Purchase of a battery for the Port below 
 Boma ; purchase of artillery, arms 
 
 anfl ammunition 80,000 
 
 Subsidy to King Leopold . . . 132,000 
 
 and not to the extent, again, of a solitary centime 
 upon or on behalf of the native population. 
 
 Finally, the Association observes that the 
 Colony — {i.e. the native) — is itself expected to 
 subscribe to this " rich and industrious metro- 
 polis " ! 
 
 And to this extent and for these pxirposes : 
 
 £ 
 For the upkeep of a Museum at Ter- 
 
 vueren (Belgium) .... 8,944 
 For the upkeep of the Colonial 
 
 Institute 2 740 
 
 For the upkeep of the Belgian School of 
 
 Tropical Medicine .... 984 
 
 jpaop Ih^ Colony is already saddled with an annual debt charge of 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 31 
 
 These expenses are so meticulously enunciated 
 that the world is aljle to appreciate at its due 
 value the circumstance that the Congo native is 
 expected to provide the means of paying down 
 to the electric lighting, fire and water bills of these 
 institutions. I l|pg leave to continue the list : 
 
 Pa3Tnent to the members and staff of 
 
 the Colonial Council (in Brussels) . 2,245 
 
 Salary to a Consul, &c 3,200 
 
 Payments to ex-officials and their 
 
 widows 379 
 
 Payments to doctors and others . . 404 
 
 Library : subscriptions to newspapers, 
 
 periodicals, &c 1,844 
 
 Railway freight on Hbraries for the 
 
 Upper Congo 20 
 
 Freight and insurance .... 20 
 
 Import dues 40 
 
 PubUcation of the Bulletin of Com- 
 
 faraUve Colonisation .... 400 
 
 Subventions to philanthropic and other 
 
 Societies 2,600 
 
 Subvention to the " ViUa Colonial " . 800 
 
 Subvention to the Brussels Exhibition 
 
 of 1910 and to the Colonial Exhibition 
 
 at Tervueren 4,000 
 
 Finally, to complete the picture of this " rich 
 and industrious metropoUs " in the act of inter- 
 preting its duties towards the Congo natives and 
 their duties towards itself, the Association closes its 
 researches into the Colonial Minister's Budgetary 
 estimates for 1910 by ascertaining that the natives 
 
32 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 of the Colony lie administers must also find tlie 
 
 following sums : 
 
 Annuity to Prince Albert until he suc- 
 ceeds to the Belgian throne . . 4,800 
 
 Annuity to Princess Clementine until 
 
 she marries 3,000 
 
 Annuities to the former ofiScials of the 
 Crown domain 2,400 
 
 Annuities to the congregation of the 
 missionaries of Scheut .... 2,600 
 
 Upkeep of the tropical greenhouses and 
 colonial collections at Laeken in Bel- 
 gium 16,000 
 
 I will not trust myself to give expression, in a 
 communication to His Majesty's Government, to 
 the views with which the Association closes this 
 survey of the financial provisions forming part of 
 the Belgian Government's proposals for a reform 
 of its administrative procedure in the Congo. 
 
 I would merely observe that the Belgian 
 Government, alone among the Governments of 
 Christendom, claims the right to govern a tropical 
 dependency in Africa by means of enormous taxes 
 wrung from its inhabitants, and by the issue of 
 loans the interest upon which it expects its African 
 subjects to pay ; and caps this claim by demandiag 
 of these same African subjects that they shall 
 provide subsidies for the Belgian heir-apparent 
 and his sister, for ex-officials, for missionary, 
 medical and philanthropic institutions in Belgium ; 
 that they shall provide for the upkeep of museums, 
 institutes, and tropical greenhouses in Belgium, 
 and that they shall even pay the salaries of the 
 governing body of the Congo in Brussels and the 
 cost of newspapers and periodicals presumably 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 33 
 
 intended for the edification of the members of that 
 body. 
 
 While such conceptions as to the duties of 
 governing a tropical dependency prevail among the 
 ruling classes of this " rich and industrious metro- 
 pohs," who ask the world to-day to credit them 
 with good intentions and lofty and philanthropic 
 motives, I respectfully submit that the lives and 
 Uberties of the native inhabitants of that depen- 
 dency are not safe in the uncontrolled hands of 
 these their present rulers. 
 
SECTION C— PKOBLEMS INCIDENTAL TO 
 THE APPLICATION OP THE SYSTEM 
 
 I. — Native Army 
 
 A subsidiary but, nevertheless, an extremely 
 important test of the reality of any substantial 
 alteration in the policy hitherto pursued on the 
 Congo would naturally be sought in the composi- 
 tion and pay of the native army. It seems hardly 
 necessary to point out in a communication to H.M. 
 Government that the main purpose of the native 
 army in the Congo, as of the cloud of irregular 
 levies armed by the concessionnaires, has been, 
 not the enforcement of law and order (when the 
 Administration itself was the supreme violator of 
 law and the chief disturber of order), but the 
 enforcement of the so-caUed taxes in rubber and 
 food supplies : that it has Uved upon the land and 
 that it has made up for the lack of adequate pay 
 by unUmited and unchecked loot. The compre- 
 hensive evidence, both official and unofficial, on 
 these matters is overwhelming, and the atrocities 
 perpetrated by this horde of Vandals let loose on 
 tribute-hunting expeditions upon the unarmed 
 population may, without exaggeration, be said to 
 have become notorious throughout the length and 
 breadth of Central Africa. Wherever its operations 
 have ranged native Uve stock has almost totally 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 35 
 
 disappeared ; native preventive measures against 
 the spread of venereal disease have been impossible 
 of apphcation. From far and wide — especially, 
 perhaps, from the Kasai — women have been raided 
 in enormous numbers to satisfy its lusts. In the 
 A.B.I.R. territory it is admitted in one official 
 document in the writer's possession that a " veri- 
 table slave-trade in women " was carried out by 
 that Company's irregulars. It was due to the 
 nature of the tasks assigned to this so-called Force 
 Puhlique under its European officers, that the 
 ItaHan Government finally withdrew its sanction 
 for Italian officers — whose indignant protests were 
 ventilated in the ItaUan miUtary journals and in the 
 Italian Chamber by Signor Santini — ^to take service 
 in the Congo. 
 
 The number of the irregular levies kept up by 
 the concessionnaires has never been more than 
 roughly estimated. Consul Casement put it 
 down at 10,000 ; but, admittedly, at a rough 
 estimate only. They were supposed to have been 
 totally suppressed years ago, but as the disclosures 
 recently made by Dr. Doerpinghaus prove, they 
 stiU exist as a regular institution in the Bussira 
 territory,* while Consul Thesiger has shown them 
 to be employed in large numbers by the Kasai 
 Company — contrary, in both cases, of course, to 
 the written law. 
 
 The regular army has not ceased to grow and 
 grow until it has reached its present figures — esti- 
 mated for 1909 — of 17,000 native units. So far 
 as I have been able to ascertain, this figure is slightly 
 larger than the combined forces maintained by 
 England, Germany and France in their tropical 
 
 * Appendix VI. 
 
 s 2 
 
36 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 African possessions. In German East Africa and 
 the Cameroons, for example, the total native 
 ranks number together 3,828 for a territory more 
 than half the size of the Congo.* 
 
 It might have been reasonably anticipated that 
 once a fandamental change from a policy based 
 upon compulsory labour enforced by violence to a 
 policy based upon honest commerce was in con- 
 templation, the estimates for 1910 would have 
 foreshadowed a considerable reduction in the 
 native army. The contrary is the case. The 
 Colonial Minister announces that the army is to 
 be actually increased, and one of the reasons given, 
 strangely enough, is this very re-introduction, in 
 stages, of freedom of commerce ! Such an ex- 
 planation is so manifestly untenable that the 
 Association cannot, I venture to think, be accused 
 of unworthy suspicions if it assumes that the 
 true explanation lies elsewhere. But all the infor- 
 mation vouchsafed in addition to the above by the 
 Belgian Colonial Minister's declaration is "the 
 necessity of a stronger occupation of the territory." 
 
 While the Association notes that the Budget 
 contains provision for an increase in expenditure 
 connected with the rationing of the Force Publique 
 (this is dealt with in the next section), the scale 
 of pay to the native ranks remains at its usual 
 amazingly low figure. 
 
 The total year's pay for 17,000 native ranks is 
 shown at £52,812, or, say, £3 2s. Id. per unit per 
 annum. 
 
 I select one or two examples to show how this 
 
 ' German East Africa, 383,079 square miles; Cameroons, 
 191,130 square miles ; total, 574,209 square miles. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 37 
 
 pay compares with, the pay of African ranks in 
 other tropical African armies : 
 
 Per ann. 
 £ a. d. 
 
 Average pay of native unit in the 
 
 Cameroons 28 10 0* 
 
 Average pay of native unit in German 
 
 East Africa 23 5 Of 
 
 Average pay of native unit in Southern 
 
 Nigeria 18 OJ 
 
 Average pay of native unit in the West 
 
 African Regiment . . . . 13 6 § 
 Average pay of native unit in Northern 
 
 Nigeria 18 0|| 
 
 This remarkable difference between the pay of a 
 native unit in the Congo and that of a native unit 
 in other tropical African dependencies would appear 
 to be typical of the divergent character and rdle 
 of the native soldier in the Congo and elsewhere, 
 and it cannot but be a matter for grave foreboding 
 that, judged by these tests, the Belgian Govern- 
 ment should, apparently, be prepared to perpetuate 
 the character and the role of the Congo army. 
 
 II. — The Food-taxes 
 
 The burden of the so-called food-taxes upon 
 the native population has been only a degree less 
 terrible in its effects upon native hfe than the 
 burden of the rubber tax. Indeed, there are some 
 who hold that its effects have been even more 
 disastrous. They point out that whereas both are 
 
 * Inclusive of ration money, varying from 15 to 35 pfennige 
 pel diem. 
 
 t Exclusive of ration money. 
 
 j Exclusive of Zd. per day ration money. 
 
 § Army Estimates (March 31, 1910) : exolusive of ration money ; 
 the regiment is recruited among the Mendis and Timinis of Sierra 
 lieone, y Apparently exclusive of rations. 
 
38 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 enforced by compulsory labour, and give rise to 
 brutal ill-usage in tbeir application, in the case of 
 the former the native is compelled to part with the 
 very necessaries of existence, his own staple food 
 supplies : that the demand upon him, both as to 
 the quantity required and to the labour involved, is 
 so excessive that no time is left him to grow and 
 produce a suflSciency for himself. It is clear, 
 however, that the argument as to the labour in- 
 volved applies equally to the rubber " tax," the 
 demand for rubber in many parts sweeping within 
 its meshes the labour both of men and women 
 and precluding the natives from attending to 
 their farms. In this respect the report from Consul 
 Thesiger as to the state of affairs in the Kasai 
 country published early this year by H.M. Govern- 
 ment cannot be read without the conviction being 
 arrived at, that the question is one of the gravest 
 possible import to the future welfare of the Congo 
 races. 
 
 This, then, is the principal charge levied against 
 the Congo Administration under this head — ^that 
 the native population is rapidly decreasing from 
 absolute lack of food. The charge occurs over and 
 over again in the British Consular reports and 
 in the Missionaries' letters. It was especially 
 accentuated by the Belgian Commission of Inquiry. 
 A subsidiary charge has been that the Congo Ad- 
 ministration paid for its food supplies [which it 
 exacted with condign punishment in case of non- 
 compliance] at a rate far below the actual market 
 value of the commodity. This charge has also been 
 fully substantiated in the detailed reports, both 
 official and non-official, bearing on the subject. 
 
 A total change in this System may, therefore, 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 39 
 
 be said, without exaggeration, to be Uterally a 
 matter of life and death to the natives of the Congo. 
 It is therefore with unqualified satisfaction that 
 the Association notes in the Colonial Minister's 
 Declaration the categorical statement that 
 
 " The food-tax -will be suppressed," 
 
 and the further statement that, in future, the 
 Administration will purchase food-stuffs in silver, 
 and wiU provide its paid labourers (whose salaries 
 it will increase) with ration money with which to 
 purchase food, thus adopting Consul Thesiger's 
 suggestion.* 
 
 Three statements are, therefore, made : 
 
 1. That the tax in food-stuffs will be done away 
 with. 
 
 2. That the Administration's native personnel 
 will be provided with money rations. 
 
 3. That the salaries of the native personnel 
 will be increased. 
 
 The difficulty in which the Association finds 
 itself in regard to this part of the Belgian Govern- 
 ment's proposals is its inabOity to trace in the 
 Budgetary estimates the very considerable increase 
 in expenditure which, if the Association be accu- 
 rately informed, must of necessity accompany the 
 promised changes. 
 
 The Association has discussed at great length the 
 matter of food supplies with men who have resided 
 long years in various parts of the Congo, and it is 
 assured that the estimate of 100,000 individuals 
 connected with the machinery of administration is 
 a low one. These 100,000 individuals include the 
 officers, the soldiers, their wives, children and camp- 
 
 * Africa, No. 1, 1908, p. 58. 
 
40 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 followers, estimated at 50,000 at least ; the remainder 
 being composed of paid workmen on the stations, 
 with their following, engaged in various kinds of 
 remmierated labour, White officials and their per- 
 sonal servants, women, and so on. All these 
 people have hitherto been living on the land, and 
 more than one of H.M. Consuls has drawn attention 
 to the " pitiful " contrast between the sight of 
 poor, naked, emaciated forest women bringing 
 supplies of food-stuffs to the Government Station 
 and the spectacle of gaily dressed native women 
 " attached " to the Officials' establishments or to 
 the soldiers' quarters, strutting about in idleness. 
 The Association has also been assured that it is a 
 low estimate to reckon that each unit will, normally, 
 consume food-stuffs on the Congo to the equivalent 
 .of 5s. per month. Assuming these figures to be 
 substantially accurate — and I may venture to 
 repeat that they are the result of considerable 
 inquiry — the stoppage of the compulsory taxation 
 in food and its substitution by payment at local 
 prices would involve the Administration in an 
 increased expenditure of £300,000 per annum.* 
 
 Turning now to the Budgetary estimates for 
 1910, we find a revenue increase of £146,050 over 
 1909, and an expenditure increase of £171,071, 
 leaving an adverse balance of £25,021. How much 
 of that increased expenditure of £171,071 can be 
 
 * It is instructive to note that the provision for the entire 
 " remuneration " allotted by the " Belgian Colonial Administra- 
 tion " to the native in the Budget of 1909 — which provision 
 includes, moreover, sundry other expenses impossible to propor- 
 tion, but obviously considerable — for £675,000 of rubber, copal and 
 ivory, and (on the basis indicated above) £300,000 for food-stuffs 
 was £115,000, inclusive of the labour involved in collecting these 
 articles. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 41 
 
 attributed to the stoppage of the compulsory tax 
 in food ? 
 
 It is, for various reasons, quite impossible to 
 pronounce definitely on tliis point, owing to the 
 manner in which the returns are compiled. 
 
 For example, we are told (p. 37) that "the 
 expenses incurred in paying for native food sup- 
 plies," which, in the Budget of 1909, were presented 
 in one total among the expenditure items figuring 
 in the Department of " Taxes in kind and exploita- 
 tion of the domain," are distributed, in the Budget 
 for 1910, among all the Departments affected. 
 When, however, we turn to the particulars given 
 under this Department in the Budget for 1909, we 
 find that no separate item is inscribed for pay- 
 ment of native food supphes, but that this payment 
 is lumped together with the payment for labour 
 and for forest products (Chap, x, p. 66). Baffled 
 in this direction, investigation is equally ineffective 
 when directed upon each Department ; for, while 
 in most cases there are increases under the heads of 
 up-keep (entretien) and salaries,' we are left in doubt 
 as to the extent to which these increases are ac- 
 coimted for on the one hand by the purchase of 
 food, and on the other by an increase in the 
 number of White officials and salaried natives 
 attached to those Departments. That in many 
 cases an increase in the staff has taken place is 
 stated in the explanatory notes. 
 
 What an attentive examination of these esti- 
 mates can, however, permit to be affirmed without 
 hesitation is that out of this increased expenditure 
 for 1910 of £171,071 a proportion of £81,559* is 
 
 * Sendee de la Caisse d'Epargne : Remboursements : D^pensea 
 relatives k divers Services: Boole de m^decine tropicale: Coutb 
 
42 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 not even remotely connected with payment for 
 food supplies ; while another sum, impossible to 
 gauge with accuracy, but at least considerable, is 
 avowedly the consequence of an increase in the 
 European and native staff. 
 
 The Association must, therefore, confine itself in 
 this connection to pointing out that, while the 
 promise of an abolition of the food -taxes is in itself 
 satisfactory, adequate evidence is lacking to give 
 to that promise the burden of actual proof which 
 it would be so desirable to possess. 
 
 colonial : Muste de Tervueren : Bienfaisance : Instruction publique : 
 Prisons : Fabrication de monnaies : Hygiene : Postes efc t616graphes : 
 Rtat civil et successions. 
 
SECTION D.— GOVERNMENT RUBBER 
 PLANTATIONS 
 
 The Association observes with no little appre- 
 hension the resolve of the Belgian Government to 
 inaugurate a new system of rubber plantations for 
 Government accoimt (pp. 15 and 16), notably at 
 Ganda-Sundi in the Lower Congo, in the Maringa- 
 Lopori district, in the Bangala, the Mongala, the 
 Upper Ituri, and the Manyema (p. 43) ; and the 
 opening of a credit of £80,000 under the head of 
 " extraordiuary expenditure " for the increase in 
 the White and Black stafE required for the purpose. 
 The Association adheres very strongly to the 
 opinion that the conception of a European Ad- 
 ministration in tropical Africa creating industrial 
 enterprises in the country with the object of raising 
 revenue therefrom, runs counter to the whole 
 modern trend of thought in the government of 
 tropical dependencies, and is liable to generate 
 grave abuses. The Association sees in this resolve 
 a revival of the old vicious idea of the Administra- 
 tion itself exploiting native labour and the resources 
 of the country which has been the curse of the 
 Congo since 1892. It contrasts this policy an- 
 nounced by the Belgian Government with the 
 policy pursued by the British, French, and German 
 Administrations in tropical Africa, which seek to 
 assist and encourage the natives in creating new 
 
44 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 industries of their own from wHcli they reap the 
 yield and the profit, the European Administrations 
 aforesaid contenting themselves with the increase 
 in trade (and consequently in Customs dues) in- 
 evitably brought about by every fresh expansion 
 of native industry and, thereby, of the purchasing 
 capacity of the natives. I would draw attention 
 in this respect to the wonderful growth in recent 
 years of the cocoa industry in the Grold Coast, the 
 ground-nut industry in French Senegal, the cotton 
 and maize industries in German Togo, French 
 Dahomey, and Nigeria — one and all native indus- 
 tries grafted upon the old-time but extant native 
 industries in forest products proper, I would 
 point to the existence of agricultural centres and 
 botanical gardens in our own and our neighbours' 
 African dependencies, where experiments are carried 
 out for the benefit of the native communities (and 
 necessarily of the dependency itself, where normal 
 conceptions prevail) ; whence seeds and plants are 
 distributed gratis to the native farmers ; where a 
 trained stafi by personal exposition, by pains- 
 taking lectures and addresses, brings home in an 
 increasing degree to the rising generation of 
 natives the value of their land to them, how they 
 can increase their interest in it, how they can 
 develop it for their own uses, get the most from 
 it, tap fresh sources of wealth /or themselves. And, 
 bearing in mind aU that is being done in these ways 
 by the European administrator to justify his 
 occupation of the African tropics and to show him- 
 self worthy of his civilising mission, it is difficult 
 to refrain from commenting upon the bitter irony 
 of the situation which finds the Congo — where such 
 views as these were to prevail par excdlence, where 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 45 
 
 European rule was to be on a higher ethical plane 
 than in any of the surrounding territories — in the 
 hands of a Government apparently as impervious 
 to the humane ideals which other Governments in 
 like situations pursue as it is impregnated with 
 notions which other Governments have long since 
 abandoned. The proclaimed programme of the 
 Belgian Government discloses the yawning gulf 
 which separates it from its contemporaries so far 
 as native policy is concerned, and in this particular 
 alone, induces many forebodings for the future. 
 
 But while lamenting the Belgian Government's 
 resolve, the Association recognises that the treaty 
 obligations to which the Congo territory is subject 
 do not give the signatory Powers of the Berlin Act 
 the righi to oppose it, unless in its execution of 
 that resolve the Belgian Government proposes to 
 turn its methods of compulsory labour into this 
 new channel. 
 
 In that case, the Association holds, the right of 
 interference is absolute. The Secretary of State 
 in his speech at Sheffield on October 22 last asked 
 for an answer to his question : 
 
 " Is a great portion of the native population of the 
 Congo still obliged to labour compulsorily under the guise 
 of taxation ? " 
 
 before he could consider the recognition of the 
 Belgian annexation of the Congo. 
 
 I make bold to have proved beyond doubt 
 or contest in this communication, from the 
 Belgian Government's own admissions, that the 
 answer to that question is an affirmative one 
 to-day, and that it will continue to be of that 
 nature under the proposals before us for at least 
 
46 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 several years to come as regards tke karvesting of 
 forest products in a considerable part of the Congo 
 territory. 
 
 But I venture to hope that the Secretary of 
 State will also wish to assure himself that this 
 scheme of Government rubber plantations is not 
 going to give an additional lease of life to com- 
 pulsory labour in another direction. 
 
 It will not have escaped the Secretary of State 
 — I mention this merely as an illustrative point — 
 that the regions where this new system is to be 
 inaugurated include the territories of the Lopori- 
 Maringa* and Mongalla,"j' where compulsory labour, 
 or, more accurately, " slavery pure and simple " 
 (to recall once again the phrase of the Secretary of 
 State) in its most atrocious form, has reduced, 
 impoverished, and rendered the natives in the last 
 degree wretched by long years of abominable usage. 
 
 The Secretary of State will similarly bear in 
 mind as to another of the regions, the Upper Ituri, 
 designated for this purpose, that it was of the 
 natives in the eastern section of the Grands Lacs con- 
 cessionnaire territory, which includes the southern 
 bank of the Upper Ituri, Vice-Consul Michell wrote : 
 
 " I must say that, during more than nineteen years' 
 experience in Northern and Central Africa, I have never 
 seen such a miserable poor lot as the Basengi in this 
 State . . . the people are all disheartened and are 
 unanimously of opiuion that they were better off under 
 the Arabs. . . ."J 
 
 Neither will the Secretary of State have failed 
 to note in his consideration of this matter the 
 report I had the honour of submitting to him on 
 June 16 last, from which it would appear that the 
 
 * A.B.I.B. Concession. f Aaversoise Concession. 
 
 t Africa, No. 1, 1907, p. 49. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 47 
 
 new syatem had already started, since native 
 labour was called upon to plant rubber for six 
 months in the year, and to collect forest rubber for 
 the other half. I^" 
 
 Is the labour which will be required to carry 
 out the new scheme to be compulsorily secured or 
 not ? To that question the Association respect- 
 fully insists that a categorical answer should be 
 asked of the Belgian Government. 
 
 And if it is not compulsorily obtained, how is 
 the labour to be got ? It should, I venture to 
 think, ever be borne in mind that a very large 
 section of the population of the Upper Congo 
 (notoriously in the Maringa-Lopori and Mongalla) 
 is exhausted and worn out, requiring before every- 
 thing a period of rest to recuperate. 
 
 And what will be the amount of labour required 
 to clear and plant with rubber 5,000 acres per 
 annum for the next ten years, as the Belgian 
 Government proposes ? ■ir-'4 
 
 These, too, are quesjiions to which, on behali of 
 the Association, I would direct the most serious 
 attention of H.M. Government. 
 
 So far as the latter one is concerned, I had 
 hoped to be in a position to submit some detailed 
 observations in this letter. But I find upon 
 inquiry a great divergence of opinion on the 
 subject, and I have not yet been able to satisfy 
 myself as to the facts. 
 
 Reserving, under sanction, the submission later 
 on of a Memorandum on the point, I would here 
 indicate but one opinion which seems to me worthy 
 of consideration. It is that of an Englishman who 
 was for many years engaged as Chef agronome by 
 the Congo Government. This gentleman estimates 
 that at least one skilled labourer per acre would be 
 
48 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 required on tlie Congo — ^where there is no skilled 
 labour — for the work of tapping alone. If that 
 estimate is accurate, it would not appear to be 
 excessive to reckon that the work of clearing and 
 planting would require a strict minimum of one 
 man per acre. This would mean 5,000 men in the 
 first year for the first 5,000 acres contemplated.* 
 I do not hesitate to afl&rm that the Belgian Ad- 
 ministration, which cannot even secure half that 
 number of labourers for the Grands Lacs railway 
 without the exercise of violence and without having 
 recourse to " recruiting operations " at an enormous 
 distance from the site of employment, f would find 
 it a fortiori utterly impossible to secure 5,000 
 labourers (for the first year only) for rubber 
 plantations save by similar methods. As H.M. 
 Government are aware, that compulsory labour 
 for the Grands Lacs railway is justified to-day on 
 the ground of " pubUc utihty," and on that ground 
 the practice was legaUsed by decree by the present 
 Colonial Minister of Belgiujn soon after he became 
 responsible for the Congo's administration.J It 
 woidd be making an undidy large draft upon 
 charity to assume that the excuse of " pubUc 
 utility " need be strictly confined to the building 
 of a railway. 
 
 I can only renew, on behalf of the Association, 
 the deep concern with which it has perused this 
 portion of the Colonial Minister's Declaration. 
 
 * It would be imprudent in tlie highest degree to draw inferences 
 applicable to tropical African conditions — and especially to existing 
 conditions on the Congo — from conditions prevailing, for example, 
 in the Malay States. 
 
 t Vide the latest disclosure of the American missionaries in the 
 Kasai and Kwango. Appendix IV, 
 
 I Appendix IV. 
 
SECTION F.— RESTRICTIONS UPON 
 FREEDOM OF TRADE 
 
 I respectfully submit, on behalf of the Associa- 
 tion, that the existence of freedom of trade on the 
 Congo depends upon two factors : 
 
 First, the right of the native to sell to mer- 
 chants the produce of his soil, having commercial 
 value on the world's markets. ^ 
 
 Secondly, the presence of merchants in the 
 country to buy that produce from him. 
 
 The first point has been fuUy dealt with in 
 Section A of this communication. The second 
 point has now to be examined. 
 
 After the experiences which have befallen every 
 attempt on the part of merchants of various 
 nationalities to establish a footing in the Upper 
 Congo during the past ten years, and the squeezing- 
 out process steadily applied towards old-established 
 firms in the small Lower Congo, it is obvious that 
 merchants will not run the risk of opening up 
 business in this part of the world imless they are 
 satisfied not only that they wiU be unmolested, but 
 that their enterprise will be free from undue 
 restrictions. 
 
 So far as the first point is concerned, the Associa- 
 tion assumes that scandals such as the Rabinek 
 afiair, the seizure of Senhor Amaro's * goods, and 
 
 * 1906 and again in 1909. 
 
 £ 
 
50 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 the violent interference with and confiscation of 
 the goods of sundry German firms * will not again 
 recur. But, recalling my observations under Sec- 
 lion A, I would beg leave to accentuate the fact 
 that the Belgian Grovernment proposes to exclude 
 merchants from the whole Congo until July 1, 
 1910, from the old Crown domain territory until 
 July 1, 1911, from the Welle and Aruwimi and 
 from the left bank of the Lualaba between the 
 equator and latitude 5° S. until July 1, 1912, and 
 from sundry concessionnaire areas, apparently, for 
 an unlimited period. Just as these proposals are, 
 in the opinion of the Association, inadmissible 
 from the point of view of native rights under 
 International Treaties, so, the Association holds, 
 are they inadmissible from the point of view of the 
 rights secured to merchants of aU nationalities 
 under the same treaties — ^rights which are formally 
 guaranteed in the separate agreements between the 
 Powers and King Leopold and in the BerUn Act. 
 
 In regard to the second point, the existence of 
 restrictions hampering to trade, I beg leave to call 
 the attention of H.M. Government to various 
 features in the existing situation and to divers 
 aspects of the Belgian Government proposals. 
 
 At the present moment the three articles which 
 will alone pay transport expenses to Europe from 
 the Upper Congo are rubber, copal and ivory, the 
 most important being rubber. While the rates 
 charged by the company which is part owner of the 
 railway connecting the Lower with the Upper 
 Congo remain at their present figure, the develop- 
 ment of a trade in any article of a lower intrinsic 
 value is impossible. 
 
 * 1908 and 1909. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 51 
 
 Consul Ernst Vohsen of Berlin, the well-known 
 German authority, member of the German Colonial 
 Society and editor of the " Kolonial Rundschau," 
 has recently set forth * in detail, and as follows, 
 the position of merchants desirous of opening up 
 a trade in rubber with the natives anywhere in the 
 vast Upper Congo : 
 
 " A merchant acquires from Government a piece of 
 land of one-and-a-half hectares, situated in a good rubber 
 district. He builds on it a factory, with dwellings and 
 storehouses attached. I suppose all to be carried out on 
 the smallest possible scale so that the expenses should 
 be reduced to their lowest ; on the other hand, I calculate 
 the production of rubber at a high figure and suppose it 
 to be 20,000 klgs. per aimum. The transport wUl be by 
 the merchant's own thirty-ton steamer, with a speed of 
 eight knots. 
 
 1. — FiEST Payment 
 
 Francs 
 
 Licence to collect and sell rubber . . 5,000.00 
 
 2. — Yearly Payment 
 
 Tax on the factory, dwelling-house, kit- 
 chen, &c., 600 square yards at 1 franc . 
 
 Warehouse, 100 square yards at 0.75 
 franc 
 
 House for the native personnel, 80 square 
 yards at 0.50 franc .... 
 
 Sheds (open on four sides), 30 square yards 
 at 0.50 franc 
 
 Yard, 50 square yards at 0.25 franc . 
 
 Licence to engage labour .... 
 
 Licences for 15 men, at 3 francs each 
 
 Tax on two white foremen .... 
 
 Tax on 15 native foremen, at 10 francs 
 each 
 
 Total ...... 
 
 ♦ Berliner TaijeblaU. 
 
 ,*&. 
 
 Francs 
 
 600.00 
 
 75.00 
 
 40.00 
 
 15.00 
 12.50 
 100.00 
 45.00 
 60.00 
 
 150.00 
 
 1,097.50 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 8. — Taxes on and Licences fob the 
 Steamers 
 
 Francs 
 
 Tax on a 80-ton steamer .... 600 
 
 Do, on one boat 100 
 
 Do. on captain and engineer, at 30 francs 
 
 each 60 
 
 Licence to engage labour .... 100 
 Licence for a crew of 20 men, at 8 francs 
 
 each 60 
 
 Tax on a crew of 20 men .... 200 
 
 Total 1,120 
 
 4. — ^Licence to Cut Wood fob Stbamee's 
 Consumption 
 
 Francs 
 
 With speed of 7 knots or under, 240 francs 
 per ton, carrying capacity . 240 x 80 7,200 
 
 As the supposed steamer has a speed of 
 8 knots, additional tax of 10 francs for 
 half knot and per ton .... 600 
 
 Total 7,800 
 
 5. — ExpoBT Duties 
 
 Francs 
 
 For 20,000 klgs., at 0.60 franc the kilo . 12,000 
 
 Taxe sufpUmentaire 5,000 
 
 Taxe domaniale 5,000 
 
 Total 22,000 
 
 Eecapitulation of Ybaely Payments 
 
 Francs 
 
 Factory 1,097.50 
 
 Steamer 1,120,00 
 
 Woodcutting 7,800.00 
 
 Export duties 22,000.00 
 
 t r- Total 32,017.50 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 53 
 
 " To this must still be added a sum of 10 francs for each 
 contract with the labsurers engaged. All those employed 
 in the factory or on the steamer must also pay their own 
 personal tax, which ranges from 9 francs to 24 francs 
 per annum. In this way, at least another 650 francs 
 find their way into the pockets of the Administration, so 
 that it receives, besides the 10 per cent, import duty 
 upon all goods, provisions, and material for factory or 
 steamer, a yearly total of 32,667 francs. This sum is 
 further increased the first year by the 5,000 francs paid 
 for the licenoe to collect rubber and by the price given 
 for the land. 
 
 " And this is not all the merchant has to bear. For the 
 20,000 kilograms of rubber which he annually exports he 
 is obUged to put in 10,000 rubber plants, and bring them 
 to maturity. Thus, supposing the same annual export 
 of 20,000 kilograms continues, every year 10,000 new trees 
 would have to be planted, which would mean that a regular 
 plantation would have to be laid out and maintained. 
 
 " The Funtumia elastica is the commonest rubber here. 
 These trees must be at least seven years old before they 
 can be tapped, and during the first five years the planta- 
 tion must be carefully kept free from all undergrowth if the 
 trees are not to die off. Only when no more expenses are 
 Ukely to be incurred and the plantation i^eds no more 
 attention, does the Government take it over. Thus, 
 supposing the Government only takes it over at the end 
 of five years, the merchant would have a plantation of 
 50,000 trees to maintain, which number would remain 
 permanent, as for each 10,000 trees taken over by the 
 Government 10,000 new ones would have been put in. 
 
 " All the cost of such an undertaking would have t® 
 be borne by the merchant although he would derive not the 
 least benefit from it, as the plantation would belong to 
 the State. All this enormous extra expense is the price 
 which has to be paid for the right to buy rubber in a 
 country where, according to international convention, 
 free trade should exist. 
 
 " In addition to the already mentioned taxes, the 
 
54 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 State thus also secures the entire profits of a rubber plan- 
 tation upon which it has not had to expend a single 
 penny. As soon as the plantation begins to be productive 
 it quietly appropriates it, and the unfortunate merchant 
 who has had to bear the entire expense during five to 
 seven years, obtains not the smallest indemnification. 
 " These are the conditions now existing in the Congo." 
 
 It is needless, the Association thinks, to remark 
 that under such, conditions " freedom of trade " 
 on the Congo, conceded on paper, is, in practice, a 
 myth (even with the limitations as to time specified 
 in section A.). 
 
 It remains now to be seen in what measure the 
 proposals of the Belgian Government wiU modify 
 existing conditions. 
 
 Facilities, we are told, will be placed in the way 
 of merchants acquiring land for the erection of 
 trading stations.* The " first payment " men- 
 tioned in Consul Vohsen's list quoted above, 
 viz. the licence fee of £200, will be abolished and 
 replaced by " a moderate contribution, per kilo- 
 gramme of rubber collected " (recolte). The word 
 recolte appears to indicate that this " moderate 
 contribution " will be levied upon the wet rubber as 
 it is brought in by the natives from the forest, and 
 not upon the dried and prepared article ready for 
 export down river for shipment to Europe. As the 
 difference in weight between wet and dry rubber is 
 roughly 30 per cent., this is a point of consider- 
 able importance to merchants. 
 
 * In a memorial presented to the Belgian Colonial Minister at 
 Matadi on August 20 last, signed by the merchants of all nationalities 
 in the Lower Congo, a copy of which was sent me by the German 
 Vice-Consul, who is one of the signatories, it is stated that " land 
 thus available is, at the present moment, wholly inadequate." 
 This memorial is attached as an annex to the present communica- 
 tion. ( Append ii V,) 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 55 
 
 The wood-cutting tax (see Vohsen's " Recapitu- 
 lation ") is to be reduced one half. 
 
 The onerous obligation of planting rubber trees 
 imposed upon the merchant is abrogated. But in 
 heu thereof, the merchant must pay id. per kilo 
 on tree or vine-rubber, and 2d. per kilo on root- 
 rubber " collected " (recolte). 
 
 The other multitudinous taxes specified by 
 Consul Vohsen, viz. Hcences upon the various 
 parts of the trading-station, upon workmen, boats, 
 boat crews, &c., &c., appear to remain. Hence, 
 without taking these manifold taxes into account, 
 we find that the rubber purchased by merchants 
 from the natives with European goods upon 
 which, be it observed, these merchants would have 
 paid 10 per cent, import duty, would be Uable to 
 the following taxes : 
 
 Per kilo 
 (2 lbs.) 
 
 Export duty 6d. 
 
 Supplementary tax .... 2|d. 
 
 Demesnial tax 2^d. 
 
 " Plantation " tax .... 4d. 
 " A moderate contribution " in lieu 
 of the obligation to plant . . ? 
 
 Thus, without the " moderate contribution," 
 whatever it may amount to, rubber would have to 
 pay a direct tax to the " Belgian Colonial Adminis- 
 tration " of Is. 3d. per Idlo before it even left the 
 Congo, besides being saddled indirectly with those 
 multitudinous establishment and worldng charges 
 which Consul Vohsen has enumerated. When to 
 this be added handling charges at the port of 
 ocean shipment ; ocean-freight to Europe ; handling 
 charges, warehouse charges and brokers' fee at the 
 
56 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 European port of discliarge, and purchase price to 
 the native collector of the article itself, it may well 
 be doubted whether any merchant would find it 
 worth while to engage in the trade. Assuredly, it 
 is difficult to see in these comprehensive measures 
 of taxation that encouragement to the re -establish- 
 ment of normal trade relations on the Congo which 
 the Belgian Government professes itself anxious to 
 promote. 
 
 On this matter H.M. Government will doubt- 
 less receive representations from quarters more 
 fitted by expert knowledge to deal with it than is 
 the Association ; the Association's object in this 
 regard being merely to examine in a general way 
 the probable effects of the Belgian Government's 
 proposals upon the re-estabhshment of normal 
 trade in the Congo from the point of view that the 
 future of the native races is so largely concerned 
 therein. But I cannot leave the immediate subject 
 under review without observing, first, that charges 
 upon trade such as these are unknown in any other 
 tropical African dependency, and secondly that the 
 retention of the " demesnial tax " upon rubber is 
 a direct re-affirmation of the principle of Govern- 
 ment ownership to that article, and is, conse- 
 quently, at variance with the announced abandon- 
 ment of this claim by the Government. {Vide 
 Section A.) 
 
 The one other point in this particular connection 
 which I make bold to select as justifying comment 
 from this Association, has reference to the ivory 
 trade. Under present conditions, a truly extra- 
 ordinary law is enforced by the " Belgian Colonial 
 Administration," as it was by the Congo Govern- 
 ment : " a law " — as the Memorial referred to in 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 57 
 
 the footnote to p. 54 accurately states — " unique 
 in colonial political economy." Under it {Arrete of 
 October 5, 1889, and Arrete of September 30, 1905) 
 a mercbant purchasing ivory from the natives is 
 required to hand over one half of his purchase to 
 the Administration. Thus, if he buys two tusks 
 (with European goods upon which he has paid 
 10 per cent, import duty to the Administration) 
 weighing 40 lbs, each, he must hand over one of 
 them to the Administration. The other is stamped 
 (poinqonne) and he is then free to take it out of the 
 country. 
 
 H.M. Government are aware that an Anglo- 
 Indian merchant representing a firm estabUshed in 
 Uganda has this year been midcted of 792 kilos of 
 ivory under this iniquitous law, and under seal of 
 the Procureur cfEtat at Niangara, a copy of whose 
 attestation is in the writer's possession. 
 
 Of this law it may be said summum jus summa 
 injuria. The system of poinqonnage is not a tax, 
 but confiscation. And it is astonishing to find the 
 Belgian Colonial Minister not only upholding it 
 (p. 26) but confidently relying that a more severe 
 apphcation of it will provide his administration 
 with an increased revenue of £53,840. 
 
 Finally the Association contends that if, in the 
 assumed interest of the native peoples of the Congo, 
 the Brussels convention has prohibited trading in 
 " trade gims " and ammunition in certain portions 
 of the Congo Basin, that prohibition should apply 
 equally to the " Belgian Colonial Administration " 
 (which continues to dispose of these articles to 
 the Chiefs of the Welle country against ivory), and 
 to the Concessionnaires, who appear, as in the past, 
 to import with impunity both rifles and trade 
 
58 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 guns with which to arm their muxclerous irregular 
 soldiery.* 
 
 The Association, in conclusion, would earnestly 
 recommend to H.M. Government the publication 
 of an authoritative statement on the whole subject, 
 thus enabling the Chambers of Commerce of this 
 co^mtry to be furnished with accurate particulars 
 in respect to the conditions under which legitimate 
 trade can be carried out in the Congo, accom- 
 panied by reports from H.M. Consuls bearing upon 
 trade prospects in the various regions with which 
 they are acquainted. 
 
 * Appendix VI. 
 
SUMMING UP 
 
 I beg leave to now sum up the opinions of the 
 Association upon the Belgian Grovernment's pro- 
 posals as I have endeavouxed to present them in 
 detail in these pages. 
 
 That the retention by the Belgian Grovernment 
 for the past fifteen months of a system of " slavery " 
 — despite the pledges given to H.M. Government 
 before anne xation took place — calls for the strongest 
 protest. ^^ 
 
 That the existence of that system to-day, and 
 every added day that it endures, places the Belgian 
 Government in the position of violating Inter- 
 national Treaties and the laws of humanity. 
 
 That the proclaimed intention of the Belgian 
 Government to abandon, in principle, one part of 
 the system, viz. the claim to ownership of the 
 actually negotiable products of the Congo, and 
 thereby to throw open the Congo to freedom of 
 trade, is in itself satisfactory, but is vitiated in 
 actual practice by delays, by the maintenance of 
 the claim to land, and by the absence of any 
 financial provision to alleviate the burden upon 
 native labour. 
 
 That the retention by the Belgian Government 
 of the Congo Government's pohcy which treated 
 all land as " vacant," deprives the native races of 
 
6o THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 all guarantees of future security and constitutes a 
 monstrous invasion of human rights. 
 
 That compulsory labour for revenue require- 
 ments is to he maintained during 1910 to such 
 good purpose that the proceeds are estimated to 
 provide more than 40 per cent, of the total revenue. 
 That the demand upon native labour in one form 
 or another is estimated to produce next year 
 £839,900 out of a total revenue of £1,589,812. 
 
 That compulsory labour for revenue purposes is 
 admittedly to exist in a considerable section of the 
 Congo during 1911 and the first half of 1912. 
 
 That no time limit is assigned to the cessation 
 of compulsory labour, in part for revenue purposes, 
 in part for private profit, in extensive areas held 
 by concessionnaire companies controlled by the 
 Belgian Government. 
 
 That the capital test by which a real intention 
 to change the system permanently, including the 
 abolition of compulsory labour, can be judged, 
 resides in the willingness of the Belgian' Govern- 
 ment to make demands upon the national ex- 
 chequer (until such time as an adequate revenue 
 has been built up from other sources) ; but that 
 notwithstanding the assurance given that the 
 Congo being now dependent upon a " rich and indus- 
 trious metropolis," " profound " modifications in 
 policy shall follow, no provision is made or sug- 
 gested for a grant-in-aid. 
 
 That the Colony is called upon, in addition to 
 the crushing burden of taxation laid upon its 
 inhabitants, to pay interest charges on loans con- 
 tracted for purposes which will not benefit its 
 inhabitants. 
 
 That the Colony is called upon to provide 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 6i 
 
 emoluments to members of the Belgian royal 
 family and to contribute substantial sums to the 
 up-keep of divers establishments in Belgium, 
 contrary to all modern conceptions of colonial 
 administration. 
 
 That the native army, already dispropor- 
 tionately large, is to be stiU further increased, and 
 that the pay of its units is kept at so low a figure 
 as compared with the salaries of native units in 
 other tropical African armies, as to suggest that 
 its notorious character is to be maintained in the 
 future. 
 
 That the promised abandonment of the com- 
 pulsory food- taxes is satisfactory, but that adequate 
 evidence derivable from the financial provisions in 
 the Budget, is unhappily lacking to give to that 
 promise the actual burden of proof which it would 
 be desirable to possess. 
 
 That the announced system of Government 
 rubber-plantations for revenue purposes is deeply 
 to be deplored and induces grave forebodings in 
 connection with further compulsory claims upon 
 native laboiir. 
 
 That the impediments in the way of European 
 merchants proposing to establish themselves in 
 the country would appear to be excessive and to 
 require careful investigation. 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
 From these opinions I have the honour, on 
 behalf of the Association, to formulate the follow- 
 ing conclusions : 
 
 That the recognition by this country of the 
 Belgian annexation of the Congo should be with- 
 held : 
 
 Until satisfactory and sufl&cient guarantees 
 have been given to H.M. G-overnment that the 
 system of " Slavery " maintained for so many 
 years in the Congo at such terrible cost to human 
 life and suffering shall, in its threefold aspect, be 
 completely abolished throughout the Congo, at 
 the latest by July 1, 1910 — by which time the 
 Belgian Government will have been just upon 
 two years in possession, i.e. : 
 
 A. Abandonment in practice of the claim to 
 the products of the land. 
 
 B. Kecognition of the vaUdity of native tenure 
 in land. 
 
 C. Complete and final aboUtion of compulsory 
 labour for revenue purposes and private profit. 
 
 That, failing these satisfactory and sufficient 
 guarantees, H.M. Government shall, in conjunc- 
 tion, if possible, with other Powers, take the steps 
 open to them which wiU ensure for the native 
 races of the Congo the enjoyment of those rights 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 63 
 
 and liberties to which as human beings they are 
 entitled — rights and liberties formally assured to 
 them by International Treaties. 
 
 I have the honour to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 (Signed) E. D, Morel. 
 
 To the Right Honourable 
 
 Sir Edward Grey, Bart., P.O., M.P., 
 H.M. Principal Secretary of State for 
 Foreign AflFairs. 
 
APPENDICES 
 
 I. The Congo Reeobm Association's Statement, issued 
 
 November 10, 1909 67 
 
 II. List of Reports sent to the Foreign Office by the 
 Congo Reform Association in the last Twelve 
 Months as to Misrule on the Congo ... 70 
 
 III. Petition of Noombb Chiefs to the Belgian Colonial 
 
 Minister 73 
 
 IV. Raiding for Labour in the Kasai District. The 
 
 Forced Labour Decrees 76 
 
 V. Petition of the Merchants op the Lower Congo to 
 
 THE Belgian Colonial Minister .... 83 
 
 VI. The Treatment of the Natives in the Bussiba 
 
 Concession 86 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 THE CONGO REFORM ASSOCIATION'S STATEMENT, 
 ISSUED NOVEMBER 10, 1909 
 
 The Executive Committee of the Congo Reform Associa- 
 tion and its branches throughout the country, which met 
 to-day under the chairmanship of the President of the 
 Association, Lord Monkswell, recalls that the policy of 
 the Congo Government, based upon the appropriation of 
 the land and the natural products of the Congo, and 
 enforced by a form of compulsory labour described by 
 successive British Foreign Secretaries as " slavery pure 
 and simple " and " bondage under the most barbarous 
 and inhuman conditions," still obtains, fifteen months 
 after Belgian annexation. The Committee likewise recalls 
 the pledge given to His Majesty's Government by the 
 Belgian Government before annexation took place that 
 " an immediate amelioration in the moral and material 
 conditions of the natives " would ensue " as soon as the 
 annexation of the Congo and the Colonial Law had been 
 voted by Parhament." The Committee notes that this 
 pledge has not been kept, and records that it has received 
 during the whole of these fifteen months evidence from 
 various parts of the Congo, which it has placed before His 
 Majesty's Government, showing that the situation is 
 there substantially unchanged. His Majesty's Govern- 
 ment, in their despatch to the Government of Belgium 
 dated June 11 last, arrived at the same conclusion on the 
 strength of their own reports. By the Congo mail to 
 hand this week detailed and specific accounts have been 
 received by the Association of raids conducted by Belgian 
 
 s2 
 
68 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 officials, accompanied by murderous outrages, for the 
 purpose of securing labour for the Upper Congo Railway. 
 Examining the project of reform brought forward on 
 October 28 last by the Belgian Government, the Com- 
 mittee agrees with the Prime Minister in cordially wel- 
 coming the abandonment in principle by that Govern- 
 ment of its claim to the natural products of the country 
 and its intention to throw open the Congo to freedom 
 of trade ; but declares the delays foreshadowed in con- 
 verting its theoretical abandonment of a policy which His 
 Majesty's Government have admitted is totally incon- 
 sistent with international obligations and considerations 
 of humanity, to be inadmissible. The Committee notes 
 further the apparent intention, as stated in the Belgian 
 Government's proposals, of upholding the equally unten- 
 able claims to the tribal and communal lands of the 
 natives, which, while it is maintained, deprives the native 
 races of any security for the future. The Committee also 
 observes with regret the absence of any evidence that the 
 Belgian Government intends, by granting a vote-in-aid 
 to the Congo, to alleviate in an effectual manner the 
 crushing burden of tribute laid on the native population 
 for the upkeep of the machinery of administration. 
 Although the promise has been given that the compulsory 
 food taxes levied on the population will be abandoned, 
 the Committee fails to trace in the Budgetary Estimates 
 submitted to the Belgian Chamber any adequate pro- 
 vision for a grant designed to meet the very large increase 
 of expenditure which the practical application of such 
 an announced policy would involve. The Committee 
 observes with anxiety the apparent intention to make 
 further large demands on native labour in the establish- 
 ment of Government rubber plantations, from which the 
 natives will derive no benefit, and notes with concern an 
 announced further increase in the Native Army unaccom- 
 panied by any increase in the pay of its units, which pay 
 is far below the recognised standard adopted by civihsed 
 Powers having possession in tropical Africa. Iq view of 
 these unsatisfactory features in the proposals of the 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 69 
 
 Belgian Government, the long delay which has already 
 taken place in giving effect to the pledges made by the 
 Belgian Government before annexation, and the con- 
 tinued receipt of unfavourable news from the Congo, the 
 Committee expresses the earnest hope that His Majesty's 
 Government will refuse to recognise the Belgian annexa- 
 tion until substantially better terms are forthcoming, and 
 that in the meantime they will increase the British Con- 
 sular Staff in the Congo and provide it with adequate 
 means of locomotion on the waterways of the country. 
 The Committee entrusts to its hon. secretary the duty of 
 communicating to His Majesty's Government a detailed 
 criticism, on behalf of this Committee, of the Belgian 
 reform proposals. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 LIST OP REPORTS SENT TO THE FOREIGN OFFICE BY 
 THE CONGO REFORM ASSOCIATION IN THE LAST 
 TWELVE MONTHS AS TO MISRULE ON THE CONGO 
 
 Oppressive food " taxes " in the Kinshassa district.* 
 December 2, 1908. Rev. John Howell, Baptist 
 Missionary Society. 
 
 The rubber slavery in the Kasai district.f Decem- 
 ber 12, 1908. Revs. W. M. Morrison and W. H. Sheppard, 
 American Presbyterian Mission. 
 
 Raiding by Govermnent officials and soldiers for 
 shortage of " taxes " in the Lukolela district.* 
 January 28, 1909. Rev. John Whitehead, Baptist 
 Missionary Society. 
 
 The rubber " tax " in the Lisafa, Boonji, Dilangi and 
 Nsongo districts.J February 19, 1909. Rev. George S. 
 Jeffrey, Congo Balolo Mission. 
 
 Oppressive food " taxes " and other forms of com- 
 pulsory labour in the Lukolela district.* May 10, 1909. 
 Rev. H. M. Whiteside, Congo Balolo Mission. 
 
 The rubber, copal and food " taxes " in the Juapa 
 and Ikelemba basins and territory drained by head- 
 waters of Maringa, the Duala, Bolombo, Lomako and 
 Yokokala to Bongandanga on the Lopori, 1,300 miles 
 
 * Under the direct control of tlie Administration. 
 
 t Exploited by the Kasai Company. 
 
 J Under the direct control of the Administration. Exploited 
 by its representatives for account of the shareholders of the A.B.I.R, 
 Company, in which the Belgian Government holds half the stock. 
 See also Appendix VI. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 71 
 
 joumey4 May 10, 1909. Bevs. S. Gilchrist and Charles 
 Powfield, Congo Balolo Mission. 
 
 Oppressive food " taxes " and other forms of com- 
 pulsory labour in the Lukolela district.* May 25, 1909. 
 Rev. H. M. Whiteside. 
 
 Rubber " taxes " and flogging in the neighbourhood of 
 Lolanga * and Ikau.f June 16, 1909. Revs. Charles 
 Padfield and H. M. Whiteside. 
 
 Rubber " taxes " and other forms of compulsory 
 labour mainly in the Bompona district. J August 18, 
 1909. Rev. H. M. Whiteside. 
 
 Murder and pillage by soldiers in Kwango borderland.* 
 August 18, 1909. Dr. Leslie (American Mission). 
 
 Rubber and food " taxes " in Bontoko and Nsongo 
 districts % (widely removed). October 1, 1909. Rev. 
 James Moon, Congo Balolo Mission. 
 
 Oppressive taxes in silver coin in Thysville district.* 
 See Appendix III. 
 
 [A report to His Majesty's Government, based upon 
 Rev. W. M. Morrison's and Dr. Coppedge's advices as 
 to the raiding in the Luebo district (Kasai) — vide 
 Appendix IV — ^is in course of preparation.] 
 
 The following resolution was passed by the Conference 
 of Missionaries assembled at Stanley Pool in September : 
 
 " We, as individual missionaries of the various 
 Protestant missionary societies, of several nationalities, 
 working in the Congo, in conference assembled at Kin- 
 chassa, September 14-19, 1909, do express our deep 
 regret and disappointment that although there may have 
 been in certain locahties a slight amelioration of the con- 
 dition of the native peoples, we are compelled once more 
 to record our protest against the continuance of the 
 system of forced labour and excessive taxation which 
 
 * Under the direct control of the Administration. 
 
 t Exploited by the Kasai Company. 
 
 I Under the direct control of the Administration. Exploited 
 by its representatives for account of the shareholders of the A.B.I.R. 
 Company, in which the Belgian Government holds half the stock. 
 See also Appendix VI. 
 
72 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 still prevails in various forms throughout large areas of 
 the Congo. 
 
 " On behalf of these suffering natives, we thank those 
 who have used their influence in endeavouring to secure 
 for them their guaranteed treaty rights. And we again 
 appeal to all lovers of humanity in every land to do every- 
 thing in their power to bring about as speedily as possible 
 the deliverance of these peoples from their state of prac- 
 tical slavery. 
 
 " Signed on behalf of the Conference by the President, 
 Convener, and Secretary, 
 
 " H. D. Campbell, 
 " T. Hope Moegan, 
 " H. S. Gamman." 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 THE PETITION OF THE NGOMBE CHIEFS OF THYSVILLE 
 AND NEIGHBOURHOOD (REPRESENTING IN THE 
 AGGREGATE SEVERAL THOUSAND NATIVES) TO 
 THE BELGIAN COLONIAL MINISTER, PRAYING TO 
 BE RELIEVED OF THE BURDEN OF THE TAX IN 
 SILVER COIN 
 
 Translation of an A'p'peal presented to the Belgian Colonial 
 Minister by the Chiefs oi'the towns and districts around 
 Thysville (Ngombe) on May 21, 1909.* 
 
 " We are very thankful for your coming to see our 
 Congo country. We also desire to see you and welcome 
 you to our land. 
 
 "1. We have no place where we can trade, but you 
 have arranged that we Congos should pay taxes, but if 
 we cannot trade how can we get the money with which to 
 pay the taxes ? 
 
 " Besides you want the women now to pay taxes, but 
 we do not feel thankful for this arrangement, because we 
 men have much trouble to pay our tax of twelve francs 
 per year ; some cannot find even half a franc until they 
 have sold their clothes, or their farms, and then the sum 
 of twelve francs is not reached ; and when we have sold 
 all we possess to pay these immediate taxes how shall we 
 pay those taxes that will come by and by ? 
 
 "2. This is what we now see, that the tax collector 
 when he arrives will not take cloth, or anything that we 
 
 * Received by the Congo Reform Association through the Rev. 
 John H. Weeks. 
 
74 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 can pay, but demands francs only ; but it is with very great 
 trouble that we are able to procure francs, so we desire 
 that he should take anything we are able to give as pay- 
 ment for our taxes. 
 
 " 3. We do not see any returns for our taxes. In the 
 old days we paid taxes. If a man made a bridge across 
 a river everyone who wanted to use that bridge paid a 
 tax ; if a man wanted to cross a river by a ferry canoe 
 he paid the ferryman ; but for the tax we now pay (to 
 the State) we see no return. There is no French school, 
 no industrial teaching, and the roads we are expected to 
 keep clean although we pay a tax, and if the tax collector 
 finds the roads covered with grass he makes us pay a 
 pig on the top of our taxes, but we are thinking that as 
 you receive our money you should clear the roads, etc., 
 but after we have finished paying our taxes you demand 
 that we should clear the roads without pay or rations and 
 for nothing. 
 
 " 4. The tax is more than we can pay and you should 
 reduce it because we have no places now where we can 
 procure that with which to pay the tax. In the time of 
 our elders we procured money by trading at Kintambu 
 (Stanley Pool), then we Congos went to Kintambu with 
 our trade goods and bought ivory, rubber, and fish, of the 
 Up-river people, and we traded with one another, but now 
 Bula Matadi {i.e. the State) has stopped all the roads and 
 we can no longer trade. 
 
 " Therefore we sincerely beg of you to open the trade 
 routes again, and to reduce the taxes, and to remove the 
 tax from the women. We leave these matters in your 
 hands and we hope that you will help us. 
 
 " We are the chiefs of the country round Ngombe 
 Lutete." 
 
 Notes from the Rev. J. H. Weehs in connection with the 
 
 Appeal. 
 
 " The Appeal was first posted by the chiefs, and later 
 in the day it was presented in a personal statement made 
 through their paramount chief to the Colonial Minister 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 75 
 
 himself. The statement was translated, as made, from 
 the Congo language into the French language by one of 
 the Government of&oials. 
 
 " The Belgian Colonial Minister answered that he 
 would give his decision on the subject when he returned 
 down river." (On the date of September 28 Mr. Weeks 
 had not heard that the petition had received an answer.) 
 
 Mr. Weeks adds : " During April and May last I know 
 for a fact that the tax collector threatened again to tie up 
 people in the above district unless they brought francs. 
 I know people who sold cloth — new cloth — at half-price 
 to get francs, and others sold their farms for a pittance 
 for the same reason, and one man sold his mother for six 
 francs to get francs to pay his tax. He could have paid 
 it in brass rods (the currency of the country) or in cloth, 
 or in goats and fowls, but the tax collector would have 
 none of these (he was only obeying his orders), but 
 insisted on francs in payment of the tax. So few francs 
 were in circulation that, although their normal price was 
 120 brass rods per franc, they rose from ISO to 200 brass 
 rods per franc, and even then they were difficult to get. 
 The railway company, and the missions and traders, circu- 
 late a large number of francs per month, and but for these 
 three sources of supply the natives would not be able to 
 procure many, if any, francs. The State has done little 
 to circulate francs, and eight francs out of ten in circula- 
 tion are from the French Mint. Yet they insist on francs 
 in payment of taxes." 
 
 In conclusion Mr. Weeks contrasts the treatment 
 meted out to the native people by the Administration with 
 the treatment of its labourers by the private company 
 which works the Lower Congo Railway, of whose just 
 dealing he speaks in high terms. 
 
APPENDIX IV 
 
 RAIDING FOR LABOUR IN THE KASAI DISTRICT 
 THE FORCED LABOUR DECREES 
 
 I RECEIVED on November 9 a long report from Dr. 
 Coppedge of the American Mission at Luebo on the Kasai 
 and a letter from the Eev. W. M. Morrison, the head of 
 the Mission, detailing an investigation by the former into 
 raiding operations conducted in the interior by a Belgian 
 officer and his soldiers to procure recruits for the Native 
 army and labourers for the Grands Lacs Eailway (1,500 
 miles distant). Dr. Coppedge's report, which covers five 
 closely type-written sheets, is too long for reproduction. 
 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also received advices from the 
 Rev. W. M. Morrison and sent the latter's letter to the 
 Times, where it appeared on November 10. It is here 
 reproduced : 
 
 L^opoldville, Congo Free State, Africa, 
 September 27, 1909. 
 
 " My dear Sir, — I thank you for writing to President 
 Taft. Am glad to say that our American Government 
 seems deeply interested in this case and in the whole 
 situation here, but the time-worn arguments about Eng- 
 land wanting the Congo, and about its being purely a 
 religious controversy, are being again worked for all they 
 are worth. 
 
 " We are now face to face with the forced labour ques- 
 tion in the building of the Great Lakes Railway. It seems 
 that this is now to come on top of the rubber rigime. So 
 the people are being crushed between the upper and 
 nether millstones. During the month of June a raid was 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILI^ 77 
 
 made near Luebo by a State officer. Men and women, 
 boys and girls were taken by force ; villages were pillaged ; 
 two were burnt ; women were raped ; chiefs tied up and 
 taken away. A few weeks later I came down the Kasai 
 River on a State steamer. On this same steamer were 
 about twenty of these same people. They said that they, 
 after being caught, were taken to Lusambo, and were 
 there put on the steamer to be taken they knew not 
 where. Several of the men had been given the usual 
 uniform of the State soldiers, the others were in ordinary 
 dress, and were told that they were to be workmen. 
 Among the number were three or four women who had 
 been torn from their homes and their husbands and had 
 been given over to other men. These people were all put 
 off at Kwamouth, at the junction of the Kasai and Congo 
 rivers, thence to be transhipped to the Upper Congo. 
 They were a wretched-looking lot. When they were put 
 off, one of the men was so weak that he had to be helped 
 along by his companions. 
 
 " And now a letter comes from Luebo that the State 
 officer there has received instructions to recruit a lot of 
 men there. So it is certain that this is aU being done, 
 not only by permission of the Government, but under 
 actual orders. 
 
 " Now, the question is, How long will all this keep up ? 
 How long can the native races stand this drain ? I 
 am sorry to say that so far I can see no material change 
 in the situation under the so-called Belgian rigime. 
 We are always told to wait, wait, wait. Wait till Belgium 
 takes over the country formally, wait till the House of 
 Deputies acts, wait till the Colonial Minister comes out, 
 wait till he returns, wait tUl his report is made, wait for it 
 to be discussed, wait for further investigation — they are 
 always investigating, but what comes of it ? — wait for the 
 report of the investigating Commission, wait for this to 
 be discussed, and so we wait and wait. In the meantime 
 the wealth of the country is fast disappearing, and the 
 spirit of the natives is being hopelessly crushed. Well, 
 we at this end can do nothing, we can only tell you what 
 
78 .THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 is going on. When we appeal to the Government of Bel- 
 gium we are only maligned and sued for our trouble and 
 our motives impugned. We and the native people 
 must now look to you and others in civilised lands for 
 help. . . . God bless you and all others who are helping 
 to heal this ' open sore.' 
 
 " Yours most cordially, 
 
 " W. M. Morrison." 
 
 The following observations will be to some purpose in 
 this connection : 
 
 A railway is being constructed in the Congo from 
 Stanleyville, above the Falls, to Ponthierville, below 
 the Falls, to connect the navigable Upper Congo as 
 the Lower Congo has been connected with the Upper 
 Congo by the Matadi-Leopoldville line. Simultaneously, 
 another railway is being constructed from the same base, 
 Stanleyville, to Lake Albert. The work is covered by a 
 Convention between the Belgian Government and a 
 private company — the Gompagnie des Chemins de fer 
 du Congo swpirieur aux Grands Lacs Afncains — of which 
 M. Eenkin, the Colonial Minister, used to be an Adminis- 
 trator, of which a former Finance Minister of the French 
 Republic is inscribed as one of the principal shareholders, 
 and in which M. Empain, the King's banker, is the 
 " power." The company possesses, according to its 
 statutes, a concession of ten milUon of rubber forests, 
 with power of successive extension, proportionate to the 
 increase of capital. The second railway, Stanleyville- 
 Lake Albert, runs right through this concession, of 
 which the rubber is exploited by the Belgian Government, 
 the profits being divided between that Government 
 and the company. 
 
 On February 16, 1909, Messrs. Roger and Vander- 
 velde interpellated the Belgian Government on the 
 subject. The interpellation covered two points — the 
 character of the enterprise and the method of recruiting. 
 The Deputies mentioned held that the company was a 
 private enterprise, and argued that as the Colonial law 
 forbade the application of forced labour in favour of 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 79 
 
 private enterprises, the Colonial Minister, in renewing 
 the Decrees of the old Administration providing for the 
 recruiting of labourers for this railway under the Conscript 
 Law, had violated the Colonial law. Lito that side of 
 the question I do not propose to enter. It is of mere 
 academic importance. Otherwise important, however, 
 are the methods employed in obtaining the labour, and 
 the defence of those methods by the Belgian Colonial 
 Minister. 
 
 It had long been known that the labour for these 
 railways and for public works generally was obtained 
 under the old Administration by armed raids differing not 
 at all fi'om slave raids : raids covered by the Conscript 
 Law. Article 6 of the Law, entitled " Disciplinary Rules 
 for Labourers in the Employ of the State," provides that 
 labourers are subjected to mihtary discipline and to the 
 punishments decreed by the same. These punishments 
 include the " chain gang," with hard labour from one 
 day to one month, and flogging from four to fifty blows 
 on the buttocks ; the flogging must not exceed twenty -five 
 blows per diem, " and can be suspended if a wound is 
 fonned or fainting ensues." As no Congo regulation, 
 however barbarous, would be complete without the 
 traditional note of hypocrisy, it is stipulated that " cor- 
 poral punishment cannot be inflicted on those labourers 
 whose, contract of engagement does not formally bind 
 them to agree to being subject to such application." 
 
 This, as applying to primitive forest dwellers, torn 
 fi'Om their homes by armed soldiery ! 
 
 Vice-Consul Michell, reporting on November 80, 1906,* 
 wrote : 
 
 " I am not aware of any civilised State in which 
 conscription is appHed to ' works of public utility.' . . . 
 Those ' paid workmen ' are the conscripts ! They are 
 hunted in the forests by soldiers, and are brought in 
 bound by the neck like criminals." 
 
 Here is an extract from reports from the Attorney- 
 General's assistant at Stanleyville to his chief, showing 
 
 * Africa, No. 1, 1907, p. 63. 
 
8o THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 how these labourers were recruited for these railways in 
 1905 : * 
 
 " If these works are to be executed arbitrary measures 
 must be resorted to. The men are taken by force and 
 brought to the works, where they are kept, under fear 
 of the lash and prison." 
 
 This worthy magistrate of the old regime, who holds 
 an important position under the Belgian Administration 
 to-day, goes on to point out the awkward position of a 
 magistrate who, by law, should denounce these " attempts 
 against individual Uberty." He asks that " forced 
 labour " should be legalised by Decree : 
 
 " In order to conciliate legality with economic or 
 political necessities, I proposed to the Commission of 
 Inquiry the system of requisitions — in other words, that 
 for works of special importance the labourers should be 
 recruited by force, just as soldiers are. This proposal 
 would make forced labour, which exists in practice to-day, 
 legal, and would put everyone at their ease." 
 
 Inoludirig, doubtless, the natives ! 
 
 Consul Thesiger shows us that last year the same 
 practices prevailed. Reporting on March 17, 1908, he 
 says : f 
 
 " There are continual police raids carried on (in the 
 Ituri district) with' the greatest energy, in which native 
 villages are destroyed and such prisoners as can be 
 taken sent in chains to work on the Railway des Grands 
 Lacs." 
 
 Decrees authorising the recruiting of labourers for these 
 railways were issued in 1906, 1907, and 1908 under the 
 Conscript Law, the term of service being Jive years, and 
 the pay twenty-one centimes per diem, paid in trade goods, 
 or, say, 5s. per month in trade goods. 
 
 Such was the system which the Belgian Government 
 found in being — a system of pure and simple slave 
 raiding, a flagrant violation of the Berlin and Brussels 
 Acts — in August 1908, when it annexed the Congo. In 
 
 * Le regime Congolais. Stanislas Lefrano. 
 t AfriM, No. 1, 1909. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 8i 
 
 the April, prior to that step, the Belgian Government 
 assured us that * 
 
 " The question of improving the lot of the natives is 
 not less a matter of solicitude in Belgium than it is in 
 England. It is one of the loftiest preoccupations of our 
 country, which is fully sensible of the importance of the 
 civilising mission which falls to its lot in Africa. ... In 
 any case, the principle of individual liberty laid do^vn in 
 the draft Colonial Law is free from any further restrictions 
 whatever." 
 
 And Sir Edward Grey, on the strength of these some- 
 what grandiloquent expressions, was able to assure the 
 Belgian Minister, then in London, on June 23, that : 
 
 " In my opinion, the publication of the documents 
 which had passed hitherto had produced a very good 
 effect here." f 
 
 The first public act of the Belgian Government in 
 relation to the Congo was to renew the regulation of the 
 old Administration by issuing on January 6, 1909, a 
 Decree providing for the forced recruiting in 1901 of 
 2,225 labourers for those railways ! Under the same 
 Conscript Law, with the same period of service, at the 
 same pay ! 
 
 It is unnecessary to publish long extracts from the 
 debate : the laboured apologies of the Cabinet Minister, 
 the splendid indignation of M. Vandervelde — ^in one of 
 the finest speeches he has ever delivered in the Chamber ; 
 the final acquiescence of the Chamber in the maintenance 
 of this iniquitous system, accompanied by a pious hope 
 that it may not be necessary to perpetuate it ad infinitum.X 
 
 * Memorandum, April 25, 1908. Africa, No. 3, 1908. 
 
 t Africa, No. 4, 1908. 
 
 j The resolution passed by the Chamber read as follows : '" The 
 Chamber being of opinion that there is reason for substituting as 
 soon as possible the free recruiting of labour for recruiting on acooun 
 of public utility for the construction of the Great Lakes Railways, 
 and being convinced of the possibility of introducing considerable 
 improvements in the condition of the labourers of the contingent, 
 especially in the direction of reducing the duration of their service, 
 of limiting the recruiting zone, and the local proportions of the 
 contingent, of assuring to the workers of the contingent remuneration 
 
 G 
 
82 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 The facts are sufficient. 
 
 The folio-wing summary, however, can be registered 
 from the admissions made by M. Eenkin himself. In the 
 three years, 1906-08, 6,500 natives have been taken from 
 their homes — all over the country, in some instances 
 twenty and thirty days' march removed from the railway 
 works. Of these 2,000 had " disappeared " by October 
 1908. The " majority " of disappearances, M. Eenkin 
 affirmed, without producing figures, were from desertions. 
 Two thousand two hundred and twenty-five more are to 
 be recruited this year, similarly from far distant regions in 
 many cases. 
 
 Thus does the Belgian Government apply the " prin- 
 ciples of individual liberty " ; thus does it translate its 
 " lofty preoccupations " — by organising slave raids to 
 capture labourers for five years at twenty-one centimes 
 a day ! For where is the man — outside Belgian governing 
 circles — who will affirm that it is possible to induce 
 African natives voluntarily to engage in labour under 
 such conditions ? 
 
 Le Patriote of Brussels (September 2) publishes a 
 letter from Father de Vos, complaining of the recruiting 
 operations of the Government for labour for the Great 
 Lakes in the Kwango district. 
 
 equal to that of free labourers in the region, and of paying that 
 remuneration in cash, taking note of the statement of the Minister 
 for the Colonies, passes to the order of the day." 
 
APPENDIX V 
 
 PETITION OF THE MERCHANTS OF THE LOWER CONGO 
 TO THE BELGIAN COLONIAL MINISTER 
 
 The following Memorial was handed to the Belgian 
 Colonial Minister at Matadi (Lower Congo) signed by the 
 merchants of the place on August 26. The grievance 
 under No. 10 refers to the regulations whereby the 
 Government lays claim to one tusk out of every two tusks 
 of ivory produced in the country, the tusk not claimed 
 being regarded as Government property unless it is 
 stamped with the official seal — called 'poinfonnage. 
 
 Matadi : August 26, 1909. 
 
 The undersigned merchants of this city make appeal to 
 your high authority. Measures were taken by the Govern- 
 ment of the Congo Free State, which, while in the interest 
 of that State, caused an enormous prejudice to the 
 commerce of individuals and trading companies which are 
 not concessionnaire companies, and restricted the free 
 development of trade. 
 
 The undersigned make bold to bring to your notice a 
 few measures adopted by the Government of the Congo 
 Free State which are to a large extent the reason of the 
 commercial depression which now reigns here. They have 
 confidence . that you will examine the facts mentioned 
 below with a view to remedying them and of giving your 
 support to the merchants of the Belgian colony. 
 
 It is essential in the interests of trade in the Belgian 
 Congo that : 
 
 1. The commercial freedom should be re-established 
 
84 THE CONGO REFORM BILL 
 
 as it existed before 1892, and the stipulations of the Act 
 of Berlin on this subject should be respected. 
 
 2. That leases of lands should be accessible to indi- 
 viduals and trading companies which are not concession- 
 naire companies, all over the colony ; lands thus avail- 
 able being, at the present moment, wholly inadequate for 
 the necessities of trade. For example, the leasable areas 
 in the Bangala district have virtually no value to mer- 
 chants, seeing that this district has been exploited by 
 concessionnaire companies. Moreover, in accordance with 
 the Decree of the Governor-General of February 25 last 
 (of which the public had cognisance by the Official 
 Bulletin No. 10 of July 8, which reached Matadi on 
 August 8), the harvesting of rubber has been prohibited 
 during the last six months of the current year in the 
 Maringa-Lopori zone and in the Mongalla zone. 
 
 3. That the natives should be allowed to sell freely the 
 products of the soil. 
 
 4. That the whole of the assets of Government 
 officials should be seizable for debts contracted in the 
 colony. 
 
 6. That ration money should be furnished to all 
 Government officials instead of furnishing rations to a 
 number of them. 
 
 6. That silver coinage should be introduced as rapidly 
 as possible into all the districts of the colony for pay- 
 ments made to white men and to natives. 
 
 7. That the natives shall have the option of paying 
 their taxes in coin. 
 
 8. That produce paid by the natives in taxes to the 
 Goveriunent should be put up to public auction as is done 
 in neighbouring colonies. 
 
 9. That the tax for wood-cutting for steamers on the 
 Upper Congo should be reduced to an equitable figure, 
 the actual tax being a prohibitive one in the actual sense 
 of the term. 
 
 10. That the law relating to the foingonnage of ivory 
 should be abolished, this law being unique in colonial 
 political economy. 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 85 
 
 11. That the system inaugurated by the Decree of 
 June 8, 1906, providing that, in order to prove native 
 rights of ownership over the rubbrr collected on their 
 lands, they must present a certificate of origin, shall be 
 abolished. 
 
 12. That the pedlars' licences permitting of a stay in 
 one place not exceeding a fortnight should be modified 
 in the most Mberal manner. 
 
 13. That the export duties on rubber should be reduced 
 to the equitable tax of 6d. per kilo, and that the supple- 
 mentary tax and the demesnial tax should be abolished. 
 
 14. That the prohibition of the sale of trade guns and 
 powder in the region of the Lower Congo should be 
 abolished. The fear that in selling these articles to the 
 natives the latter might rise in rebellion against the 
 whites is not founded. On the other hand there would 
 have been some motive for taking such precautions in 
 regard to certain regions of the interior, where aU the 
 concessionnaire companies find themselves outside the 
 area of prohibition, and import guns and powder as in the 
 past. This measure has done an enormous harm to 
 individuals and trading companies in the Lower Congo, 
 for the benefit of certain concessionnaire companies and 
 for the benefit of a neighbouring colony — Portuguese 
 Congo. 
 
 15. That Art. I. of the Decree of September'^22, 1904, 
 on the plantations of rubber-bearing|trees^and|vines|be 
 modified in the sense that the exporter ; should, while 
 paying an increased tax, be exempt from the necessity of 
 making such plantations. 
 
 The Congo correspondent who sends the text of this 
 document accompanies it with the statement that there 
 is " absolutely no change in the prevailing system since 
 Belgian annexation." 
 
APPENDIX VI 
 
 THE TREATMENT OP THE NATIVES IN THE BUSSIRA 
 CONCESSION 
 
 Foe the full details of this horrible story, the reader 
 is referred to the book just published (November 14, 1909) 
 by Dr. W. Doerpirghaus, of Barmen, Germany, son of 
 Dr. T. Doerpinghaus, King's Council : " Deutschlands 
 Rechte und Pflichten gegenliber dem Belgischen Kongo." 
 In his depositions handed in to the Belgian Court at 
 Coquilhatville (Upper Congo), Dr. Doerpinghaus enu- 
 merates a list of barbarous and revolting outrages — 
 inconceivable to any persons but those who are famiUar 
 with the gentle methods of Belgian civilisers in Africa — 
 committed upon the natives in 1907, 1908, and 1909. 
 Before leaving the Congo Dr. Doerpinghaus handed copies 
 of these depositions to the German, American, and 
 British Consuls for transmission to their respective 
 Governments. In his covering report to the German 
 Consul, Dr. Doerpinghaus says : 
 
 " The production of the rubber and copal in the 
 fifteen factories spread over the said territory is based on 
 a well-organised system of compulsory labour, for the 
 maintenance of which the agents employ, with the tacit 
 toleration of the management, every means which 
 brutality and coarseness have ever invented. Each 
 factory disposes of twenty -five guns (rifles) and a staff of 
 twenty-five men, who are paid by the Company, but 
 besides this the managers of the factories keep a so-called 
 personnel supplementaire, the numerical strength of which 
 amounted in May last at the Bessoi factory, for example, 
 to 200 to 250 people. These people serve as watchmen 
 
THE CONGO REFORM BILL 87 
 
 in the villages, and have to compel the natives to work 
 by continual oppression. They are fed and paid in goods 
 which the natives ought to receive for produce delivered. 
 It goes without saying that these people enrich them- 
 selves in every possible way, and rob the natives of women, 
 slaves, and in short of all their possessions. The 
 abominations and murders committed by them beggar 
 description, and are innumerable. In addition to this, 
 the white men are away a great deal on journeys so as to 
 give more weight to the activity of those under them. 
 The history of modem civilised nations has scarcely ever 
 had anything to equal such shameful deeds as the agents 
 in the Belgian Congo have rendered themselves guilty of. 
 That the Company is aware of the doings of its agents, 
 tolerates them, and encourages them, I can produce a 
 flagrant proof. ... I must add that the natives of the 
 region in question are harmless, and only rise to attack 
 when driven to extremities. I frequently travelled for 
 days without escort. There is therefore not the shghtest 
 excuse for the murders and atrocities. . . . This work in 
 the swampy equatorial forest, frequently several days' 
 journey away from the villages, must most seriously 
 injure the health of the natives and greatly facilitate the 
 spreading of every infectious disease. As a matter of 
 fact, the natives have to work twenty to twenty-five days 
 in the forest in order to satisfy the Company. . . . Not 
 only does the population suffer physically, even their 
 possessions and modest wealth are disappearing, and they 
 have sunk to a level of civOisation which is lower than that 
 in which they were found by the first Europeans. They 
 have unlearnt the art of smelting iron from the ores ; 
 there scarcely exist any more natives who can weave ; 
 no progress is to be recorded in culture and civilisation." 
 
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