“The horrors of that traffic, the thousands of victims massacred each year through the slave trade, the still greater number of perfectly innocent beings who, brutally reduced to captivity, are condemned en masse to forced labour in perpetuity, have deeply moved all those who have even partially studied this deplorable situation, and concerting, in a word, for the founding of an International Association to put an end to an odious traffic which makes our epoch blush, and to tear aside the veil of darkness which still enshrouds Central Africa. The discoveries due to daring explorers permit us to say from this day that it is one of the most beautiful and the richest countries created by God.
“The Conference of Brussels has nominated an Executive Committee to carry into execution its declaration and resolutions.
“The Conference has wished, in order to place itself in closer relationship with the public, whose sympathy will constitute our force, to found, in each State, National Committees. These Committees, after delegating two members from each of them to form part of the International Committee, will popularise in their respective countries the adopted programme.
“The work has already obtained in France and Belgium important subscriptions, which make us indebted to the donors. These acts of charity, so honourable to those who have rendered them, stimulate our zeal in the mission we have undertaken. Our first task should be to touch the hearts of the masses, and, while increasing our numbers, to gather in a fraternal union, little onerous for each member but powerful and fruitful by the accumulation of individual efforts and their results.
“The International Association does not pretend to reserve for itself all the good that could or ought to be done in Africa. It ought, especially at the commencement, to forbid itself a too extensive programme. Sustained by public sympathy, we hold the conviction that, if we accomplish the opening of the routes, if we succeed in establishing stations along the routes followed by the slave merchants, this odious traffic will be wiped out, and that these routes and these stations, while serving as fulcrums for travellers, will powerfully contribute towards the evangelisation of the blacks, and towards the introduction among them of commerce and modern industry.
“We boldly affirm that all those who desire the enfranchisement of the black races are interested in our success.
“The Belgian Committee, emanating from the International Committee, and its representative in Belgium, will exert every means to procure for the work the greatest number of adherents. It will assist my countrymen to prove once more that Belgium is not only a hospitable soil, but that she is also a generous nation, among whom the cause of humanity finds as many champions as she has citizens.
“I discharge a very agreeable duty in thanking this assembly, and in warmly congratulating it for having imposed on itself a task the accomplishment of which will gain for our country another brilliant page in the annals of charity and progress.”
We have here, in his Majesty’s own words, a very lucid and reiterated exposition of King Leopold’s main object in concerning himself with Central African affairs—the suppression of the slave trade, with consequent moral and material advancement of its peoples. But let it not be lost sight of that, subsidiary to this lofty mission, King Leopold has never disavowed—nay, his Majesty had more than once expressly declared it—his desire to find in Africa new markets for Belgian manufactures, and a wide field for the surplus population of overcrowded little Belgium, where his people might live and where their peculiar genius in the arts and sciences might flourish unfettered by alien laws.
Old Beliefs Disproved.