What is lawful for one party must be lawful for the other, and we cannot reproach the Congo Free State for upholding against British would-be interference such rights of the Crown as other governments maintain in their own colonies.
This example of vigorous Teutonic candour might be repeated from the columns of many other European journals, but the desire to avoid passing from the historical to the controversial in the present work must limit the use of abundant similar material.
To show that the direct exploitation of domanial forests is made a legitimate source of revenue in Eastern countries, the instance of Japan may be cited. That brave little country, so heroically engaged in fighting for the unmolested right to pursue its brilliant course of modern progress, directly cultivates and harvests for the benefit of its treasury a State domain equal to seven times the entire area of Belgium!
When the ministers of his Majesty, King Leopold, were requested to indicate the principles upon which the Domaine Privé of the Congo Free State was developed, they stated that, having in view the necessity for revenue from the soil, the civilising influence of labour, and the social, physical, and moral condition of the African black, they had devised that scheme which would attract the only existing available labour in the country, the co-operation of the native, for which co-operation the State not only paid him, but provided him with liberating and enlightening opportunities for participating in the growth of African civilisation. In its official reports the Government of the Congo Free State refers to its aims in this respect:
The object which the Government aims at, is to succeed in turning the private domain of the State to profit, exclusively by means of voluntary contributions [of labour] from the natives, and inducing them to work through the allurement of an earned and adequate payment. The rate must be sufficiently remunerative to stimulate in the natives the desire of obtaining it, and, as a consequence, to induce them to gather in the products of the domain.
Where the attraction of commercial benefit is not sufficient to assure the working of the private domain, it is necessary to resort to the tax in kind; but, even in this case, the work is remunerated in the same manner as the voluntary contributions. The Government’s orders in this respect are positive. Properly speaking, the tax in kind is not a real tax, since the local value of the products brought in by the natives is given to them in exchange.
The Government has never neglected an opportunity to remind its agents, intrusted with the collection of taxes in kind, that their part is that of an educator: their mission is to impress on the mind of the natives the taste for work; and the means available would fail of their aim if compulsion was changed into violence.
What is called the Domain of the Crown is a limited territory defined by decrees dated March 8, 1896, and December 23, 1901, lying in the basins of Lake Leopold II. and of the Lukenie River, in the basin of the Busira-Momboya River, and between certain boundaries at the confluence of the Lubefu and Sankuru rivers, to the western summit-line of the Lukenie basin, and including certain contiguous areas. These lands include six discovered mines which have so far not been worked. The Domain of the Crown is a corporate body administered by a committee of three persons appointed by the Sovereign.
The forests of the Congo are the finest in the world. They contain a great variety of hard and soft wood, fruit-bearing trees, rubber trees and vines, and gum trees, and constitute an industrial wealth which is being preserved by enforcing rigorous laws. A decree dated July 7, 1898, and orders dated November 22, 1898, and March 21, 1902, regulate timber cutting. Under these, steamboats may take on supplies of wood fuel on payment of an annual tax measured according to their tonnage and speed.
