As to the condition of the natives, this is the opinion of Sir Harry Johnston, speaking from experience of that part of the Congo which was formerly the most backward:
“This portion of the Congo Free State was inhabited by cheerful natives who repeatedly, and without solicitation on my part, compared the good times they were now having, to the misery and terror which preceded them when the Arabs and Manyema had established themselves in the country as chiefs and slave-traders.”
As this volume is going to press, advices are to hand that M. Gaston Doumergue, the French Minister for the Colonies, submitted to the President of the Republic of France—and on October 23, 1904, procured his signature to—a decree consolidating the Republic’s legislation concerning French West Africa. This decree reaffirms that “all vacant lands in the colonies of French West Africa are the property of the State”; that the property of the State may be alienated, leased, or developed according to the methods employed in the Free State; that concessions may be granted; that property held in common by tribes under their chiefs may not be sold by them without the State’s consent, etc. In short, the success of the land régime practised by the Congo Free State having convinced the Germans and the French of its wisdom, both countries have now conformed their own laws to it.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Report to the Belgian Senate, July 25, 1893.
[37] For statistics supporting this statement, see page 287.
[38] Sale of Government Land in the Anglo-Egyptian Soudan, Times (London), July 18, 1904.
[39] Annual Colonial Report, Lagos, 1899.
[40] Approximately twenty-four and one-half acres.
[41] Two Liverpool firms, Messrs. Hatton & Cookson and John Holt & Co., have alone figured in the cases brought before the Courts of Libreville.