Will it be said that these ideas are superannuated; that they do not belong to our age? I will reply by a very recent example, which has been the subject of discussion between the Governments of Spain, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. It is known that certain native chiefs on the northern coast of the island of Borneo delegated to a European, a private individual, rights implying the exercise of territorial sovereignty; that the person to whom the chiefs of the country had delegated supreme power, under the title of maharaja, ceded his rights to a private company, and that that company obtained from the English Crown a charter of incorporation. It may be said that the history of the propagation of civilisation in the seventeenth century in America is renewed in Asia and Africa in the nineteenth century. The English Government regarded this delegation of sovereign rights by native chiefs, in return for an annual subsidy, as a sufficient title to enable the company to exercise these powers, and sustained this proposition before the House of Commons. In reply to a question in regard to the granting of the charter of incorporation, Sir Henry James, Attorney General, said:
“The rights which have been accorded the company have become legally its property, and it would have been an act of confiscation if the Government of Her Majesty had attempted to deprive it of them.”
And the prime minister, Mr. Gladstone, also affirmed that the charter had not granted to the company any power to exercise rights implying sovereignty which it had not already acquired by delegation from native chiefs. A correspondent of the Revue de géographie of Paris has specified these rights according to the contents of the act of delegation.[60] It is not doubtful that in virtue of this act the company, without being a state, can exercise sovereign rights over a considerable territory in the northern part of the island of Borneo. M. E. de Laveleye, before cited, says that Germany, formally consulted by the British Government in 1882, did not question the capacity of private individuals or of companies to obtain from non-civilised Sovereigns the concession of rights implying the exercise of rights of sovereignty. The Governments of the Netherlands and of Spain did not deny such power, but they claimed to have anterior rights over the northern portion of Borneo; and it was in virtue of those anterior rights that they protested against the rights claimed by the British North Borneo Company. It is, therefore, evident that the obstacles which the establishment of stations by the International Association upon the Upper Congo might meet with from European powers are not to be found in the fact that they are in contravention of any law of nations by virtue of which states alone can exercise sovereign rights, but solely in the fact that Portugal pretends, by reason of anterior rights, to deny the capacity of the native chiefs of the country to cede the sovereignty of a part of their territories without the consent of Portugal.
It appears, in the meantime, that the British Government did not yield to the pretensions raised by Holland and Spain concerning the northern part of the island of Borneo, and that the Government of the French Republic, in spite of the pretensions of Portugal, has recognised the supremacy of a native king upon the Upper Congo, and has accepted the cession of his hereditary rights. This treaty, concluded by M. Savorgnan de Brazza, as the representative of France, at Neousa, the 30th October, 1880, ceded to France a territory which was in the possession of certain chiefs, vassals of the King Makoko; and said chiefs signed the treaty, whilst the King Makoko, in his capacity as suzerain of these chiefs, ceded to France, by an act invested with his mark, his rights of supremacy over this territory. It seems, therefore, that there is no place for a suzerainty of Portugal over the regions around Stanley Pool, according to the opinion of the Government of the French Republic, for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies authorised the President of the Republic to ratify the treaty and act above mentioned, and the President has promulgated a law to give them full effect.
It might reasonably be asked, if there is any difference in principle between the right of African chiefs, admitting they are sovereigns of a territory, and the right of Asiatic chiefs to cede their territory to a private company. France, at least, has recognised the right of King Makoko, suzerain of the Batakes, to cede to a European State his rights of sovereignty, and the right of the chiefs subordinate to his authority to cede the possession of the parts of the territory they occupied. Why should it be forbidden to a native chief to cede his territory to an international European company, which, according to the law of nations, is perfectly capable of accepting and exercising such a sovereignty?
The Comité d’Études of the Upper Congo—for it is necessary to distinguish between the association which occupies the Lower Congo and the association which occupies the Upper Congo—has made, through Mr. Stanley, with the native chiefs, treaties, which in regard to their tenor resemble more closely the treaties concluded by the British Society with the Sultans of Brunei and Sooloo, in the island of Borneo, than the treaties concluded by the native chiefs of the Upper Congo with M. Savorgnan de Brazza. Take for example the treaty which Captain Eliot, agent of Mr. Stanley, concluded with the Chief Manipembo, the 20th of May of this year. The first three articles declare that the Chief Manipembo cedes and abandons to the committee of the Upper Congo, in full property, certain territories in return for a present the receipt of which is acknowledged, and he solemnly declares that these territories form an integral part of his State, and that he can freely dispose of them. It is clearly evident from the tenor of these articles that the Chief Manipembo recognises no superior chief. Article IV. of the treaty states that the cession of territory carries with it the abandonment by the above-named chief, and the transfer to the committee of all his sovereign rights.
Was this transmission of sovereign rights to the committee of the Upper Congo illegal according to the law of nations? It is indisputable that the Chief Manipembo was legally capable of concluding treaties with European Powers, for the French Republic, through M. Cordier, on the 12th of March of this year, concluded with him and with the King of Loango treaties by which all the left bank of the river Quillou,[61] which empties into the Bay of Loango, is placed under the protectorate of France.
Concerning the exercise of sovereign rights by the committee of the Upper Congo, acquired by treaties with native chiefs, if reliance can be placed upon an article in the Journal l’Export, which professes to have its facts from good authority, the committee has instructed its representatives, in case of expeditions from any nation seeking to establish themselves there, to give them gratuitously the necessary land. The committee wishes especially to create colonies at the stations of the Congo, and to see developed there a new kind of free cities. An idea which may throw some light on the future of the Upper Congo is this: An International Protectorate of the Lower Congo, under the presidency of Portugal, and a system of free cities for the Upper Congo.
History teaches us that the march of the caravans which traverse the sandy deserts of Northern Africa has been rendered possible by the existence of certain spots where nature has made provision of water and vegetation where travellers and camels can rest and refresh themselves. Why should not a philanthropic association be permitted to imitate this foresight of nature, and to establish, like these oases, free cities at certain distances upon the banks of the great river of Equatorial Africa, to facilitate the progress of a humane civilisation and the development of a beneficent commerce?
The institution of free cities in Germany greatly accelerated the progress of the arts and civilisation in Europe, and the rapid development of these cities in the fourteenth century teaches us that by means of such an organisation a nearly barbarous country can be erected into a civilised body upon an industrial and commercial basis. These cities, either through their origin or by virtue of the charters granted them by sovereign powers, secured to themselves a free government, which assured to their citizens personal liberty and the ownership of their property under the protection of their own magistrates.