The five Powers occupying and governing the Congo Basin have here assumed certain obligations in reference to the commercial régime which should prevail in their territory. There shall be freedom to trade, and to navigate in pursuit of commerce; there shall be no differential duties imposed; there shall be no monopoly in matters of trade. In the fourth protocol of the Berlin Conference, Baron Lambermont’s report includes a definition of what the Conference meant by monopoly “in matters of trade.” This statesman declared that:
No doubt whatever exists as to the strict and literal sense which should be assigned to the term in commercial matters. It refers exclusively to traffic, to the unlimited power of every one to sell and to buy, to import and to export, products and manufactured articles. No privileged situation can be created under this head, the way remains open without any restrictions to free competition in the domain of commerce, but the obligations of local Governments do not go beyond that point.
The Theory of Congo Government.
Notwithstanding the explicit nature of this definition, those who, for reasons which it is not the purpose of this volume to expose in detail, condemn the governmental system of the Congo Free State, and declare that the General Act of the Berlin Conference aimed at much more than insuring the common right (freedom) of all nations to pursue legitimate trade in the Basin of the Congo. How much more, and precisely what the Act aims at, according to hostile commentators, varies with the capacity for exaggeration, or the speciousness in argument, of the critic. Some declare that freedom in matters of trade means that anybody may invade the Congo Basin and barter with natives for the produce of the soil and the chase, laws respecting private property and providing regulations to govern traffic notwithstanding. In his essay on Principles of Government in the Congo Free State[8] the author briefly indicates the motif of King Leopold’s rule in Central Africa and the cogent reasons for the system which has made that rule the envy of persons whose faculty of perception is not as dormant to-day as it was in 1885, when it was lazily assumed that the salvation of a territory, not worth much materially, was being imposed upon an enthusiastic and impractical kingly philanthropist. Amongst other things, this essay contains the following exposition of the system of internal government by which the Congo Free State and its people have morally and materially prospered. It is, in substance, the definition of Congolese policy stated by his Majesty, King Leopold:
Respect for Property.
... The principles of the Congolese system of internal government appear to be in entire conformity with the General Act of Berlin, wherein freedom of trade is assured to the subjects of all nations. This signifies the liberty to sell and to buy in a legitimate way, not in a way peculiar to the theories of Congo despoilers. It is repugnant to law, and disturbing to civil order and progress, to permit the product of the land to be purchased from any person but its legitimate owner. Congo law represses theft, the insidious encouragement of which would appear to be the aim of those who so grossly misinterpret the principle of Freedom of Commerce. A respect for property is essential to all governments which hope to endure, and the law of this attitude is universal in all civilised communities. Trade, whether free or restricted, could not exist on any other basis. The forces of civilisation are paralysed without it, and untamed natives are left to savage internecine strife.
Labour the Great Civiliser.
The principles of the Congo Government are that the soil shall maintain those who develop its resources for the betterment of the sower and the reaper. The civilisation of the native by industry and other forms of instruction in the attributes of order, civic life, and all that he may be capable of absorbing of enlightened freedom. For the privilege of residing within the sphere of a State so governed, the white man is the most taxed member of society in the world. Shall savages alone be exempt from labour and just contribution to organised government? Shall the white man’s rule teach the black that idleness, craft, animal instincts, predatory habits in gaining his irregular subsistence, are the foundations of civilisation? Or shall the white man by precept and example, and by humane but positive insistence, train the savage in the ways of law and order, industry and thrift?
Taxation of the Native.
Reverting for a moment to the assertion that the Government of the Congo Free State is primarily responsible for what its detractors allege to be the enslavement of the native, I fail to find conviction in unfounded statements often repeated, and arguments upon wrong premises, varied only in form, not substance. Ignorance of the motif impelling Congo State method and movement has misled those who have brought prejudice to a subject worth the attention only of the broadest minds. The system, which is the object of attack when new stories of atrocities are scarce, is briefly stated to be to devote the revenue derived from the State’s property as much as possible to cover the State’s expenses; that is to say, to the moral and material organisation and regeneration of the country and its inhabitants; to resort to the imposition of a tax in specie as rarely as possible; and to exact a few hours’ labour monthly from the natives, in order to give them the habit of work, which is the greatest of civilising precepts. In this connection the Congo Government goes beyond its duty, and pays the natives for this work, teaching them the relation between labour and its reward. The habit of work, when formed, will elevate the natives from the savage instincts which tend to debase them in idleness. The exaction of, and payment for, forty-odd hours’ work each month from an able-bodied native, for whose redemption from savagery millions of money and many lives have been, and are being, spent, is a lesser tax than the white man pays on his meagre income from daily toil in the cities of London, New York, Paris, and Berlin. The county road tax alone, levied upon the farmer in the United States, is a greater imposition than this. Those who have the hardihood to argue that the enforced practice of habits of industry upon savages in an African colony, less than twenty years in the making, is an unjust and iniquitous burden, can have no conception of the condition of the white slaves of the Midland counties of England, no understanding of life and its burdens in the centres of the world’s highest civilisation.