The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

Without any burden on our Treasury on that account,—since the Belgian judges serving in the Congo will, during the term of their service, cease to draw upon our budget,—our magistracy will be losing nothing of their value, so justly appreciated, by delegating a few of their members—selected from the youngest—in those new regions where their knowledge of law, coming into more direct contact than at home with nature and practical needs, will acquire renewed strength at the very springs of equity and juridical conscience.

At the same time, their authoritative participation in the colonial undertaking will contribute to do away with the very suspicion of those abuses which, after being systematically exaggerated by interested opponents, have been used as a pretence for this deplorable Congophobe campaign which has led away in England a few minds more generous than enlightened.

Fortified in this manner, the Congolese magistrates, who even now worthily bear comparison with any colonial magistracy, will, by the mode of their recruitment, and their own merit, command respect from our adversaries.

They will be continually renewed, which is advisable in these tropical regions, where the conditions of climate very soon exhaust individuals, and the new and continued relations which will thus progressively spring up between Belgium at home and its African extension will contribute to force into our colonial undertaking the best part of our traditions and of our national spirit.

It would be also useful if the ambulatory character attributed by Congolese law to the Courts of First Instance were made more effective, by rendering it an obligation for these courts to move about periodically throughout the extent of their province, to sit regularly at important centres, and to betake themselves to all points to which the necessities of their presence required them to proceed. This object might be easily attained, if only there were placed at the disposal of the magistrates the material means—with regard to transport, provisions, and lodging—that the frequency of these movements on circuit might call for.

I would also recommend a new measure which would consist in establishing in the different jurisdictions a corps of special agents who should be remunerated by the Government, and whose mission would be to discharge in the interests of the natives the rôle of barristers. At present it is to the magistrates themselves that the native addresses himself in order to obtain the necessary counsel for the protection of his rights. It would be preferable that those who may be called upon to lay down the law on a conflict of civil right, should not fill also the post of being counsel to one of the parties. On the other hand, from the penal point of view the measure that I propose would permit of professional defenders being assured to the accused. This institution, which it would be necessary to render of as general application as possible in the Upper as in the Lower Congo, would thus place on the spot, at the disposition of those natives who thought they had ground of complaint, gratuitous defenders of their interests.

In the State Printing Office at Boma. Natives Laying-on and Taking-off.

Indeed it would be useful to constitute in Belgium a Court of Cassation to which the sentences and definite judgments in penal matters which might possibly be contrary to the law should be submitted. Such a court might be composed of members of the Belgian Court of Cassation, or of the Appeal Courts admitted to the grade of emeritus, or actually practising.

It will certainly seem natural that these different opportunities of co-operating in the Congolese work should be given to the Belgian magistracy. Belgium would see therein, as it seems to me, the occasion of drawing closer the links of a moral nature which already unite it to its future colony, and the mission not without distinction which Belgian officers have fulfilled and are fulfilling in Africa would find its complement in the collaboration of jurists of merit who can be counted in our country in great numbers.