Thus the European Powers, yielding to the specious plea that they must grant the Congo Free State the power of levying customs dues in order to further its philanthropic aims, gave up one of the fundamentals agreed on at the Berlin Conference. The raison d'être of the Congo Free State was, that it stood for freedom of trade in that great area; and to sign away one of the birthrights of modern civilisation, owing to the plea of a temporary want of cash in Congoland, can only be described as the act of a political Esau. The General Act of the Brussels Conference received a provisional sanction (the clause respecting customs dues not yet being definitively settled) on July 2, 1890[466].
On the next day the Congo Free State entered into a financial arrangement with the Belgian Government which marked one more step in the reversal of the policy agreed on at Berlin five years previously. In this connection we must note that King Leopold by his will, dated August 2, 1889, bequeathed to Belgium after his death all his sovereign rights over that State, "together with all the benefits, rights and advantages appertaining to that sovereignty." Apparently, the occasion that called forth the will was the urgent need of a loan of 10,000,000 francs which the Congo State pressed the Belgian Government to make on behalf of the Congo railway. Thus, on the very eve of the summoning of the European Conference at Brussels, the Congo Government (that is, King Leopold) had appealed, not to the Great Powers, but to the Belgian Government, and had sought to facilitate the grant of the desired loan by the prospect of the ultimate transfer of his sovereign rights to Belgium.
Unquestionably the King had acted very generously in the past toward the Congo Association and State. It has even been affirmed that his loans often amounted to the sum of 40,000,000 francs a year; but, even so, that did not confer the right to will away to any one State the results of an international enterprise. As a matter of fact, however, the Congo State was at that time nearly bankrupt; and in this circumstance, doubtless, may be found an explanation of the apathy of the Powers in presence of an infraction of the terms of the Berlin Act of 1885.
We are now in a position to understand more clearly the meaning of the Convention of July 3, 1890, between the Congo Free State and the Belgian Government. By its terms the latter pledged itself to advance a loan of 25,000,000 francs to the Congo State in the course of ten years, without interest, on condition that at the close of six months after the expiration of that time Belgium should have the right of annexing the Free State with all its possessions and liabilities.
Into the heated discussions which took place in the Belgian Parliament in the spring and summer of 1901 respecting the Convention of July 3, 1890, we cannot enter. The King interfered so as to prevent the acceptance of a reasonable compromise proposed by the Belgian Prime Minister, M. Beernaert; and ultimately matters were arranged by a decree of August 7, 1901, which will probably lead to the transference of King Leopold's sovereign rights to Belgium at his death. In the meantime, the entire executive and legislative control is vested in him, and in a Colonial Minister and Council of four members, who are responsible solely to him, though the Minister has a seat in the Belgian Parliament[467]. To King Leopold, therefore, belongs the ultimate responsibility for all that is done in the Congo Free State. As M. Cattier phrased it in the year 1898: "Belgium has no more right to intervene in the internal affairs of the Congo than the Congo State has to intervene in Belgian affairs. As regards the Congo Government, Belgium has no right either of intervention, direction, or control[468]."
Very many Belgians object strongly to the building up of an imperium in imperio in their land; and the wealth which the ivory and rubber of the Congo brings into their midst (not to speak of the stock-jobbing and company-promoting which go on at Brussels and Antwerp), does not blind them to the moral responsibility which the Belgian people has indirectly incurred. It is true that Belgium has no legal responsibility, but the State which has lent a large sum to the Congo Government, besides providing the great majority of the officials and exploiters of that territory, cannot escape some amount of responsibility. M. Vandervelde, leader of the Labour Party in Belgium, has boldly and persistently asserted the right of the Belgian people to a share in the control of its eventual inheritance, but hitherto all the efforts of his colleagues have failed before the groups of capitalists who have acquired great monopolist rights in Congoland.
Having now traced the steps by which the Congolese Government reached its present anomalous position, we will proceed to give a short account of its material progress and administration.
No one can deny that much has been done in the way of engineering. A light railway has been constructed from near Vivi on the Lower Congo to Stanley Pool, another from Boma into the districts north of that important river port. Others have been planned, or are already being constructed, between Stanley Falls and the northern end of Lake Tanganyika, with a branch to the Albert Nyanza. Another line will connect the upper part of the River Congo with the westernmost affluent of the River Kasai, thus taking the base of the arc instead of the immense curve of the main stream. By the year 1903, 480 kilometres of railway were open for traffic, while 1600 more were in course of construction or were being planned. It seems that the first 400 kilometres, in the hilly region near the seaboard, cost 75,000,000 francs in place of the 25,000,000 francs first estimated[469]. Road-making has also been pushed on in many directions. A flotilla of steamers plies on the great river and its chief affluents. In 1885 there were but five; the number now exceeds a hundred. As many as 1532 kilometres of telegraphs are now open. The exports advanced from 1,980,441 francs in 1885-86 to 50,488,394 francs in 1901-02, mainly owing to the immense trade in rubber, of which more anon; the imports from 9,175,103 francs in 1893 to 23,102,064 in 19O1-O2[470].
Far more important is the moral gain which has resulted from the suppression of the slave-trade over a large part of the State. On this point we may quote the testimony of Mr. Roger Casement, British Consul at Boma, in an official report founded on observations taken during a long tour up the Congo. He writes: "The open selling of slaves and the canoe convoys which once navigated the Upper Congo have everywhere disappeared. No act of the Congo State Government has perhaps produced more laudable results than the vigorous suppression of this widespread evil[471]."
King Leopold has also striven hard to extend the bounds of the Congo State. Not satisfied with his compact with France of April 1887, which fixed the River Ubangi and its tributaries as the boundary of their possessions, he pushed ahead to the north-east of those confines, and early in the nineties established posts at Lado on the White Nile and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin. Clearly his aim was to conquer the districts which Egypt for the time had given up to the Mahdi. These efforts brought about sharp friction between the Congolese authorities and France and Great Britain. After long discussions the Cabinet of London agreed to the convention of May 12, 1894, whereby the Congo State gained the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin and the left bank of the Upper Nile, together with a port on the Albert Nyanza. On his side, King Leopold recognised the claims of England to the right bank of the Nile and to a strip of land between the Albert Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika. Owing to the strong protests of France and Germany this agreement was rescinded, and the Cabinet of Paris finally compelled King Leopold to give up all claims to the Bahr-el-Ghazal, though he acquired the right to lease the Lado district below the Albert Nyanza. The importance of these questions in the development of British policy in the Nile basin has been pointed out in Chapter XVII.