[473] Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1904), p. 27.
[474] A. Boshart, Zehn Jahre Afrikanischen Lebens (1898), quoted by Fox Bourne, op. cit. p. 77. For further details see the article by Mr. Glave, once an official of the Congo Free State, in the Century Magazine, vol. liii.; also his work, Six Years in the Congo (1892).
[475] Sir Charles Dilke stated this very forcibly in a speech delivered at the Holborn Town Hall on June 7, 1905.
[476] Cattier, Droit et Administration . . . du Congo, pp. 243-245.
[477] For a map of the domains now appropriated by these and other privileged "Trusts," see Morel, op. cit. p. 466.
[478] See the evidence in Parl. Papers, Africa. No. 8 (1896).
[479] Morel, op. cit. chaps. xxiii.-xxv.
[480] Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), pp. 29, 60. A missionary, Rev. J. Whitehead, wrote in July 1903: "During the past seven years this 'domaine privé' of King Leopold has been a veritable 'hell on earth.'" (Ibid. p. 64).
[481] Ibid. pp. 34, 43, 44, 49, 76, etc.
[482] Ibid. p. 70. The effort made by the Chevalier De Cuvelier to rebut Mr. Casement's charges consists mainly of an ineffective tu quoque. To compare the rubber-tax of the Congo State with the hut-tax of Sierra Leone begs the whole question. Mr. Casement proves (p. 27) that the natives do not object to reasonable taxation which comes regularly. They do object to demands for rubber which are excessive and often involve great privations. Above all, the punishments utterly cow them and cause them to flee to the forests.
The efforts of Mr. Macdonnell in King Leopold II. (London, 1905) to refute Mr. Casement also seem to me weak and inconclusive. The reply of the Congo Free State is printed by Mr. H.W. Wack in the Appendix of his Story of the Congo Free State (New York, 1905). It convicts Mr. Casement of inaccuracy on a few details. Despite all that has been written by various apologists, it may be affirmed that the Congo Free State has yet made no adequate defence. Possibly it will appear in the report which, it is hoped, will be published in full by the official commission of inquiry now sitting.