“Les contraventions aux décrets, ordonnances, arrêtes, règlements d’administration intérieure et de police, à l’égard desquelles la loi ne détermine pas de peines particulières, seront punies d’un à sept jours de servitude pénale et d’une amende n’excédant pas 200 fr., ou d’une de ces peines seulement.”
Article 2 requires that:—
“Ces peines seront appliquées par les Tribunaux de l’État conformément aux lois en vigueur.”
It would be manifestly impossible to say that either in form or mode of procedure this law had been applied to the failure of the community at W* to meet the demands made upon them.
Neither the summary arrest and taking away from their homes of the men whose names were given to me nor the imposition of the very heavy fine of brass rods find any warrant in this page of the Congo Statute Book.
If a legal warrant exists for the action of the authorities in this case—as in the numerous other cases brought to my notice—that action would still call for much adverse comment.
The amount of the fine levied on W* was not only out of all proportion to the gravity of the offence committed, but was of so crushing a character as to preclude the possibility of its being acquitted by any reasonable or legitimate means that community disposed of.
Among the earliest enactments of civilized administrations, recognition has invariably been given to the pronouncement that no fine or imposition, or exaction, shall exceed the powers of the person on whom it is imposed to meet it.
But if, as I venture to presume, no Congolese law or judicial pronouncement exists, or could exist, for the levying, in this manner, of these fines, very explicit Regulations for the treatment of the natives on general lines and their right to judicial protection do exist.
In the “texte coordonné des diverses instructions relatives aux rapports des Agents de l’État avec les indigènes,” which are to be found in the “Bulletin Officiel” of 1896 (p. 255), these Regulations are published at length and would seem, textually, to leave little room for criticism.