A MEMORIAL 
 
 ON NATIVE RIGHTS IN THE LAND AND ITS 
 
 FRUITS IN THE CONGO TERRITORIES 
 
 ANNEXED BY BELGIUM (SUBJECT 
 
 TO INTERNATIONAL RECOGNI- 
 
 TION) IN AUGUST, 1908. 
 
 "If it can be shown that the land of the Congo does possess and has always possessed 
 save where there is no population Native Owners, and was always recognised as possessing 
 Native Owners until the Edicts of 1891-2 ; and if it can be shown, concurrently, that where- 
 ever the Native Owners of the land had had access (prior to the Edicts of 1891-2) to European 
 markets for the disposal of the produce of the land, either by direct or indirect dealings with 
 Europeans, they traded freely in that produce : then the appropriation by the governing 
 Authorities of the Congo of the land's natural wealth, on the plea that the land possesses 
 no Native Owners, stands out as a violation of Native Law, of Native Rights, of Inter- 
 national Law, and of elementary morality without precedent in contemporary history, and 
 the Great Powers, I submit, cannot allow that policy to be perpetuated by the Belgian 
 Government." 
 
 PRESENTED TO 
 
 ecvetaru of 
 Jfomgn JUfairs, 
 
 State for 
 
 By B. D. MOREL, 
 
 Hon. Secretary of the 
 CONGO REFORM ASSOCIATION. 
 
 PRICE THREEPENCE. (Post Free.) 
 
 APPLY TO 
 
 The CONGO REFORM ASSOCIATION, Granville House, Arundel Street, Strand, W.C.
 
 A MEMORIAL 
 
 ON NATIVE RIGHTS IN THE LAND AND ITS FRUITS 
 IN THE CONGO TERRITORIES ANNEXED BY 
 BELGIUM (SUBJECT TO INTER- 
 NATIONAL RECOGNITION) 
 IN AUGUST, 1908.
 
 IN DEX. 
 
 PART I. ... ... ... ... ... Pages 5 to 20 
 
 In which is demonstrated the falsity of the contention advanced 
 by the late Administration of the Congo, and by the Belgian 
 Government to-day, that the Land of the Congo is without 
 Native Owners. 
 
 PART II. ... ... ... ... ... Pages 21 to 38 
 
 A constructive demonstration of Native Rights of Ownership in 
 Land, and utilisation of its Produce for Commercial pur- 
 poses from early times until the Edicts of 1891-2. 
 
 PART III. ... ... ... ... ... Pages 39 to 52 
 
 In which the dishonesty and untenability of the Belgian claim to 
 the Land of the Congo is demonstrated ; in which the form 
 which Native Ownership of Land takes in the Congo is 
 shown, and in which evidence is produced from all over the 
 Congo proving the existence of well-defined Native tenure 
 in Land. 
 
 POST-SCRIPT UM TO PART III., and CONCLUSION... Pages 53 to 56 
 
 N.B. The contents of each Part, with the pages indicating the references, 
 are given in the introductory Summaries. 
 
 2107587
 
 PART I. 
 
 IN WHICH IS DEMONSTRATED THE FALSITY OF THE CONTENTION 
 
 ADVANCED BY THE LATE ADMINISTRATION OF THE CONGO, 
 
 AND BY THE BELGIAN GOVERNMENT TO-DAY, THAT 
 
 THE LAND OF THE CONGO is WITHOUT 
 NATIVE OWNERS.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE PARAMOUNT OBJECT OF EUROPEAN RULE ON THE CONGO SINCE THE EDICTS OF 
 
 1891-2 (p. 7) THE SYSTEM THEN ESTABLISHED (p. 7) THE ATTITUDE IN REGARD 
 
 TO IT, OF SUCCESSIVE BELGIAN GOVERNMENTS AND OF THE PRESENT MINISTRY (p. 7) 
 THE INACTION OF THE PRESENT MINISTRY AND THE REASONS FOR IT (p. 8) THE 
 DETERMINING FEATURES OF THE SYSTEM (p. 8) THE BENEFICIARIES FROM THE SYSTEM 
 UNDER THE LATE, AND THE PRESENT, ADMINISTRATION (p. 9) THE ISSUE AT STAKE 
 (P- 9) IN WHAT THE DEFENCE OF THE SYSTEM CONSISTS (p. IO) -DOES THE LAND 
 POSSESS NATIVE OWNERS OR NOT? (p. Il) THE AUTHORITY CLAIMED BY KlNG LEOPOLD 
 
 TO SECURE INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION FOR HIS CONGO SUZERAINTY (p. 12) THE 
 
 TRANSFERRED SOVEREIGNTY OF THE NATIVE RULERS (p. 12) DlD THE TRANSFER IMPLY 
 ABANDONMENT OF NATIVE PROPRIETARY RIGHTS IN LAND AND PRODUCE ? (p. 13) 
 
 REASONS IN THE NEGATIVE (p. 14) RIGHTS OF AFRICAN RULERS IN NATIVE LAW (p. 14) 
 PASSION OF NATIVES FOR THE LAND (p. 14) ACTS AND DECLARATIONS OF THE INTER- 
 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION AND ITS AGENTS (p. 14) THE STATEMENTS OF STANLEY (p. 14) 
 THE ASSOCIATION'S MANIFESTO (p. 14) THE TEXT OF THE TREATIES (p. 15) THEIR 
 
 NATURE, ACCORDING TO STANLEY AND CAPTAIN HANSSENS (p. 17) THE FIRST OFFICIAL 
 
 DECREES OF THE "CONGO FREE STATE" (p. 17) THE CHARACTER OF THE PROCEEDINGS 
 AT BERLIN (p. 18) THE PROVISIONS OF THE BERLIN ACT (p. 18) THE UTTERANCES 
 OF THE WORLD'S STATESMEN (p. 18) FIVE CONCLUSIONS (p. 19).
 
 Jl Memorial of |iatibe Rights in the 
 
 anb its 
 
 Jftmt0 an the Congo territories. 
 
 Paramount 
 object of 
 European 
 rule on the 
 Congo since 
 1892. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 The paramount object of European rule on the Congo since the 
 Edicts of 1891-2 has been that of pillaging its natural wealth to enrich 
 private interests in Belgium. 
 
 To achieve this end a specific, well-defined System was thought 
 out in Brussels and applied on the Congo. 
 
 That System has endured for sixteen years. Its essential features have been 
 known to successive Belgian Governments for ten years. They were known to the 
 present Belgian Government when the latter took office. They have been defended 
 in principle, and their effects in practice denied by successive Belgian Ministers 1 , 
 including Ministers in the present Belgian Government, some of whom have even 
 been actively concerned in the working of this System and have personally participated 
 in the profits derived from it 2 . 
 
 The present Belgian Cabinet is not, therefore, confronted with any new problem. 
 It has assumed the task of governing the Congo, thoroughly aware of the position 
 of affairs, fully informed of the principles upon which the Congo has been managed, 
 completely posted as to the root of the evils, and perfectly cognisant of the effective 
 remedy. 
 
 Belgium's first Colonial Minister, who now holds office, left the Administrative 
 Board of a Congo Concessionnaire Company 3 to enter the Cabinet. That Conces- 
 sionnaire Company was controlled by the late Administration of the Congo, its 
 Administrators were in close and constant communication with the latter from which 
 the Company derived its powers and which participated in the Company's profits. 
 
 1 Messrs, de ?met tie Naeyer, Van den Heuvel, Favereau, Schollaert, Davignon. 
 
 2 Messrs. Renkin and Delbeke. 
 
 3 Compagnie des Grands Lacs.
 
 ( 8 ) 
 
 Ignorance Ignorance as to the reforms required cannot then be pleaded by 
 
 cannot foe t ^ e p rese nt Belgian Government. Ministers were aware of them long 
 the Belgian before tnev to k office. But, although annexation was consummated on 
 Govern- August aoth last, the year closes with the System inaugurated by the 
 
 ment. ] a te Administration unchanged. Not only has the Belgian Government 
 
 done nothing ; not only has the Belgian Government given no indication of an 
 intention to alter the prevailing System ; but the Belgian Government has furnished 
 numerous tokens of a design to perpetuate the System. 
 
 The Congo territories are still being pillaged, ruthlessly and systematically, for 
 the enrichment of private interests and to enable the Belgian Government to main- 
 tain its hold upon the territory without calling upon the Belgian tax-payer for 
 grants in aid 1 . The Belgian electorate was not consulted on the question of annexa- 
 tion. Ministers had no mandate from the Nation to commit it to annexation. The 
 Belgian public was, however, assured that Belgium would contract no financial 
 obligations in annexing the Congo, and Ministers shrink from the electoral disaster 
 which, under the circumstances, would probably follow a demand upon the public 
 purse ; grants-in-aid of a substantial character being, nevertheless, essential if the 
 System of pillage still obtaining is to be replaced by just and normal rule in 
 accordance with the Acts of Berlin and Brussels and International Treaty rights. 
 
 This exact expression of the truth is but the echo of the same truth eloquently 
 pleaded in the Belgian Chamber by distinguished and patriotic Belgian Statesmen 
 and its enunciation here infers no reflection upon the Belgian people as a people. 
 These cannot be held responsible, at this stage, for the actions of a Government 
 which committed them uninformed and unconsulted to the task of administering an 
 enormous Dependency in the African tropics. 
 
 Determin- The determining features of the System of rule which has pre- 
 
 ing : features vailed on the Congo since 1892 may be briefly stated in three sentences, 
 of System 
 
 The rights of the natives to the produce of their own soil, which 
 prevailing 
 since 1892. ^ as commercial value on the world's markets, are taken from them 
 
 and vested in aliens living thousands of miles away. 
 
 The natives cease to be owners of property and cease to be economic units ; and 
 the alien appropriators claim the right, as representatives of a superior civilisation, 
 to extract from the natives the labour which is required for the collection of this 
 produce and its shipment to Europe, where it is sold for the exclusive benefit of the 
 aliens in question. 
 
 i Which every country knows to its cost is an inevitable feature of the management of Tropical Dependencies 
 at least in the earlier stages of their development.
 
 ( 9 ) 
 
 The proceeds of this sale form the principal asset of the alien Administration 
 and provide the dividends of its affiliated Corporations ; the natives are thus 
 systematically robbed of their natural wealth and of their power to enrich themselves 
 by trade and labour. 
 
 Bene- 
 ficiaries of 
 the System 
 under the 
 late and 
 under the 
 present 
 Adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 Under the Administration known as the " Congo Free State " the 
 alien beneficiaries from this System were : 
 
 First : The Sovereign, in his personal capacity, who claimed the 
 produce of the soil in the portion of the territory known as the 
 " Crown domain." 
 
 Secondly : The Sovereign, in his capacity of autocratic ruler of a 
 " State," whose aboriginal inhabitants he had deprived by Decree 
 of all that they possessed, and who claimed for the " State " 
 the produce of the soil in the portion of the territory known 
 as the " Private domain " later as the " National domain." 
 
 Thirdly : Financial Corporations known as Concessionnaire Com- 
 panies or Proprietary Companies, among which the produce of 
 the remaining portion of the territory was distributed by various 
 methods, the " State" retaining, in most cases, half the shares. 
 
 The proceeds from the sale in Europe of the produce were, so far as the " Crown 
 domain" territory was concerned, paid into a private exchequer and not accounted 
 for. So far as the " Private domain " or " National domain " was concerned, they 
 were utilised for the purpose of enforcing the System upon the country. So far as 
 the concessionnaire area was concerned, they were distributed to shareholders in the 
 shape of dividends. 
 
 Under the present Belgian Administration the alien beneficiaries from this 
 System are : 
 
 First : The Belgian Government, which claims the produce of the soil both of 
 the " Crown domain " and of the " Private or National domain." 
 
 Secondly: The same financial corporations, armed with the same powers, and 
 the Belgian Government, which, by the Act of Transfer, has replaced the 
 " Congo Free State " as holder of half the stock in these Corporations. 
 
 A simple 
 issue : 
 Is the 
 System 
 valid and 
 permissible? 
 
 The issue at stake is, therefore, clear : 
 
 It is simply whether this system of pillage applied to the Congo 
 territory is valid 
 
 From the point of view of the historical circumstances connected 
 with the establishment of European rule on the Congo;
 
 From the point of view of International Treaty obligations and the 
 Law of Nations ; 
 
 Whether it is permissible 
 
 From the point of view of the Imperial duties and responsibilities 
 of European Powers whose protected territories border the 
 territory where this System is enforced ; 
 
 From the point of elementary justice and civilised usage. 
 
 Moment 
 opportune 
 for a 
 
 detailed ex- 
 amination 
 of native 
 rights in 
 land and 
 produce. 
 
 The Congo Reform Association's existence of nearly five years has 
 been spent in making known the nature of this System to the civilised 
 world ; in making known its inevitable effects, and in bringing forward 
 facts and arguments designed to meet the above-stated questions by a 
 direct negative. 
 
 The moment would now seem to be opportune for the many 
 representations made to H.M. Government to be supplemented by a 
 fuller and more detailed examination of native rights in land and produce, such as 
 they existed in the Congo prior to the Edicts of 1891-2, such as they, there, exist 
 to-day : and such as they exist and are recognised in other tropical regions of Africa 
 where native society is based as in the Congo upon communal ownership of 
 property. It is evident that civilisation is, by the uprising of this System, and the 
 attempt to give it permanence, faced with a problem which vitally concerns the 
 future of the African tropics and their inhabitants, and, indeed, the whole character 
 of European rule in the Dark Continent. 
 
 In what the The natural prelude to such an examination must necessarily 
 
 defence of consist in setting forth the only defence which has been advanced to 
 
 consists justify this wholesale appropriation of the natural wealth, earning 
 
 capacity and trading rights of many millions of Africans. 
 
 That defence consists in the assertion that the land upon which this produce of 
 commercial value grows (or may be made to grow by cultivation) is not, and has 
 never been owned, by the natives : that it is, consequently, " vacant " land, and as 
 such is the property (together with its products) of the Belgian local Administration 
 of the Congo, or, indeed, of the Belgian " State " itself, as the Belgian Government 
 may think fit. The term " National domain " is thus interpreted, not as connoting 
 the patrimony of the aboriginal inhabitants held in trust for them by the Belgian 
 Government, but as the " National " property of Belgium.
 
 ( II ) 
 
 No attempt has ever been made, at least to the writer's knowledge, to substantiate 
 that assertion. It remains a mere assertion. On the other hand elaborate treatises 
 have been drawn up ; lengthy consultations juridiques (by Maitres BARBOUX, NYS and 
 others) have been published ; innumerable speeches have been delivered in the 
 Belgian Houses of Parliament, one and all proclaiming the right of a " State " to 
 appropriate and to utilise "vacant" lands. If it can be shown by inquiry that 
 " vacant " lands exist, and if the word " State " is used to designate the body 
 of the people united under one government, or acknowledging the suzerainty 
 of an alien over-lord, and if the proceeds derived from the utilisation of these 
 "vacant" lands by that government or alien over-lord are expended in the interests 
 of the body of the people as is the case, for example, in the British dependencies 
 in tropical Africa then the contention of Belgian ministers and jurists is not, and 
 has never been, disputed. If, on the other hand, the word "State" is used to 
 designate the citizens of another country altogether, and it is claimed that these 
 citizens are entitled to acquire and to benefit exclusively from the wealth derived 
 from a territory in Africa, and obtainable only by the labour of the native ; then 
 the contention of Belgian ministers and jurists would be open to serious objections. 
 
 BUT THIS IS NOT THE POINT AT ISSUE. 
 
 The point at issue is not the theoretical rights of a " State" over "vacant" lands, 
 but the assertion that the land of the Congo, upon which produce of commercial 
 value grows (or may be made to grow by cultivation), has no native owners : that 
 the only valid native claim to ownership of land applies to the sites of native towns 
 and villages, and to the areas around them under cultivation for food-stuffs : that 
 all land outside those sites and cultivated areas, and all its produce of commercial 
 value, is the property of the European State, or of the European State's local ad- 
 ministration, which has acquired political power in the country. 
 
 DOES THE LAND, BEYOND THE LIMITS OF NATIVE TOWNS AND 
 VILLAGES AND THEIR ADJACENT FARMS OR FOOD PLANTATIONS, 
 POSSESS NATIVE OWNERS, OR DOES IT NOT? THAT, AND THAT 
 ALONE, IS THE VERITABLE ISSUE. 
 
 Can it be If it can be shown that the land of the Congo does possess, and 
 
 shown that h as always possessed save where there is no population native 
 has native owners, and was always recognised as possessing native owners until 
 owners? the Edicts of 1891-2 ; and if it can be shown, concurrently, that where- 
 
 ever the native owners of the land had had access (prior to the Edicts 
 of 1891-2) to European markets for the disposal of the produce of the land, either 
 by direct or indirect dealings with Europeans, they traded freely in that produce ;
 
 then the appropriation by the governing authorities of the Congo of the land's 
 natural wealth, on the plea that the land possesses no native owners, stands out as 
 a violation of native law, of native rights, of international law, and of elementary 
 morality, without precedent in contemporary history, and the Great Powers, I submit, 
 cannot allow that policy to be perpetuated by the Belgian Government. 
 
 I contend that this proposition is easily demonstrable. 
 
 On what What authority did the Founder and President of the International 
 
 authority Association of the Congo King LEOPOLD II. invoke, in order to justify 
 did the "In- 
 ternational the claim f that Association to be recognised by the Great Powers as 
 
 Associa- Suzerain of the Congo ? 
 tion" 
 
 (known It was the authority with which the International Association alleged 
 later as the j tse jf to ^ e invested by the production of upwards of 450 Treaties con- 
 State") lay eluded by Mr. HENRY M. STANLEY and his staff on the Association's 
 claim to behalf with native chiefs. That, and no other, was the principal authority 
 
 recognition appealed to by King LEOPOLD II., and it was armed with this authority 
 
 by the Great 
 
 Powers ? "*"* he came before the civilised world. 
 
 "We sounded said STANLEY in 1884 the feelings of the natives. We laid the question 
 before them as frankly as I now lay it before you. We made treaties with them by which they 
 ceded to us the sovereignty and every right which could be taken by others to our disadvantage. 
 ... By this act the International Association came into quiet possession, and those Powers dis- 
 posed to annex the land and frustrate the work could not expel us from the country. . . . While 
 we travelled through and through the Congo lands making roads, stations, negotiating for privi- 
 leges, surveying the vast area, teaching and preparing the natives for the near advent of a bright 
 and happy future for them, winning them by gentleness, appeasing their passions, inculcating 
 commercial principles, showing to them the nature of the produce that would be marketable when 
 the White man should come, and everywhere accepted as their friends and benefactors we became 
 convinced that the real obstacles to the recognition of the projects of the Association were not 
 the natives. . . . 1 
 
 The text of the Declarations exchanged between the International Association 
 and the Great Powers, " by which the International Association of the Congo has 
 obtained the recognition of the Governments," 2 is, moreover, quite conclusive on this 
 point. On April 22nd, 1884, General SANFORD, King LEOPOLD'S representative in 
 Washington, obtained the recognition of the United States Government to the 
 International Association on the primary ground that : 
 
 " By Treaties with the legitimate Sovereigns in the basins of the Congo and of the Niadi 
 Kialum and the adjacent territories upon the Atlantic there has been ceded to it territories for 
 the use and benefits of Free States established and being established under the care and supervision 
 of the said Association in the said basins and adjacent territories to which cession the Free States 
 of right succeed. "3 
 
 1 Address to the London Chamber of Commerce, Sept. igth, 1884. 
 
 2 Annex i to protocol 9 (Africa, No. 4, 1885). 
 
 3 Idem.
 
 ( '3 ) 
 
 On December i6th, 1884, M. STRAUSS, King LEOPOLD'S chief representative at 
 the Berlin Conference, obtained the recognition of H.M. Government to the Inter- 
 national Association on the primary ground that : 
 
 " By Treaties with the legitimate Sovereigns in the basins of the Congo and Niadi- K-wilu, 
 and in adjacent tet ritories upon the Atlantic, there has been ceded to it territory for the use and 
 benefit of Free States established and being established in the said basin and adjacent territories ; 
 that by virtue of the said Treaties the administration of the said Free States is vested in the 
 Association." 1 
 
 Thus, the International Association based its claim to international recognition 
 as a Suzerain power in Central Africa on the strength of having purchased, or other- 
 wise obtained, authority from a number of legitimate African Sovereigns to so 
 represent itself, and producing upwards of 450 Treaties in proof of its assertion. 
 
 If Native Now it is on the face of it patent that the transfer of sovereign 
 
 Rulers rights by Native Chiefs to the International Association, constitutes proof 
 
 TT*/liTl STPWPli 
 
 sovereign ^ ^ e P ossess i n by those Native Chiefs of such rights. It is equally 
 
 rights to patent that as these Native Chiefs possessed these sovereign rights over 
 
 the Inter- the land, the land could not have been without native owners. The 
 
 . f af International Association claimed, by virtue of these Treaties, sovereign 
 
 they must rights over an enormous stretch of country. For the successors of the 
 
 have pos- International Association to contend to-day that the rights of these 
 ^ip^^pfl STI r*Ti 
 . , , ' " legitimate Sovereigns," or their descendants did not, or do not extend 
 
 beyond the boundaries of the native towns and villages and their adjacent 
 food plantations, would be to admit the perpetration of a gross fraud by the International 
 Association upon the Great Powers. From that position no escape is logically 
 possible. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that the Treaties with Native Chiefs on the strength of 
 which King LEOPOLD induced the Great Powers to recognise the flag and status of 
 the International Association, were Treaties signed and admittedly so with legiti- 
 mate Native Sovereigns holding sovereign rights over the land and, consequently, 
 over the produce of the land, which, as will be shown later on they were, in point 
 of fact, utilising at the time. 
 
 Did the native rulers of The next point for consideration is whether, in trans- 
 
 the Congo, in trans- ferring their sovereign rights over the country to the Inter- 
 
 f erring their sovereign . . , r , 
 
 rights to the Inter- national Association, the "legitimate rulers of these native 
 
 national Association, communities, intended and were regarded by the International 
 
 relinquish the Association as intending to relinquish the proprietary rights 
 
 proprietary rights of r . . . .. , . , , r iU * ., , 
 
 their people in the of their P e P le m the SDl1 and m the P roduce * tne SQl1 
 
 and. an i s pro From whatever aspect it is approached, any contention 
 
 in the affirmative is untenable. 
 
 Idem.
 
 ( 14 ) 
 
 No In the first place, the African King or Chief under the patriarchal 
 
 because system prevailing on the Congo and throughout the greater part of the 
 
 African tropics, does not himself own the land. He is merely its trustee on behalf 
 of his subjects. This is a matter of common knowledge to all African administrators 
 and, were it necessary, a volume could be compiled on the subject. 1 Exceptions to 
 this rule are rare. 
 
 No It is equally well-known, in the second place, that African Com- 
 
 because munities regard the land as their inviolable possession, being at once 
 
 the supplier of all their needs and the origin of all their religious conceptions, and 
 that no African Community would knowingly barter away the land of its ancestors 
 on any consideration whatsoever. 
 
 No In the third place the acts and declarations of the International 
 
 because Association on the one hand, and the Protocols of the Berlin Act on 
 
 the other prove conclusively that the International Association never dreamed of 
 putting forward such a contention ; that no pretention of the kind was even whispered, 
 and that the Great Powers would have declined to entertain it for a moment, had 
 it been advanced. 
 
 No The pre-eminent endeavour of the International Association was 
 
 because to w j n t ^ e confidence of the Great Powers and of Public Opinion in 
 
 order to secure international recognition. With this object in view its Founder and 
 his assistants represented themselves as desirous to promote above all things the 
 welfare of the natives, and to forward the development of commercial relations 
 between them and the outer world. The elimination of native ownership in the soil 
 and in the produce of the soil, would not only have been a singular fashion of pro- 
 moting the welfare of the natives, but it would have made the development of 
 commercial relations between them and the outer world impossible. It would, 
 therefore, have been totally at variance with the Association's professions. 
 
 No We have seen how STANLEY, on his own showing and acting as 
 
 because t ^ e chief agent" of the International Association, went up and down 
 
 the river repudiating any idea of a desire to annex the land, assuring the natives 
 that the advent of the White-man in the Upper river would place markets for the 
 disposal of their produce at their very doors, and securing Treaties for the Inter- 
 national Association by these and kindred means. 
 
 In its official Manifesto 2 the International Association declared that " all can 
 enter into free commercial relations with the natives ; that its aim was ' to civilise 
 Africa by encouragement given to legitimate trade'"; that "thanks to trade all this 
 produce will enter into circulation, the counterpart of its value will return to Africa 
 for which it will prove a source of prosperity. 1 ' 
 
 t It is again referred to in this Memorial (Part III.) 
 2. Communicated by Stanley to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce on October 2ist, 1884.
 
 No The mere fact that these declarations were made and repeatedly 
 
 because accentuated ; that they formed, indeed, the basis of the International 
 
 Association's claim to recognition suffice to dispose of any idea that the International 
 Association regarded its Treaties with the Native Chiefs as implying that the 
 natives had been thereby despoiled, voluntarily or otherwise of their proprietary 
 rights in the soil and its fruits, and their ownership in land limited to the sites 
 of their towns and food plantations. These declarations were in themselves an 
 admission that the Native Communities of the Congo preserved all their rights 
 in the soil and its produce since, not only the development of trade and commerce 
 but the very existence of this relationship is dependent upon the possession by the 
 native of produce to sell to the European against cash or merchandise or both as 
 the case may be. 
 
 The The Treaties themselves (in so far as they are publicly accessible) do 
 
 Treaties b ut corroborate the declarations made to the world by the International 
 
 the Association. The comments of STANLEY, and of his principal assistants 
 contrary. who together obtained them, are equally significant. He constantly 
 complains of the difficulty of securing even sites for stations and 
 the building of roads, so suspicious were the natives that their rights in the 
 land were to be interfered with. Similar experiences are constantly being recorded 
 by European Administrators and travellers in tropical Africa. Now, STANLEY finds 
 himself compelled to " pay "32 down and a rental of 2 a month ; " again, he 
 says, " In casting up the gross account of the expenditure, I discovered that 156 
 in English gold had been paid. Consider that for this sum we had only obtained 
 a right of way. ..." 
 
 That the Treaties were above all Treaties of protection and trade is abundantly 
 evident. Thus, the Treaty uniting " all the Chiefs of the Wambundu, Kintamo and 
 the Association into a confederation for the preservation of peace in the region south 
 and west of Stanley Pool " stipulates that no stranger shall enter the territory of 
 these federated Chiefs without a guarantee from the Association that "such stranger 
 was a bona fide trader"^ In the "verbal Treaty" arranged with the Chiefs of 
 Lukolela, Juka and Mungawa there is an agreement "to cede to us (the International 
 Association) sovereignty over their country." In the sentence immediately following 
 STANLEY says : " They also sold to us a fine piece of land, etc.," showing that 
 acceptance of a protective Suzerainty, carrying with it increased trading facilities, 
 did not involve a surrender of ownership in land, which had to be bought or leased 
 by the International Association ; of which further proof is forthcoming in the word 
 " rental " used by STANLEY in the passage already quoted. 
 
 i " The Congo." (Treaty dated April 8th, 1883).
 
 ( 16 ) 
 
 STANLEY drew, from the very sacredness of these native rights in land, additional 
 arguments in favour of the international weight which should rightly attach to his 
 Treaties, as tending to demonstrate their absolute honesty : 
 
 "The Association," he writes, "were in possession of Treaties made with over 450 
 independent African Chiefs, whose rights would be conceded by all to have been indisputable 
 since they held their lands by undisturbed occupation, by long ages of succession, by real Divine 
 
 Yet, to-day, the rulers of the Congo interpret this " Divine right " of the natives 
 to their lands, in the sense of a " Divine right " conferred upon Belgium, in the 
 name of Civilisation, to rob the natives of their land and to treat them as the 
 property of the Belgian State ! 
 
 In the Treaty of April ist, 1884, with the "King and Chiefs of Ngombi and 
 Mafela," the Chiefs " solemnly affirm that all the country belongs absolutely to them." 
 
 After STANLEY, the most active of the International Association's agents in Treaty- 
 making was the Belgian Captain HANSSENS. He arrived in the Congo, early in 1882, at 
 the time when STANLEY was preparing to return home. Ten years later his letters 
 were published. 2 Their testimony is invaluable as the following extracts will show. 
 
 From Leopoldville, October 5, 1882. "As soon as I have made up my mind as to the best 
 spot for the new station, I shall sign a regular contract with the owner of the land." 
 
 From the Equator Station, April 25, 1884. "This district is governed by two great chiefs, 
 Mukwala and Mongombo, who also enjoy the the paramount authority over the whole territory 
 between the Mantumba and our station at Lukolela. I made blood brotherhood with them, and 
 succeeded in concluding a treaty which places this huge territory under the protection of the 
 Committee. . . . My journey has been fertile in results. I have concluded with the great 
 Chief Mkuku a Treaty which insures us the protectorate not only of the Iranga territory, situate as 
 you know on the right bank of the defile before Ngombi, but of the Ubanghi territory itself.'' 
 
 From the Station of Bangala, May n, 1884. " I am happy to tell you that I have succeeded 
 in founding the station of the Bangala. Since the gth inst., Lieutenant Coquilhat occupies with his 
 men and his goods, a site which has been ceded to the expedition by the great Chief Matamwike. 
 The negotiations were long and difficult. . . I accepted the only site offered me, thinking it essential 
 for the time being to get a footing in the country. It must fall to the head of the Station (Coquilhat) 
 to seek later on to extend it by pacific negotiation, and if this extension is possible M. Coquilhat seems 
 to me to be the man who can carry it through." 
 
 From Leopoldville, May 15, 1884. "The natives now know perfectly well that the blue flag is 
 the symbol of peate and friendship at the moment, and the hope of a greater prosperity for the future. 
 The great number of treaties I have negotiated and the comparatively short time taken in the 
 negotiations are the best proof of this. All the tribes aspire to place themselves under our protection, 
 and if I acceded to all the demands made to me, I should have to found as many stations as there 
 are inhabited districts. . . . Descending the river I stopped at the important district of Isangi. 
 I had no difficulty in concluding a treaty of friendship, and I obtained very easily the cession of a 
 site which will serve later for a station. . . I have bought the site of Liranga, belonging to the 
 paramount Chief of Ubanghi, on the right bank of the Ngombi district. . . Our situation at the 
 Falls is excellent from every point of view. We are on the best of terms with all the chiefs of the 
 vicinity, who show us the profoundest respect and testify the warmest friendship. They attach a 
 very great importance to our protection." 
 
 Could anything be more explicit ? 
 
 j Idem (p. 329). 
 
 3 " Lettres inedites du Capitaine Hamsun." Le Congo illustn;.
 
 If any lingering doubt remained as to the character of these Treaties, it 
 would be dispelled by a perusal of the Treaty with the Palaballa Chiefs. The docu- 
 ment may be usefully reproduced in part. 
 
 " Pallaballa, igth April, 1884. A supplementary Treaty made this day between II. M. 
 STANLEY, chief agent of the Association Internationale Africainc, and the undersigned chiefs of 
 the districts of Pallaballa, to explain the meaning and the spirit of the term "Cession of territory," 
 found in the Treaty made on 8th January, 1883, between Lieutenant VAN DE VELDE and the 
 said chiefs of Pallaballa : 
 
 "It is agreed between the above parties that the term ' Cession of territory* does not mean 
 the purchase of the soil by the Association, but the purchase of the Suzerainty by the Association, 
 and its just acknowledgment by the undersigned chiefs." 
 
 The nature These Agreements, then, were Treaties of protection and trade, of 
 
 * over-lordship, of Suzerainty, willingly contracted by the " legitimate 
 
 sovereigns " of the Congo in return for immediate and potential advan- 
 tages, and hastily concluded by STANLEY and his assistants on behalf 
 of the International Association, with the object of providing King LEOPOLD II. with 
 something more tangible to place before the council of the nations and to oppose the 
 pretensions of France and Portugal, than declamatory utterances, exploring feats, 
 and philanthropic professions. 
 
 They were nothing more. They could have been nothing more on the strength 
 of the evidence they and their negotiators themselves supply. 
 
 The first It remains to be said that the first act of the first Governor 
 
 Official Acts appointed by the International Association (which had by then changed 
 "Congo Free * ts name to tnat f tne "Congo Free State") Sir FRANCIS DE WINTON, 
 State" were was an Ordinance declaring that no one was entitled " to despoil the 
 the recogni- natives of the lands they occupy." 1 A further admission of native 
 native rights of ownership in land is provided in the Arrete, of one of Sir 
 
 rights in FRANCIS DE WINTON'S successors, M. CAM. JANSSEN, dated June 3Oth, 
 land. 1887, in which the latter recommends Europeans desirous of founding 
 
 trading stations in the Upper Congo, " to make with the natives the necessary 
 arrangements to ensure for themselves a peaceful occupation of the site, and to 
 prevent conflicts and hostilities." 8 
 
 So much for the conclusive proof supplied by the Acts and Declarations of 
 the International Association that, in transferring their sovereign rights over the Congo 
 to the Association, the " legitimate " rulers of the Native Communities in no way 
 relinquished and were in no way regarded by the International Association as having 
 relinquished the proprietary rights of their people in the land and in its produce. 
 
 1 Bulletin Official, No. 2, Ordonnance du ler Juillet, 1885. 
 
 2 Bulletin Officiel, No. 9, Sep., 1887.
 
 No snch That no such claim, had it been advanced by the International 
 
 claim, had Association, would have been sanctioned by the Powers, is sufficiently 
 
 it been 
 
 advanced obvious from the whole character of the proceedings at Berlin and by 
 
 would h ve the utterances of various Statesmen which preceded, accompanied and 
 
 been sane- followed those proceedings. Nevertheless, so precise, so distinctive, so 
 
 the Great entirely free from ambiguity are many of these passages, that some of 
 
 Powers them at least may be usefully recalled. 
 
 So anxious were the Great Powers that commercial relations between the Native 
 Communities of the Congo with the outer world should be unfettered even by vexatious 
 commercial arrangements, that the Act of Berlin (Art. 5) forbade the granting of " a 
 monopoly or favour of any kind in matters of trade." 
 
 PRINCE BISMARCK opened the proceedings of the Conference by associating in 
 the closest possible manner the rights of the natives in the produce of their soil, 
 with their progress and advancement. He said : 
 
 "The Imperial Government has been guided by the conviction that all the Governments 
 invited participate in the desire to associate the natives of Africa with civilisation by opening the 
 interior of that continent to trade." 
 
 COUNT DE LAUNAY the Italian delegate, declared at the closing sitting that : 
 
 "We have neglected nothing in the bounds of possibility for opening as far as the centre 
 of the African Continent, a wide route to the moral and material progress of the native tribes and 
 the development of the general interests of commerce and navigation. 
 
 BARON LAMBERMONT, one of the Belgian delegates, stated that : 
 
 "The temptation to impose abusive taxes, will find its corrective if need be, in the freedom 
 of commerce" 
 
 BARON DE COURCEL, one of the French representatives, asserted that : 
 
 " The colonial experiences of the sixteenth century, when colonies were ruined by being 
 managed in the sole interest of the Metropolis, must not be renewed. . . . We have laid down, 
 apart from the clauses of the Act, a certain number of principles which ensure against any 
 infringement in the future of the freedom of commercial transactions with the natives of the Congo 
 Basin" 
 
 BARONS DE COURCEL and LAMBERMONT, together signed a Report which is attached 
 to the Protocols of the Act and in which they declare that : "An unlimited right for 
 everyone to buy and to sell " is the only rational interpretation of the term 
 " commercial matters." 1 
 
 H.M. Government entered the Conference imbued, in the words of the British 
 delegate, Sir EDWARD MALET, with the principle of: 
 
 " The progress of legitimate, trade with guarantees of equal treatment to all nations and 
 the good treatment of the natives" 
 
 i Baron Lambermont protested to the King when the Edicts of 1891-2 were promulgated.
 
 ( 19 ) 
 
 Mr. KASSON, the United States delegate, declared that : 
 
 "The President of the United States regards this local government or any successors 
 resting upon the same basis of principle, as an assurance that the natives will learn that civilisa- 
 tion and dominion of White men means for them peace and freedom and the development of useful 
 commerce free to all the world." 
 
 M. ENGELHARDT, another of the representatives of France, in his official report 
 upon the Conference wrote: 
 
 " Native Communities and this is a point which deserves to be noted were not considered 
 as communities so unstable in occupation and constancy that the soil they inhabit, even -when not 
 utjlised, can be regarded as unoccupied land . . . Every time that a vote or a simple proposal 
 raised the interests of the African races, the assembly at Berlin showed that it did not look upon 
 them as purely accidental associations, without juridical rights, or outside the community of the 
 rights of men" 
 
 The following declarations made subsequently to the signing of the Act are 
 equally significant. 
 
 M. BEERNAERT, then Prime Minister of Belgium, asserted that on the Congo 
 there would be " absolute freedom of barter, property, commerce and navigation." 
 
 LORD VIVIAN (Great Britain) declared that: 
 
 '* Freedom of trade was established in the interests not only of civilisation but of the 
 native races of Africa" 
 
 M, FRELINGHUVSEN, the American Secretary of State, remarked that : 
 
 " Soon these millions of people inhabiting the interior of Africa will, under the inspiring 
 influence of civilisation become purchasers of every kind of provisions, manufactwed goods, agri- 
 cultural implements, etc." 
 
 All these declarations, provisions and stipulations would have been illusory and 
 meaningless, if applied to a territory whose inhabitants had been precedently despoiled 
 of the whole of their rights in the land and in the produce of the soil. The entire 
 proceedings would have been the hollowest of shams, and the utterances of these 
 distinguished statesmen the veriest persiflage. 
 
 Five I make bold to have established : 
 
 established * ^at t ^ ie c ^ m f tne International Association, afterwards 
 
 the Congo Free State, to international recognition formu- 
 lated, at first, secretly, 1 then openly, by King LEOPOLD II., reposed 
 primarily upon the existence of a number of Treaties negotiated by Mr. 
 STANLEY and his staff in the name of, and for the benefit of, the 
 International Association, with the native rulers of the Congo. 
 
 i Vide "The Life of Lord Granville," by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. 1005.
 
 ( 20 ) 
 
 ii. That before these Treaties were negotiated, and at the time they were 
 being negotiated, the native rulers and their subjects were owners of 
 the land and of the produce of commercial value the land contained, 
 and not merely owners of the sites of their respective towns and villages 
 and adjacent farms under cultivation. 
 
 iii. That one of the principal declared objects of the International Association 
 was the creation of such a condition of peace and security in the country 
 as would lead to an extensive development in commercial transactions 
 between the natives and the outer world, by giving to the former in- 
 creased accessibility to markets for the disposal of their produce. 
 
 iv. That, in recognizing the Suzerainty of the International Association, the 
 native signatories to the Treaties did not surrender their rights and the 
 rights of their people in the land, and a fortiori did not surrender their 
 rights and the rights of their people to trade freely with White men in 
 the produce of commercial value obtainable from the land. 
 
 v. That no attempt was ever made by the International Association to con- 
 tend that the Native Communities on the Congo had surrendered their 
 ownership in the land and in its produce to the Association ; that, on 
 the contrary, the Association and its agents went out of their way to 
 proclaim the opposite ; and that the Great Powers granted, separately and 
 collectively, recognition to the International Association on the under- 
 standing that native rights in land and produce were unquestioned and 
 unquestionable. 
 
 These conclusions, based entirely upon International records and upon the acts 
 and declarations of the International Association and its agents, destroy entirely the 
 defence since set up by the successors of the International Association, by which they 
 seek to justify their appropriation of the natural wealth of the Congo, on the ground 
 that the land outside the villages and their adjacent food plantations, is " vacant " 
 and without native owners.
 
 PART II. 
 
 A CONSTRUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION OF NATIVE RIGHTS OF OWNERSHIP 
 
 IN LAND, AND UTILISATION OF ITS PRODUCE FOR COMMERCIAL 
 
 PURPOSES FROM EARLY TIMES UNTIL THE EDICTS OF 
 
 1891-2.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION A.-THE EARLY TRADE OF THE CONGO TO THE FOUNDING 
 OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF RELATIONS WITH PORTUGAL (p. 24) CHARACTER OF THE EARLY TRADE 
 
 (p. 24) THE IMPETUS IT RECEIVED THROUGH THE ABOLITION OF THE OVER-SEA SLAVE 
 
 TRAFFIC (p. 24) CHARACTER OF THE TRADE TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF LAST CENTURY 
 
 (p 25) ITS VOLUME AND CHARACTER IN THE SEVENTIES (p. 2$) WHERE THE PRODUCE 
 CAME FROM (p. 25) THE DISTANCE TO WHICH TRADE HAD PENETRATED INTO THE INTERIOR 
 BEFORE THE CREATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION (p. 26) THE ASSERTIONS OF 
 
 BELGIAN MINISTERS BRACKETED WITH FACTS (p. 26). 
 
 SECTION B.-THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE NATIVES OF THE CONGO 
 WERE TRADING IN THE PRODUCE OF THEIR LANDS 
 WHEN THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION WAS 
 CREATED. 
 
 STANLEY'S CONCLUSIVE TESTIMONY (p. 28) THE ENTERPRISE AND COMMERCIAL ABILITY OF 
 THE CONGO NATIVES (p. 28) STANLEY AT MANCHESTER (p. 30) HlS WARNING (p. 30) 
 MR. HERBERT WARD'S, CAPTAINS HANSSENS' AND COQUILHAT'S, AND SIR HARRY JOHNSTON'S 
 TESTIMONY (p. 31) NATIVE CURRENCY (p. 31) THE RUBBER AND GROUND NUT TRADES 
 (p. 32) THE EVIDENCE CONTAINED IN THE PROTOCOLS OF THE BERLIN CONFERENCE (p. 33). 
 
 SECTION C.-THE EXPANSION OF THE INTERIOR TRADE WHICH 
 FOLLOWED THE CREATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL 
 ASSOCIATION, UNTIL ITS EXTINCTION BY THE 
 EDICTS OF 1891-2. 
 
 COMMERCIAL EAGERNESS OF THE UPPER CONGO NATIVES (p. 34) THE EXPANSION OF THE 
 RUBBER TRADE (p. 34) THE ARGUMENT OF THE VANDAL (p. 35) THE SITUATION IN 1890 
 (p. 35) THE ISSUE OF THE DECREES (p. 36) UNAVAILING PROTESTS (p. 36) ELABORATION 
 OF THE SYSTEM OF PILLAGE (p. 37).
 
 PART II. 
 
 Necessity A demonstration of the falsity of the contention advanced by the 
 
 of a con- i ate Administration of the Congo, and by the Belgian Government to- 
 
 structive 
 
 demonstra- ^ a ^' tnat t ^ ie ' anc * outs ide tne s i tes * tne native towns and villages 
 
 tion of and adjacent food plantations is without native owners does not suffice 
 
 Native j n t h e O pi n i on O f the writer, to show the full enormity of the System 
 
 land and inaugurated by the Edicts of 1891-2, continued for 16 years, and still 
 
 produce. maintained by the Belgian Government. 
 
 It is only by following this destructive demonstration by a constructive demon- 
 stration of native rights in land and produce, that the monstrous crime which has 
 been perpetrated, and which is being perpetuated, can be properly understood ; and 
 the dangers, both moral and material, to the future of the races and resources of 
 the African tropics, and to the future of European rule within their, adequately 
 estimated. 
 
 To be effective, this constructive demonstration should be made to cover (s.. 
 far as establishing proof of a long-continued usage for trade purposi s o ( < 
 produce of their land by the natives is concerned) three periods, meat < r 1. s 
 
 (a)' The period antecedent to the creation of the Intematio al A MJC dti< n. 
 
 (6) The period contemporary with the creation of the In 
 
 tion, and with the negotiation 01 the A&sociaiioiiV 'lua !.: 
 " legitimate sovereigns " of the country. 
 
 (c) The period following the recognition of the Internal t/i a .\s^o. a 
 
 (which then took the name of the "Congo Free State "; ly the ^^ai 
 Powers, up to the Edicts of 1891-2. 
 
 The demonstration will be completed by summarising, in Part II., th ti as^ f 
 evidence, which has become publicly accessible since 1892, as to native nuic in 
 land, and native usage of land, for purposes of trade and of internal industry am. 
 sustenance.
 
 SECTION A. 
 
 The Early Trade of the Congo to the Founding of the 
 International Association. 
 
 The dawn It would be going beyond the scope of this Memorandum to do 
 
 of trade. more than pass very rapidly over the early history of European relations 
 
 with the Congo, but a brief sketch is essential if only to show the 
 antiquity of the Congo trade in forest produce, and its gradual progression inland. 
 
 In 1485 DIOGO CAM was "received by the King of Congo with great affection, 
 and had the happiness of inspiring him with a great desire to receive instruction in 
 the tenets of the Christian religion." The Southern portion of the Congo basin would 
 appear to have been at that time under the sway of a central authority whose influence 
 radiated far and wide. 
 
 That the authority of the King of Congo extended to the Upper River would 
 seem to be clearly established by the Portuguese records. In 1491 RUY DE SOUSA 
 assisted NJUNGA-A-KUUM, then King, in an expedition against the Mundequetes, who 
 " lived in the islands and on the banks of the lake from which flows the Great 
 River," and were, doubtless, identical with the Batekes of Stanley Pool. 1 
 
 By the close of the century the Portuguese themselves appear to have established 
 trade relations with the Batekes. 2 
 
 The The sixteenth, seventeenth, but especially the eighteenth and nine- 
 destruction teenth centuries, furnish numerous records of a brisk trade in forest 
 of the Slave ' . 
 traffic produce between Europeans and natives, extending all along the coast, 
 
 from Cape Lopez to Ambrizette. During the greater part of the period 
 above mentioned this trade existed, of course, concurrently with the traffic in slaves, 
 then recognised as a legitimate form of commercial activity by all classes of Society 
 (including Ministers of the Gospel). By 1839 the slave trade in Congo waters was 
 practically at an end, thanks to the mutual exertions of the commanders of British 
 and French vessels of war, but it was not until 1857 that the destruction by British 
 ships of the slave barracoons at Senga-Tenga gave the traffic its death blow north 
 of the Congo river 3 although a so-called " Free emigration " of natives resembling 
 somewhat the " Free emigration " of services from the mainland of Angola to San 
 Thome at the present day to the French possessions in the West Indies prevailed 
 until 1860, when the friendly representations of the British Government to the 
 Emperor Napoleon III. led to its abolition. 
 
 1 F. L. de Sousa, Hist, de Dom , i66a. 
 
 2 Pigafetta : Kingdom of Congo. 
 
 3 Two years previously the chief slave depot South of the Congo, at Ambrizette, had been destroyed by the Portuguese.
 
 Nature of The trade in natural produce consisted chiefly of red wood, wax, 
 
 tne trade copper, tin, lead and iron ; large quantities of ivory were also 
 
 and its 
 
 extension. disposed of by the natives. These articles were bartered for linen, cloth, 
 
 copper kettles, muskets and other European merchandise. 1 With the 
 final extinction of the over-sea slave traffic, legitimate trade received a considerable 
 impetus, and, by the middle of the nineteenth century, European commerce was 
 pushing inwards from the coast (chiefly through the active enterprise of native 
 " middlemen " traders) into the Upper Congo and the Kasai valley from all directions. 
 Everywhere the natives of the country, even in the remote interior, unknown, un- 
 explored and inaccessible to Europeans, were giving increasing evidence of their 
 eagerness for commercial pursuits which, together with a passion amounting to 
 veneration for their land, is the dominating characteristic of the vast majority of the 
 inhabitants of the tropical regions of Africa. Soon, European merchants abandoning 
 their old custom of trading from hulks moored in the estuaries of the rivers, 
 founded establishments on shore. According to old ships' manifests in the writer's 
 possession, the Congo natives were purchasers at that period of (inter alia) the 
 following European goods in exchange for their produce : cloth, satin strips, umbrellas, 
 red baize, tobacco, powder, muskets, straw hats, kettles, brass rods, iron pots, 
 machettes, pipes, razors, looking glasses, beads, Dutch knives and snuff boxes. 
 
 The volume By the seventies European merchants had crossed into the Congo 
 
 of Trade in Basin, pushed in behind Loango and up the lower Congo, and commerce 
 Seventies ^ a< ^ penetrated far into what was destined to become the " Congo Free 
 and State." According to STANLEY'S figures the value of the Congo trade 
 
 Eighties. had reached 2,800,000 annually by 1880, for "378 miles of water 
 frontage " (which included part of the coast line now known as " French 
 Congo," part of the Coast line known as Angola, and both banks of the Congo as 
 far up as Noki and Matadi), and in the previous year a single European firm had 
 imported goods to the value of 287,400, of which 138,000 consisted of English 
 cotton and flannel goods and 64,000 of American cotton goods and American tobacco. 
 
 Where A considerable proportion of the produce sold by the Congo natives 
 
 Native to European merchants in order to acquire this merchandise, came 
 
 Produce 
 
 came from. ^ rom the Upper Congo beyond Leopoldville. As the merchants progressed 
 
 up the lower river, the Coast trade fell off remarkably. (This phenomenon 
 was repeated later on, at the expense of the Lower Congo factories when Belgian 
 merchants went up to Leopoldville and beyond). Further proof of the fact that the 
 natives of the Upper Congo were actively engaged in trade with the Ba-Congo 
 
 i For the records of this old trade the published works of Bosman, Barbot, Isert and various Portuguese authorities 
 
 may be consulted.
 
 ( 26 ) 
 
 middlemen, long before the International Association was born or thought of, is 
 adduced by STANLEY himself who, on his first journey down the river, speaks of the : 
 
 " Keen, enterprising, high-spirited people of the Upper River. Many a flotilla he continues 
 descends the great river 500 miles down to Stanley Pool to wait patiently for months before their 
 goods can be disposed of to the Lower Congo caravans." 
 
 Testimony The great distances to which trade had penetrated in the interior 
 
 before the creation of the International Association is corroborated, 
 
 Liebrechts. curiously enough, by no less an authority than Commandant LIEBRECHTS, 
 
 the Congo State's Secretary of State for the Interior, responsible above 
 
 any other official of King LEOPOLD'S executive staff for the organisation from Brussels 
 
 of the system under which the natives of the Congo have been robbed of the produce 
 
 of their lands on the ground indicated in Part I. In his " Guide de la Section de 1'Etat 
 
 Independant du Congo A 1'exposition de Bruxelles-Tervueren en 1897 j" 1 Commandant 
 
 LIEBRECHTS writes on p. 80 of the Batekes : 
 
 "The Bateke are traders also, but rather middlemen; they jealously guard the monopoly 
 of transactions on Stanley Pool, thus holding the key to the whole trade of the Upper Congo. 
 This incessant movement resulted in the fact that for many years, long before the arrival of 
 Europeans, the riverine tribes of the Congo, as far even as the Aruwimi, possessed European 
 merchandise, passed from hand to hand from the coast, and having thus acquired an extraordinary 
 value," 
 
 Thus we have it recorded by this high Official, so deeply incriminated in the 
 System of oppression pursued for sixteen years on the Congo, that the natives for 
 a distance of over 2,000 miles in the interior were eagerly purchasing European 
 goods long before they had even seen a European unless it were Stanley. 
 
 But in speaking in 1897 f t ^ ie Batekes holding a monopoly of trade at Stanley 
 Pool and controlling the whole of the "trade" of the Congo, Commandant LIEBRECHTS 
 was deluding his readers. " Trade ' had been extirpated five years before the Guide 
 to the Brussels Exhibition had been compiled, and the Batekes, concurrently with 
 that extirpation and the persecution which accompanied it, had "in one night" 
 abandoned their homes in Congo territory and crossed over to the French Bank. 3 
 
 Sophistries The incredible sophistries of Belgian Ministers and their supporters 
 
 of Belgian j n t ^ e B e igj an Chamber, never appear to greater disadvantage than 
 when they are bracketed with unimpeachable testimony proving that the 
 natives of the Congo not only owned the land but utilised the produce of the land, 
 and traded freely in it, long before the system of spoliation and pillage, which Belgian 
 Ministers are perpetuating, was forced upon them at the muzzle of the rifle and at 
 the end of the lash. 
 
 i Ouvrage publi sous la direction de M. le Commandant Liebrechts. Imprimerie Veuve Monnan, Bruxelles. 
 2 Africa, No. i, 1904, p. 22 of Consul Casement's report.
 
 What has Thus it has been shown, (necessarily in brief form or this Memorial 
 
 been shown. W ould assume the proportions of a volume) by what precedes, that as far 
 back as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the natives of the Congo littoral were 
 engaged in trading operations with Europeans : that even at that remote period they 
 gathered the produce of their land for commercial purposes ; that these commercial 
 transactions increased with the years and gained an ever widening area ; that by the 
 seventies and early eighties the ramifications of these commercial dealings had 
 penetrated 1,000 miles up the Congo, and that before STANLEY concluded his Treaties 
 with the " legitimate sovereigns " of the Congo, on behalf of the International 
 Association, he was himself a witness of flotillas of native canoes waiting patiently 
 at Stanley Pool to dispose of their cargoes of produce to the native middlemen of the 
 lower Congo, who, loaded with European merchandise, were tramping the weary 
 250 miles of path bordering the cataracts which separated the European trading 
 stations on the lower River from their native clients on the upper River. 
 
 In the next Section the further corroborative evidence adduced will carry us 
 through the period contemporary with the negotiation of the Treaties between the 
 International Association and the " legitimate sovereigns " of the Congo. 
 
 
 1 " =- 

 
 f 28 ) 
 
 SECTION B. 
 
 The extent to which the natives of the Congo were trading 
 in the produce of their lands when the International 
 Association was created, 
 
 Stanley's One would seek in vain for records emphasising more clearly the 
 
 belief in utilisation by the Native Communities of the Congo to the extent then 
 
 f OTY1 TY1 PVPP 
 
 as a civilis- P en to them of their lands and produce, at the time when Stanley 
 ing medium, was winning them "by gentleness" to cede their suzerain rights to the 
 International Association, than those which are provided in the brilliant 
 pages of the " Founding of the Independent State of the Congo." 
 
 STANLEY does not write in the usual stereotyped manner of the African traveller 
 when narrating affairs outside the circle of his own real or invented personal experiences, 
 but as a man who really understands the natives : who, though assuredly not tender 
 of hand when opposed or oblivious of the natives' faults, realised to the full, their 
 possibilities under firm and just rule, and realised, too, as a man who, for ell his 
 fervid idealism, was intensely practical, the enormous potentialities of a commerce 
 which would, as he most sincerely believed, develop and expand as the outcome 
 of his action, making of the mighty river and its affluents a prodigious highway 
 of industrial progress into the great heart of Africa, bringing profit alike to the 
 peoples of the Congo, and to the peoples of the Western world. He saw in the 
 unfettered expansion of these commercial relations, the true civilising medium for 
 Central Africa, and his word painting of the splendid material a far-seeing Administration 
 would have to work upon, possesses a convincing eloquence, which not all the legalised 
 outrage, juridical subtleties and shameful invasion of human rights of the last sixteen 
 years, can weaken. The following are some typical examples taken from these records : 
 
 Bolobo's en- "Bolobo is a great centre for the ivory and camwood powder trade, principally 
 
 terprising because its people are so enterprising. The native traders have agents residing at Stanley 
 traders. Pool, to whom the ivory collected here is delivered, and the merchandise from the coast 
 
 lying in store is consigned by the wealthy traders at Bolobo." . . . 
 
 Irebu, the "This was the populous district of Irebu, the home of the champion traders on 
 
 " Venice Of the Upper Congo, rivalled only in enterprise by Ubanghi, on the right bank. ... It 
 the Congo." was ' i n f act > a Venice of the Congo, seated in the pride of its great numbers between the 
 dark waters of the Lukangu and the deep, brown channels of the parent stream. . . . 
 These people were really acquainted with many lands and tribes on the Upper Congo. From Stanley 
 Pool to Upoto, a distance of 6,000 miles, they knew every landing place on the river banks. All the 
 ups and downs of savage life, all the profits and losses derived from carter, all the diplomatic arts used 
 by tactful savages, were as well-known to them as the Roman alphabet to us. They knew the varied 
 lengths of'sina' (' long* of cloth"), the number of matakos (brass rods') they were worth, whether of 
 Savelish, Florentine, unbleached domestic, twill, stripe, ticking, blue and white baft ; the valve of beads
 
 per /,ooo strings, as compared with the uncut pieces of sheeting, or kegs of gunpowder, or /lint-lock muskets 
 short and long. They could tell, by poising on the arm, what profit on an ivory tusk purchased at 
 Langa Langa, would be derived by sale at Stanley Pool. No wonder that all this commercial knowledge 
 had left its traces on their faces ; indeed, it is the same as in your own cities in Europe. Know you not 
 the military man among you, the lawyer and the merchant, the banker, the artist, or the poet ? It is 
 the same in Africa, MORE ESPECIALLY ON THE CONGO, WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE SO DEVOTED TO 
 TRADE." . . . 
 
 Clamouring " At Ikenge the natives manufactured a superior kind of pottery. Camwood powder 
 
 for Cloth. is also extensively made. Ivory is purchased from the Watwa dwarfs." . . . 
 
 (Writing of the future growth of trade on the Upper Congo)" Cloth will win the day here even- 
 tually. We are literally besieged for the very smallest refuse of clothing that we possess." . . . 
 
 The in- (Among the Basoko, on the Aruwimi) "During the few days of our mutual 
 
 dustriOUS intercourse, they gave us a high idea of their qualities industry, after their own style, 
 
 Basoko. no * being the least conspicuous. They seemed to me to be the most valuable people for 
 
 this characteristic that I had met. Their fishing canoes we witnessed coming in and going 
 out continuously, and while the people traded with us, they continued to pursue the knitting of haversacks, 
 hats, fish nets, or twist twine, after the industrial manner of the traditional grand dame of England." 
 
 "As in the old time, Umangi, Mpissa, Ukere, and Opoto, from the right bank, and Mpa, from the 
 left bank, despatched their representatives with ivory tusks, large and small, goats and sheep, and 
 vegetable food, clamorously demanding that we shotild buy from them. Such urgent entreaties, accom- 
 panied with blandishments to purchase their stock, were difficult to resist." . . . 
 
 Results of (On his return voyage to Europe he calls at some of the British settlements on the 
 
 peaceful West Coast, and his fancy pictures how the chiefs and people of the Congo will be 
 
 barter. similarly enriched through the beneficent growth of trade.) "But at Duke Town and 
 
 Creek Town I observed a sight which was priceless to me. I saw that the residences 
 of the native chiefs had been constructed in England, and transported section by section and erected here 
 one costing ^4,00x3, one ;3,ooo, one 2,000. This was the result of peaceful barter of palm oil 
 corrugated iron buildings for African chiefs. They were furnished, too, in European style, with carpets, 
 chairs, mirrors, and window curtains. ... I can conceive NGALYEMA, MAKABI, BANKWA, IBAKA, MAN- 
 GOMBO, MUGWALA, MATA BwYKi, and a host of other Congo chiefs ordering corrugated iron houses and 
 furniture iVom Europe for their ivory, their palm oil, their rubber, their gum, camwood powder, orchilla 
 weed, beeswax, grains, and spices. Duke Town shewed how remarkable a civiliser is fair trade. There is 
 no Government here. Now and then a man-of-war steams up and returns. The Consul was absent, but 
 still all lived in unity and concord." . . . % . 
 
 The " Two-hundred-and-fifty miles above the Kwa the Lukanga is discovered, which 
 
 populous leads us into Lake Mantumba, whose populous shores must not be neglected by the future 
 
 Lake. trader in the Upper Congo." . . . 
 
 A record Of (Bolobo, with its great trading population of 40,000 souls, is reduced to-day to a 
 
 destruction. place of 7,000 broken people. Its flourishing industries have vanished. Irebu, the 
 "Venice of the Congo," whose inhabitants Were versed in all the subtleties of the African 
 trade, has totally disappeared ; a military camp occupies its ancient site. Of the natives of the Aruwimi 
 country, Vice-Consul MITCHELL recently reported that they regard themselves as " practically enslaved : 
 the incessant call for rubber, food and labour leaves them no respite nor peace of mind." Death and 
 decay mark the " populous shores " of Lake Mantumba : its former inhabitants have been extirpated by 
 rubber wars, fish taxes and forced copal collection. Never, perhaps, in two short decades has such havoc 
 been wrought in the destinies of a native people. E. D. M.)
 
 ( 3 ) 
 
 What The same testimony to the commercial capacities of the Congo 
 
 Stanley told races breaks through every discourse made by STANLEY, hot-foot from 
 
 as to the Africa, in which he pleads before British audiences the cause of the 
 
 commercial International Association. 
 aptitude of 
 
 the Congo "The clever, practical people of Manchester ask me : 'And what can the natives 
 
 natives. give us in exchange for our cloth '! ' I answer that the country is peopled by about 
 
 43,000,000 of native Africans, who, from our experience among a million of them, lead us 
 to believe will prove as amenable to reason and prudent treatment as any natives we have encountered. 
 As we have ascertained that along 2,030 miles of river bank there dwell 806,300, we may estimate, then, 
 that 2,448,300 souls inhabit the banks of the navigable mileage of 6,000 miles, or 12,000 miles of river 
 shore. These 12,000 miles of Congo banks excel in quality the sea shore. In this book I speak of 
 having found oil palms and rubber creepers, the dyeing powder of the redwood and of the orchilla weeds, 
 of copal deposits and forests of gum-producing trees at every place I visited. / speak of eager native 
 traders following us for miles for the smallest piece of cloth. I mention that after travelling many miles 
 to obtain cloth for ivory and red-wood powder, the despairing natives asked : ' Well, what is it you do 
 want ? Tell us and we will get it for you.'' " 
 
 "The Congo possesses forty millions of moderately industrious and workable people, which the Red 
 Indians never were. The cautious trader, who advances not without the means of retreat ; the enterprising 
 mercantile factor, who, with hand, receives the raw produce from the native in exchange for the finished 
 product of the manufacturer's loom the European middleman, who has his home in Europe but has his 
 heart in Africa, is the man who is wanted." . . . 
 
 "Whatever interest we may profess, after all, in this many-hued splendour of the tropic bush, in the 
 variegated beauty and overflowing vegetable life on these river isles, in the bountiful wealth of the Congo 
 forests, it is but secondary to that which we must feel for the human communities, the muscles of whose 
 members have a more immediate and practical use to us. For without them the flowers, plants, gums, 
 and the dye woods of the tropical world must ever remain worthless to them and to ourselves.'''' . . . 
 
 "We wish to secure equal rights for all, and the utmost freedom of commerce. . . . Commerce 
 cannot expand in a new-born region like the Congo if not relieved of all fear of that dread Portuguese 
 tariff. The purpose of the Association is to compel commerce and industry to follow it eagerly by the very 
 inviting prospects held before commercial and industnal enterprise" . . . 
 
 His re- And as a final quotation from STANLEY'S writings and speeches, 
 
 one may give the remarkable prophecy which, unknown to himself, he 
 uttered when urging, four years later, EMIN PASHA to take service under 
 
 the Congo State flag: 
 
 "Now consider the Congo State, which has extended itself much more rapidly than Egyptian. . . . 
 Not a shot has been fired, no violence has been offered to either native or trader, not a tax has been levied, 
 except at the seaport where the trader embarks his exports. Native chiefs .... united under the blue 
 flag with the golden star. Why ? . . . . every eatable they could raise and sell brought its full value to 
 them of such clothing and other necessaries as they needed. Whatever trade they had ivory, rubber, palm 
 oil, or kernels was free and untaxed, and their native customs, or domestic matters, were not interfered with. 
 It was founded without violence, and subsists without violence. When, however, the Congo State initiates 
 another policy, taxes their (the natives) trade, lays hands upon ivory as a Government monopoly, meddles 
 with their domestic institutions, absorbs tyrannically all the profits of the European trader . . . gathers 
 about its stations sufficient physical force to enable it to do so with impunity, the Congo State will collapse 
 just as disastrously and as suddenly as was the case with Egyptian authority."
 
 Belgian But it is not only STANLEY whose words stand out as an enduring 
 
 dictums. condemnation of those who, in the face of the world, seek to-day to 
 
 perpetuate the legend of a race with no conception of property or commerce, " sunk 
 in incurable idleness," 1 " essentially lazy and indifferent," 2 " not entitled to anything," 3 
 " only respecting the law of force and knowing no other argument than terror." 4 
 
 Herbert Mr. HERBERT WARD writes, for example, in his well-known book : 
 
 Ward and 
 
 Coquilhat "The rocky banks and tree-hidden bogs concealed no worse foe than the 
 
 1880-6 k een Bateke or Byanzi trader, thirsting not for the White man's blood, but for his 
 
 cotton cloths and bright brass rods, and anxious only to get the better of him in 
 
 bargaining." 
 
 The Belgian traveller COQUILHAT, writing in 1886, bears witness to the fact that 
 the trade in ivory was already well understood as far inland as the Lulanga. He 
 describes in detail the lengthy bargaining process habitual with Bangala traders. He 
 enumerates the goods paid to a native trader for a tusk 63 Ibs. in weight, 5 and 
 
 adds : 
 
 " I admit that under present conditions of trade, the natives must be imbued with great 
 enterprise to explain their lengthy business travels and their opening of relations with distant tribes. 
 The inhabitants of the Upper Congo have never seen the coast. The trading tribes travel 120 to 
 150 miles north and south of their homes and exchange their produce with other tribes who, in 
 turn, sell it to others thus there are numerous intermediaries." 
 
 
 Native The trade with the Lower Congo had led to the introduction of a 
 
 currency regular currency in red copper all along the upper River. This red 
 
 commercial copper came from the copper mines in the French Congo (Manyanga). 
 develop- With the advent of Europeans into the upper River, brass rods soon 
 
 nient. superseded the red copper currency. Similarly, in the Kasai district the 
 
 croisette, or piece of metal in the form of St. Andrew's cross, had been 
 introduced, probably for several centuries, by the Portuguese, In the Cataracts district 
 small pieces of native cloth, manufactured from palm or pine apple fibre; in some 
 parts of the main river the Bohemian blue bead, " matar " ; in the Luababa and 
 round Lake Albert the natives, like the early Romans, used iron hoe-heads of local 
 manufacture as currency ; in the Welle, cowries had found their way from the East 
 Coast and were adopted as currency ; in the Katanga the well known copper cross 
 held sway. 
 
 i M. Woeste, dictator of the majority in the Belgian Parliament (in the Belgian House, 1906). 
 i King Leopold in bidding adieu to a party of British Catholic Missionaries (in 1905). 
 
 3 M. de Smet de Naeyer, ex-Belgian Premier (in the Belgian House, 1906). 
 
 4 President of the Supreme Court of Justice in the Congo (in 1903, Caudron judgment.) 
 
 5 One length of blue cloth, 2 of blue cotton, 2 of white cloth, i empty bottle, 2 iron buckets, i bell, i small mirror, i length 
 cloth, i fork, i spoon, i plate, 300 cowries, 6 measures of pink beads, 20 of white beads, 120 lengths of brass wire.
 
 ( 32 ) 
 
 What clearer proof could be adduced of an essentially trading population whose 
 present rulers, nevertheless, tell the world is too degraded to accept silver tokens 
 with the features of an alien and benign over-lord stamped upon them ? 
 
 I 
 
 Sir Harry Sir HARRY JOHNSTON (then Mr. Johnston), writing in 1884, refers 
 
 Johnston to t h e sa i e o f ivory by the Bangala to the Bayanzi (Byanzi) for "cloth, 
 Bavanzi beads and guns/' The Bayanzi would seem to have been at that time 
 
 Ivory the real ivory merchants of .he Upper Congo. They travelled large 
 
 Merchants, distances in their canoes and bought from all who would sell. They 
 disposed of the ivory to the Batekes who were, above all, middlemen 
 against European goods, chiefly cloth and salt, obtained by the Batekes from the 
 Ba-Congo caravans to which they sold the ivory brought from the Bayanzi. The 
 Bayanzi having got rid of their ivory then started up river again with European 
 goods on a further trading expedition, taking due care, doubtless, to make a substantial 
 commission on the sale. The evidence which is available shows that the Batekes 
 at this period often held very large stocks of cloth sufficient bales to fill several 
 huts from floor to ceiling. Apart from trade requirements they used a good deal of 
 cloth themselves for funeral puposes. 1 
 
 Captain Captain HANSSENS (vide Part I.) writing in 1882 calls attention 
 
 Hanssens, to t h e trade in ivory at Stanley Pool between {he Bateke and Bayanzi. 
 
 The Kwan- Belgians do not contest the fact that the natives of the Kasai and 
 go and Kwango were selling large quantities of rubber and ground nuts to 
 her and Europeans through native middlemen merchants long before the Inter- 
 Ground Nut national Association was created. Until European merchants, as stated 
 
 Trader, i n Section I., moved up the river, most of this rubber eventually found 
 
 1870 
 
 its way to Ambrizette and Kinsembo ; with their advent iqto the 
 
 lower River, the trade was gradually deflected towards Ango-Ango, Kola-Kola, and 
 Matadi. 
 
 The ground nut trade dates back a considerable period. It was (and still is, what 
 remains of it) 3 largely in the hands of the Dutch House ("N. A. H. V.") It is 
 noteworthy that as early as 1882 the Dutch House was trading directly with the 
 natives in rubber, ivory, and ground nuts at Stanley Pool. 3 
 
 1 It seems a well established fact throughout tropical Africa that the more winding sheets can be wrapped 
 
 round the body of a defunct, the greater is the evidence of the reipect in which he was held by his relatives. 
 It is even now considered an outrage on the Congo to bury a body_ without a covering of some sort. These 
 ideas are closely connected, of course, with Ancestral worship which forms the basis of nearly all natural 
 African religions, and is another reason explaining the veneration of the people for their land. 
 
 2 In the lower river only, of course. 
 
 3 "Ground nut cultivation was universal throughout the Cataracts region. The natives sold the nuts to the 
 
 European trading stations for salt, which they sold to the tribes in the interior for rubber." 
 
 (Bull. Off., June, 1896.)
 
 ( 33 ) 
 
 Internal I have purposely refrained from referring to the bulky evidence 
 
 commerce. available as to the natural trading instincts of the natives which is 
 provided by the testimony extant at this period of the ramifications of their internal 
 trade in fish, pottery, basket work, cowries, salt, copper, iron, agricultural implements, 
 weapons of war and chase, and so on, for these articles do not form part of the Congo's 
 exportable produce having commercial value on the markets of the world. This 
 internal trade lies, therefore, outside the present discussion, save in the general sense 
 of indicating the normal existence of trading proclivities amongst the natives. 
 
 The In conclusion there is hardly a Protocol of the Berlin Conference 
 
 th id p nC f ^ wm ch does not bear witness on the part of the Plenipotentiaries of the 
 cols of the Great Powers to a knowledge of the existence at that period of a large 
 Berlin Act. Afro-European trade in natural produce on the Congo, and of a desire 
 to place the native in a position to develop it still further, not only in 
 peace and freedom, but unhampered even by monopolies and tariffs. 
 
 As has been remarked already, the proceedings at Berlin would, in view of their 
 professed object, have been deprived of raison d'etre but for the conviction held by 
 all the Powers that in the population of the Congo, the Western world had to deal, 
 in the words used by STANLEY himself at the Conference, with a race of " born 
 traders," gathering the produce of their ancestral lands for the European markets in 
 the necessarily limited manner then open to them, and eagerly awaiting the increased 
 demand for their produce and the increased facilities for disposing of it, which would 
 accompany the White man's establishment in the upper River. 
 
 Yet only last month (December, 1908) M. WOESTE, leader of the Parliamentary 
 majority in Belgium, declared to the House that neither commerce nor industry were 
 known to the Congo natives before the creation of the " Congo Free State."
 
 ( 34 ) 
 
 SECTION C. 
 
 The expansion of the Interior Trade which followed the 
 
 creation of the International Association until its 
 
 extinction by the Edicts of 1891-2. 
 
 Stanley's With the recognition of the International Association by the Great 
 
 prophecies Powers, and the entry among the family of States of a " Free State " 
 of the Congo, purporting to have as its load-star the civilisation of 
 Africa by " encouragement to legitimate trade," STANLEY'S predictions to the natives 
 as to the increased facilities for the disposal of their produce, which would follow 
 the acceptance of the Association's suzerainty, were realised. 
 
 Trading Companies were formed, whose directing spirits were Americans, Bel- 
 gians, Dutchmen, Englishmen and Frenchmen (the capital being mainly Belgian), 
 using Stanley Pool as their base of operations, and founding station after station 
 along the main river and its tributaries. 
 
 Natives' The newcomers found, by personal experience (as STANLEY had 
 
 eagerness himself proclaimed), how eager was the native population to increase 
 of the ** s cornmerc i a l relations with the White man ; and how well-acquainted 
 
 produce of were many of the riverine tribes with the intricacies of the West African 
 their lands, trading business. Ivory and rubber were eagerly bought and sold. 
 Where the native had not become acquainted with the European demand 
 for rubber, rubber-bearing trees and vines were pointed out to them, and they 
 seized with alacrity 1 upon this means of enriching themselves just as, throughout 
 the modern commercial history of the whole of Western Africa, the natives have 
 acted in regard to rubber and other articles of commercial value, whenever the 
 demands of European industry became known to them and markets became acces- 
 sible to them. 
 
 i In a letter to the writer, written two years ago, Mrs. Rusk in, wife of the well-known Missionary of that 
 name, thus describes the beginning of the rubber trade at Bongandanga, on the Lopori river, 1,500 miles 
 from the coast : " It is most interesting to hear the Bongandanga people tell of the beginning of the 
 rubber trade. How wonderful they thought it, that the White man should v/ant rubber and be willing 
 to pay for it. How they almost fought for the baskets in order to bring it in and obtain the offered 
 riches. 1 '
 
 ( 35 ) 
 
 The argument which has so frequently been heard in the Belgian 
 Parliament, and which, moreover, is incorporated in the laws of the 
 Vandal, Congo State, to the effect that because the native tribes of many parts 
 
 1908. of the Congo territory were not aware of the commercial value of rubber 
 
 before the White man actually arrived amongst them, therefore they were not, and 
 are not, entitled to trade in it when its commercial value became known to them, 
 is the argument of the Vandal. If it is applicable to rubber in the Upper Congo it 
 is applicable to every other article of export from every part of tropical and sub- 
 tropical Africa. If the twentieth century civilisation of Western Europe is prepared 
 to admit that the act of revealing the wealth of their land to races less advanced 
 justifies the appropriation of that wealth by the revealer, then, indeed, are we wit- 
 nessing a reversion to ideas more barbarous than those of the primitive peoples of 
 the Equatorial forest. 1 Yet the Belgian Government is perpetuating this monstrous 
 conception. 
 
 Trading By 1890 trading stations were dotted up and down the Congo as 
 
 Stations f ar as t jj e Aruwimi, the Mongalla (Black River), the Maringa, Lopori, 
 
 miles of Ituri, etc., 2 and trade was expanding rapidly. 3 
 
 river 
 
 frontage, 
 
 1890. 
 
 Wolfs Writing in 1887-8 of the Sankuru (the great eastern affluent of 
 
 evidence the Kasai) Dr. WOLF (Wissman's companion) calls it " a very impor- 
 
 Sankurn * an * ^ uv ^ a ^ route from the commercial point of view." The ivory 
 1887. trade had penetrated even to this distant region. "We saw writes 
 
 the German traveller natives arriving with ivory nearly each day." 
 On the other hand the Sankuru natives had not then become acquainted with the 
 value of rubber as a trading article. 
 
 On the " In the Kasai writes a Belgian authority a year or two later 
 
 Kasai, 1890. j^e ardour of the natives for trade is not less. The steamers which 
 ply along the river are followed nearly every day by natives who, paddling hard, to 
 keep abreast, offer produce of all kinds. On the banks the same sight is seen, when 
 the steamers pass to landing places of the villages which become covered with a 
 sympathetic crowd exhibiting native cloths, wood for fuel, goats, fowls, bananas, 
 manioca, etc." 
 
 i Th 
 
 themselves as owners of the soil not the natives, 
 a Vide " King Leopold's Ride in Africa. " (E. D. Morel), : quoted extracts from letters of merchants in 
 
 the Upper Congo. 
 3 According to M. Wauters, the total of rubber exported from the upper River, which had been 30,650 kilos 
 
 in 1887, rose to 133,600 kilos in 1890.
 
 ( 36 ) 
 
 The blow In 1901 the blow fell. The infamous Edicts were promulgated by 
 
 falls, 1901. w hich the produce of the land was declared to be the property of the 
 Government ; the natives who collected it for sale to the White man, denounced as 
 poachers upon the property of others ; the White man who bought it, denounced as a 
 receiver of stolen goods and threatened with condign punishment. 
 
 Only several years later, when an instructed Public Opinion compelled attention 
 to the root cause of the abominations which were occurring all over the Congo, was 
 the "juridical" defence put forward for this sweeping appropriation, enforced by 
 violence, of the commercial produce of the Congo ; the defence which it is the purpose 
 of this Memorial if happily such may be its effect finally to destroy, viz., that the 
 land outside the sites of towns and villages and adjacent food plantations possesses no 
 native owners, and hence that the produce of the land is the property of the 
 Administration and its financial partners. 
 
 Belgian It would be going beyond the natural limits of this Memorial to 
 
 protests ^ ea ] w jth the immediate effects of this economic revolution. Suffice it 
 
 QQ'Q'IYJC'f" f fl 
 
 Edicts to sav *^at *^ e mercnants protested : that M. BEERNAERT, M. EMILE 
 
 BANNING, and Baron LAMBERMONT, signed a joint demonstration to the 
 KING: that the Governor-General, M. JANSSEN, resigned: 1 that Colonel THYS, 
 Messrs. BRUGMANN, URBAN, PARMINTER and WAUTERS, the pioneers of honest Belgian 
 trade in the Upper Congo, filled the Belgian Press with their denunciations. 
 
 "To deny" declared these gentlemen "to the natives the right to sell ivory and 
 rubber produced by the forests and plains belonging to their tribes, which forests and 
 plains form part of their hereditary natal soil, and with which they have traded from 
 time immemorial, is a veritable violation of natural rights." 
 
 But no governing Statesman seemed at the time to have perceived the vital 
 principles at stake or to have realised the inevitable aftermath. No one arose to 
 instruct Public Opinion. Belgian protests against the actions of Belgium's ruler 
 were regarded as a family squabble, and the Belgian Companies, which held out as 
 long as they could, were forced, unsupported, to come to terms. - 
 
 1 Cattier, p. 63. 
 
 2 In doing so, says Professor Cattier. they "sacrificed the future."
 
 ( 37 ) 
 
 System pur- The system thus inaugurated was prosecuted with relentless vigour 
 
 and machine-like regularity : the Congo territory became a gigantic 
 ruthless- property pillaged by slave labour for the benefit of a handful of individuals 
 ness in in Brussels and Antwerp the scene of unimaginable atrocities, enormous 
 
 Africa and depopulation, and appalling human misery. Concurrently with the daily 
 consequences of a System of exploitation pursued in the Congo, which 
 
 increasing recalled the darkest periods of the Middle Ages, the apathy of the 
 boldness in Great Powers bred a corresponding feeling of security among the 
 urope. Beneficiaries of the System in Belgium who, with every year that passed, 
 
 avowed their aims with increasing cynicism and defended their " System " with increas- 
 ing boldness, until little by little the mask of a philanthropic purpose was wholly 
 flung aside. 
 
 The final By 1903 the "Congo Free State" had advanced sufficiently on the 
 
 avowal. path of avowal to describe itself publicly as the " owner " and " landlord " 
 
 of the land of the Congo and its commercial products, to contend that these commercial 
 products were its property and not the constituents of commercial dealing between 
 the Native population and the outer world, and that it and its financial partners had 
 appropriated the whole of the land. 
 
 " The (British) Note confuses trade with the development of his property by a 
 landlord. The native who gathers products for account of the owner does not become 
 the owner of the harvested products, and, naturally, cannot dispose of them to others. 
 . . . As a matter of fact, however, the appropriation of lands worked on Govern- 
 ment account, or by the Concessionnaire Companies, is an accomplished fact. . . . 
 There are no longer any unappropriated lands there (in the Congo)." l 
 
 Thus was the colossal act of piracy shamelessly avowed and the passage of 
 TACITUS made applicable, on their own showing, to the rulers of the Congo: 
 
 "Auferre, trucidare, rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem 
 faciunt, pacem appellant." 
 
 Consistently It is necessary to recall once more that the legitimacy of this 
 
 defended system of pillage has been consistently defended by successive Belgian 
 Ministers and by the Political Party then, and still, in power under the 
 leadership of M. WOESTE. The Belgian Parliamentary Debates for 1903 
 and onwards contain sufficient testimony to this effect to fill a substantial volume. 
 
 No surprise need be felt, therefore, if to-day the Belgian Government (and its 
 Parliamentary majority) having annexed the Congo, is perpetuating, in the name of 
 Belgium, the system which its predecessors defended, upheld, and covered with the 
 mantle of a moral complicity. 
 
 i Congo State's Memorandum, September i7th, 1903, replying to Lord Lansdowne's Note.
 
 ( 38 ) 
 
 What I make bold to have established : 
 
 has been 
 
 established * That the native races of the Congo had utilised the produce 
 
 of their land, having commercial value in the European markets, for 
 purposes of trade and commerce from time immemorial. 
 
 II. That this interchange of commercial relations between the native races 
 
 and the outer world, based upon the utilisation by the natives of the 
 produce of their lands, had become considerable and had acquired wide 
 ramifications when STANLEY, HANSSENS, and others, negotiated the 
 Treaties of Suzerainty with the native rulers on behalf of the International 
 Association, and was giving rise to native activity over, at least, a thousand 
 miles of river frontage in the interior of the Congo : that it had already 
 led, in many parts of the country, to the creation of a currency. 
 
 III. That upon the advent of European merchants into the Upper River sub- 
 
 sequent to the recognition of the International Association by the 
 Powers, the area of this commercial relationship widened still further; 
 natives who had already participated in it, and those who had not had 
 until then the opportunity of doing so, alike embracing the new conditions 
 with great eagerness.
 
 PART III. 
 
 POST-SCRIPTUM AND CONCLUSION. 
 
 IN WHICH THE DISHONESTY AND UNTENABILITY OF THE BELGIAN 
 CLAIM TO THE LAND OF THE CONGO IS DEMONSTRATED ; IN 
 WHICH THE FORM WHICH NATIVE OWNERSHIP OF LAND TAKES 
 IN THE CONGO IS SHOWN, AND IN WHICH EVIDENCE IS 
 PRODUCED FROM ALL OVER THE CONGO PROVING THE EXIST- 
 ENCE OF WELL-DEFINED NATIVE TENURE IN LAND.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 IN CLAIMING THE LAND AND ITS PRODUCE, THE BELGIAN GOVERNMENT IS ACTING IN 
 OPPOSITION TO CIVILISED USAGE (p. 41) THE ARTIFICIALITY OF THE LAND "QUESTION " 
 
 (p. 42) BELGIUM HAS MERELY TO REVOKE PAPER LEGISLATION BY PAPER LEGISLATION 
 (p. 42) NATIVE RIGHTS IN LAND UNAFFECTED BY BELGIAN CLAIMS (p. 43) NATIVE 
 OWNERSHIP IN LAND EXISTS ALL OVER TROPICAL AFRICA (p. 43) ITS CHARACTER 
 (p. 44) COMMUNAL OWNERSHIP (p. 44) SIMILAR CONDITIONS IN THE CONGO (p. 44) 
 EVIDENCE OF BELGIAN MISSIONARIES (p. 45) EVIDENCE OF M. VANDERVELDE (p. 46) 
 EVIDENCE OF SCHMITZ AND VON WISSMANN FROM THE SANKURU-LOMAMI (p. 46) 
 EVIDENCE OF BELGIAN OFFICIALS FROM THE WELLE (p. 47) EVIDENCE OF DE CLERCQ, 
 
 GlLMONT AND DlEDERRICH FROM THE MAYOMBE (p. 47) EVIDENCE OF CASEMENT 
 
 AND SCRIVENER FROM BOLOBO (p. 48) EVIDENCE OF HANSSENS FROM STANLEY POOL 
 (p. 48) EVIDENCE OF SCRIVENER AND WHITEHEAD FROM LUKOLELA (p. 52) EVIDENCE 
 
 OF BOND FROM THE LULONGO AND IKELEMBA (p. 48) EVIDENCE OF HARRIS AND 
 
 PADFIELD FROM THE LOPORI-MARINGA (pp. 49-51) EVIDENCE OF BEAK FROM KATANGA 
 (p- 49) APPROPRIATION OF LAND AND PRODUCE, AN INCITEMENT TO CIVIL WAR AND 
 
 CANNIBALISM (p. 50). 
 
 POST-SCRIPTUM TO PART III. 
 
 THE PART PLAYED BY THE LAND IN THE ECONOMY OF THE NATIVES (p. $3). 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 (*. 56).
 
 PART III. 
 
 What the In defending their appropriation of the produce of the soil, possessing 
 
 commercial value on the markets of Europe, by alleging the non-existence 
 ment is of native ownership in land outside the limits of native villages and 
 
 doing. food plantations, the present European rulers of the Congo are not only 
 
 violating the Treaties with native rulers, thanks to which and to 
 the consent of the Great Powers, they come to be in the position they now claim. 
 Nor are they only infringing International Treaty rights. They are also acting in 
 opposition to recorded facts as to native laws and customs partly made public by 
 their own countrymen ; partly, indeed, by their own officials. Finally, they are acting 
 in opposition to ordinary civilised usage. 
 
 Except in the French Congo, during late years, when a modified form of the 
 Belgian system has unhappily been adopted, 1 the rights of suzerainty obtained by 
 the Great Powers over Native Communities and the administration exercised by them, 
 are utilised and directed to the extension and improvement of commercial relations 
 between their African protected subjects and the outer world. 
 
 What the They have not pirated the wealth of their native subjects, and they 
 
 Great have not, therefore, found it necessary to defend such piracy by the 
 
 Powers 
 
 are doing preposterous contention that native ownership in land stops at the 
 
 threshold of the native's hut, and at the limit of his banana grove or 
 cassava farm. They have, on the contrary, assisted and encouraged the native to 
 harvest the natural produce of his forests and his plains ; to collect his rubber and 
 his gum copal, his palm oil and his palm kernels ; to cultivate his cocoa, his ground 
 nuts, maize and cotton for export ; to hew down his mahogany tree. They are now 
 teaching him to improve his methods of cultivation and preparation ; inducing him 
 to make plantations of valuable economic plants 2 to replace the exhaustion of wild 
 ones ; helping him to understand that not only his actual prosperity but his future 
 welfare are bound up in his land and its fruits. 
 
 1 With what unfortunate results is now public property. The De Brazza Mission ; the debates in the French 
 
 Chamber ; the articles of M. Challaye in Le Temps ; the books of M. Pierre Mille and the first named ; 
 the terrible volume of M. Chevalier; the foundation of the French Branch of the League for the 
 defence of the natives of the International Basin of the Congo ; the reports of the Members of Parlia- 
 ment, Reporters for the Colonial Budget (M. Dubief in 1903, M. Messimy in 1908) ; and the melancholy 
 occurrences of 1907 and 1908 these things tell their own story. 
 
 2 As M. Roume's ArrttA, of February i.st, 1905, puts it: "In the rubber producing regions, plantations can 
 
 be made round the villages ... by the care of, and for the profit of, their inhabitants. These 
 plantations . . . will be regarded as the communal property of the inhabitants who will look after 
 them." (M. Roume was then Governor-General of French West Africa.) Our own methods are sufficiently 
 well-known not to require illustration.
 
 ( 4* ) 
 
 The Belgian I would beg leave at this point to direct attention once more 
 
 Govern- ^ fa e artificiality with which this so-called land " question" is invested. 
 
 input's 
 
 claim to the ^ s * vent ured to point out to H.M. Government on a previous occasion, 1 
 
 land an the question of native tenure in land on the Congo has become of vital 
 absurdity. import to the native races and, incidentally, to civilisation only 
 because the European rulers of the Congo lay claim to ownership of the 
 land's produce, justifying their claim on the ground that the land is without native 
 owners " vacant." Viewed by itself this appropriation on paper by a number of 
 gentlemen sitting in Brussels, of hundreds of thousands of square miles of land in the 
 African tropics is an absurdity. The land of the Congo is of no use to the Belgian 
 Government or its financial friends. The Belgian Government cannot occupy the land ; 
 it cannot place its own citizens upon the land; its own citizens cannot populate the 
 land or harvest its riches. The Belgian Government can do nothing with the land 
 of the Congo. The fact that the late Congo Government claimed the land by a 
 mere act of volition and that the Belgian Government perpetuates that claim 
 again, by a mere act of volition does not alter the position of a single tree, the 
 growth of a single vine, the course of a single stream on the Congo. It does not 
 do away, in fact, with native ownership in the land. It does not annul the immemorial 
 rights of the native population nor destroy its tribal boundaries and tenure. In 
 itself the claim is the negation of common sense. It is only because of the purpose 
 for which it is advanced that necessity arises to demonstrate that it is the 
 negation alike of morality and of Law. 
 
 The Bel- It would seem not inadvisable to recall these truths, in view of 
 
 gian Gov- ^e statements that have been made during the past few months to 
 has merely *^ e effect that, in order to undo what has been done, the Belgian 
 to revoke Government would be compelled to take a concerted series of measures 
 paper O f the most formidable and perplexing character; that the land of the 
 
 , k 1 Congo has been appropriated in fact ; that it has been actually handed 
 
 legislation. over to others who are now using and occupying it; that an original 
 expropriation at the expense of the natives would have to be followed 
 by another expropriation, this time at the expense of Europeans ; that a new Govern- 
 ment cannot be expected to adopt such far-reaching measures save by slow degrees, 
 and so on. This is but a series of attempts to beg the question. The land of the 
 Congo has remained as it was before the Belgians arrived in the country. Just as 
 the claim to it is a paper claim, so the issue of fresh paper can rescind that claim ; 
 just as the claim is a mere act of volition (not a constructive administrative measure 
 involving the sinking of large sums in the erection of public works, extensive systems 
 of irrigation or agricultural experiments on a large scale) ; so by a mere act of 
 volition, the claim can be abandoned. Save in the infinitesimal areas where Govern- 
 ment or Concession stations have been built, or Government and Concessionnaire 
 
 x Letter to Foreign Office, July 21, 1908.
 
 ( 43 ) 
 
 rubber and coffee plantations established, the land is neither occupied nor utilised 
 by Europeans. In itself the abandonment of the claim over the land would alter 
 nothing on the Congo. All that such action would do would be to deprive the 
 Belgian Government, for polemical purposes in Europe, of its "juridical" defence 
 to the appropriation of the produce of the land having commercial value on the 
 world's markets. 
 
 Position on 
 the Congo 
 will not be 
 changed 
 nntil 
 European 
 rule ceases 
 to be 
 parasitical. 
 
 The position on the Congo will not be changed until the Belgian 
 Government ceases to treat, in practice, the produce of the land as its 
 property, and ceases to compel the native population to harvest that 
 produce for the joint benefit of itself and its financial partners. In 
 other words, nothing will be changed on the Congo until commercial 
 relations between the natives and the outer world, destroyed by the 
 Edicts of 1891-2, are restored; and these can only be restored by 
 recognizing, in practice, the proprietary rights of the natives in the 
 fruits of the soil ; until, in fine, European rule on the Congo ceases to be represented 
 by a parasitical Administration, maintaining itself and permitting its financial partners 
 to enrich themselves by the systematic pillage of the country's wealth through the 
 slave labour of the country's inhabitants, and becomes an Administration in the 
 proper sense of the term. 
 
 Recognition 
 of native 
 ownership 
 in land the 
 foundation 
 stone of 
 European 
 rule in the 
 African 
 tropics. 
 
 It has been remarked above that native ownership in land must 
 needs be the foundation stone of all normal European rule in the African 
 tropics, because the economic object of normal European rule is the 
 development of commercial relations, and because any commercial 
 relationship between the European and the native is impossible, unless 
 the native has articles to sell with which to purchase manufactured 
 goods those articles being the products of his land having com- 
 mercial value on the markets of the world. H.M. Government have 
 illustrated this truth by explaining the nature of British rule in the 
 African tropics. 1 
 
 In this connection H.M. Government have pointed out that : " On the West 
 Coast of Africa, fairly well defined tribal divisions have existed almost from time 
 immemorial." I would beg leave to supplement that quoted passage. These " tribal 
 divisions " are not peculiar to the " Coast " regions. They extend right through the 
 forest belt which separates the coast from the uplands of the interior. They extend 
 to those uplands. The Land Tenure Commission, now sitting at the Colonial 
 Office to investigate the question as it affects Northern Nigeria, is finding that the 
 same rule holds good, both for the Mohammedan and Pagan zones in that great 
 Protectorate which reaches to the shores of Lake Chad. Nor is a well-defined 
 tenure in land peculiar to the British possessions. It is common to the whole vast 
 
 i Africa, No. 5, 1908.
 
 ( 44 ) 
 
 area of Western Africa, wherever there is population ; to whatever European over- 
 lordship the country has become subjected since the " Scramble." 
 
 And it is equally common to the Congo region, as will be here shown. 
 
 No Speaking generally, throughout tropical Africa, there is no such 
 
 "unowne thing as unowned 1 land, where there is population. The public 
 there is writings of the most authorised exponents of Native Customary Law in 
 
 population. tropical Africa ELLIS, SARBAH, MARY KINGSLEV, BALLAY, DE BRAZZA, 
 CLOZEL, BINGER, VILAMUR, DELAFOSSE, RAYNER, S HEALY, 3 DARESTE, 
 BOHN, BLYDEN, ZIMMERMAN : the universal experience (much of it recorded) of 
 African administrators, missionaries, and merchants are conclusive and cover virtually 
 the whole of Western Africa from the Senegal to the Congo. 
 
 Native And what form does this native land tenure, this native ownership 
 
 tenure in j n j an( j w hich no one disputes except so far as the Congo territory is 
 
 IRIIQ. tfLKPS 
 
 the form of concerned the Belgian Government and its interested allies, actually 
 
 communal take ? Here, again, the evidence is voluminous and conclusive. With 
 ownership. f ew exceptions, native tenure takes the form of communal ownership 
 of the land and its fruits ; a form proper to the condition of native 
 society where the whole social structure is patriarchal and communistic, outcome of 
 inherent usage, immemorial custom and racial necessities. In certain regions, a 
 feudalism has developed and the land is owned by the King and nobles ; but this is 
 the exception. In certain regions, too, individual tenure is found existing side by 
 side with communal ownership ; but this also is the exception. This native owner- 
 ship in land, which is admitted and recognised, is, then, communal in form. 
 
 Does a different state of affairs prevail on the Congo ? Does a practice common 
 to the- whole of the tropical regions of Africa outside a certain territory which 
 passed under the suzerainty of the King of the Belgians precisely because his Agents 
 produced documents to prove that the native rulers did possess rights over the land 
 and its produce stop short at the frontiers of this territory ? 
 
 111 LUC " line iiuiu a uvucaijr ul puiLsua^j ue aiai LU 
 
 Report for Southern Nigeria may be profitably perused.
 
 ( 45 ) 
 
 The All the Belgian authorities on Congo affairs answer these queries 
 
 in the negative. Indeed, the Belgian Government has but to consult 
 
 ment has tlie wor ks of its own compatriots to find in the facts they adduce an 
 
 only to con- implicit condemnation of its fantastic theories. Belgian experts in 
 
 suit the Belgium, Belgian Officials, Belgian Missionaries, Belgian travellers are 
 
 worKS oi 
 
 Belgians * n accorc * w ^^ Foreign Consuls, Missionaries and travellers. 
 
 Father Ver- Father VERMEERSCH, who has access to the reports of the Belgian 
 
 Missionaries on the Congo has, perhaps, summed up the situation 
 evidence of there obtaining, better than any other Belgian authority, with the excep T 
 Belgian tion of the Leader of the Belgian Labour Party, M. EMILE VANDERVELDE, 
 
 Mission- anc j o f M. GEORGES LORAND, the Leader of the Progressive wing of 
 
 LT16S 
 
 the Liberal Parliamentary Party. 1 He has been assisted in his task 
 of exposition in Belgium by Fathers Cus and VAN HENCXTHOVEN Missionaries 
 with a lengthened Congo experience. 
 
 " The natives writes Father Vermeersch interpret property in collective form ; the com- 
 munity being the village or tribe. This tenure extends over all the territory in which the Chief 
 exercises jurisdiction. The limits are clearly denned. It suffices to put this question, ' To whom 
 does this land belong ? ' To obtain the answer ' It belongs to such and such a Chief, as far as 
 such and such a place.' . . . Among the Congo natives, occupation is, no doubt, usually 
 collective ; but this occupation is as entitled to respect as any form of individual occupation. 
 Land cannot be assumed to be vacant. In Africa the forests belong to the tribes." 
 
 Father VERMEERSCH declares and this testimony, which is most important, is 
 corroborated by the British Missionaries 2 that the Catholic Missions have usually 
 made arrangements direct with the Native rulers when founding their Stations, 
 and he asserts that they never experienced any difficulties in obtaining the lease 
 of sites for the purpose. 3 Quoting from a report sent him by the Belgian Mission 
 in the Kwango, Father VERMEERSCH says : 
 
 " In the portion of the Kwango where we have laboured for 23 years, the land and the 
 forests are the secular property of the natives. I am told that it is the same in the Upper 
 Kwango and Kasai." 
 
 " To whom So far as the Kasai is concerned, this is corroborated in letters I 
 
 does the possess from the American Missionaries. 
 
 rubber 
 
 belong?" "To whom continues Father VERMEERSCH does the rubber which grows upon 
 
 asks the the land occupied by the natives belong ? To the natives and to no one else without 
 
 Belgian their consent and without just compensation. We acknowledge with much regret that 
 
 Father. the appropriation by the State of so called vacant lands on the Congo confronts us with 
 
 an immense expropriation." 
 
 1 The two Members of the Belgian House who really understand the question. 
 
 2 See p. 48. 
 
 3 In other words, they have acted in conformity with the Decrees of Governors-General Sir Francis de Winton 
 and Cam Janssens, already quoted, issued at a time when the European rulers of the Congo had not 
 patented their theory of non-native ownership in land.
 
 ( 46 ) 
 
 And the Belgian Father quotes the jurist, VAN BLUNTSCHLI : 
 
 "Territorial sovereignty does not infer ownership of the soil. But by virtue of its sovereignly 
 the State has the right to dispose of the land which is without owners." 
 
 I am not competent to judge of the juridical authority of this writer, but the 
 passage quoted is almost 1 identical with STANLEY'S Treaty with the Chiefs of 
 Palaballa. 
 
 Professor Professor CATTIER is no less emphatic. He terms the System 
 
 Cattier. inaugurated by the Edicts of 1891-2 the "organisation of spoliation." 
 
 M. Vander- M. EMILE VANDERVELDE, fresh from his visit of investigation to 
 
 veldes t ^ e Congo, speaking in the Belgian Parliament last month, said: 
 
 emphatic 
 
 testimony. The State has the right to appropriate vacant lands : agreed. But are 
 
 there any vacant lands on the Congo ? It is possible, in certain desert regions. 
 But what I can affirm is that I saw none. No doubt, the greater portion of the land is not 
 covered by native villages or native plantations ; but it can be asserted that, with exceptions which 
 are, moreover, supposititious, the whole of the territory is divided between the different com- 
 munities. When one visits a chief nothing is easier than to find out where his territory ends and 
 that of another chief begins. ... In fine, they use the collective territory of the community 
 according to their ancient traditions." * 
 
 These are statements of a general character, either based upon personal ex- 
 perience or upon information derived from a variety of local sources. If we pass to the 
 records ot Belgians dealing with specific parts of the territory, we shall not find them 
 less significant. 
 
 M. SCHMITZ, who is certainly not partial towards the critics of 
 evidence _ ^ e Congo Administration, writing 3 on the strength of personal residence 
 from the among various sections of the great Bashonge 4 people, after recording 
 
 Bashonge that land is held in communal tenure, goes on to say : 
 country. 
 
 " You will never hear a Musongo, not even a chief, say, ' This land is mine.' He will say, 
 ' This land is ours,' and by this he means, not the population of his village, but the whole tribe. . . . 
 The country belongs entirely to the tribe. . . . The tribes are very susceptible on the subject of 
 their territory ; their boundaries are traditional but most precise. " 
 
 He produces tangible proof of native Customary law in these respects in the 
 following passage : 
 
 "To-day the tribes lease their rubber forests. Thus the Bena-Lubunda lease to the Bena-Kiai 
 the right of collecting rubber in their forests. The chiefs of the Bena-Kiai pay two belts of cowries 
 and a cap-gun every month. The Bakele in 1906 leased to the Bala the rubber in their forests for 
 5 guns, i woman, and 2 goats." 8 
 
 1 See Part I. 
 
 2 Annalts jia.rlenienta.ires du l^ Dec. IQOS. 
 
 3 " Les citing ties centre le Congo," 1908 
 
 4 Closely allied with the Batetla and Baluba, and occupying a large extent of territory stretching from the 
 
 Sankuru to the Lualaba. 
 
 5 For further corroboration of this system of leasing communal lands, see the evidence of the Rev. E. Scrivener, p. 48
 
 ( 47 ) 
 
 Nothing could be more significant of the truth of what was urged above, viz. : 
 that this wave of alien oppression and violence which has swept over the country 
 has not affected native Customary law. The natives have bowed before the blast ; 
 they have died in enormous numbers ; they are perishing from misery, disease and 
 want but they cling with the unfailing tenacity of one of the most conservative 
 races on earth to their own Customary laws. 
 
 y on The German traveller VON WISSMANN writing of the same region 
 
 Wissman. also records the communistic character of native society : 
 
 " All the families, he says, of the quarter (of the town) attend to the harvest in common. 
 . . . No discussion, no quarrels ; each and all take according to their wants." 
 
 Belgian The same observations are made of the Ababua people by a number 
 
 evidence O f Belgian officials whose notes have been published by Professor 
 
 Up HALKIN, of Liege University. 1 Here are some of these notes: 
 
 Welle. " The family is the basis of the organisation of Society. . . . The family spirit is very 
 
 much developed. . . . Communal lands are delimited by a stream, one or more over-turned 
 trees, or by some peculiarity in the formation of the ground." 
 
 Belgian Of the Mayombe people 2 the testimony is similar: 
 
 evidence 
 
 from the "While all the plantations are the common property of the village or centre. . . . 
 
 Mayombe each little square planted with tobacco, carefully marked out, has its owner." 3 
 
 country. 
 
 Father DE CLERCQ writes of the same people : 
 
 " For commercial purposes the territory is divided into sections of different sizes, each is 
 overseen by a village or tribal chief. . . . Tradition decides. No artificial boundary separates 
 these commercial domains, but if one village robbed the palm trees of another it would be an 
 act of war." 4 
 
 The same author also says : 
 
 "The Mayombe country is divided into an infinity of regions, each occupied by members 
 of the same clan. . . . These regions have their precise boundaries, known and respected by 
 the people. . . . They are bounded by a wood, a stream, a valley, a mountain. ... If one 
 village migrates into a region other than that of the clan no great opposition will be made, but 
 the inhabitants of that village will always feel as if they were the hosts of strangers, and will 
 finally return to the country they have left." 
 
 M. DIEDERRICH writes of the Mayombe : 
 "The ownership of the soil is communal." 8 
 
 i In 1907, and including the evidence of Verstraeten, Vedy, Tilkens, De La Kethulle de Ryhove, etc. 
 2 Lower Congo ; territory drained by the Shiloango, Lubuzi and Lukula. 
 
 3 Gilmont, "Congo beige." 
 
 4 " Missions en Chine et au Congo." 
 
 5 Quoted in Cyr van Overbergh, p. 371.
 
 ( 48 ) 
 
 Eoger We obtain a side light on the custom of one tribe to give hospitality 
 
 Casement's to another upon its communal lands in Consul CASEMENT'S report, 
 Scr'vener's where he recounts the experiences of the refugees from Lake Leopold 
 evidence II., who had sought and found an asylum from the persecution of the 
 
 from European officials, on the communal lands of the " K," near Bolobo. l 
 
 The Rev. A. E. SCRIVENER, of the British Baptist Missionary Society, 
 who has had twenty years' experience in various parts of the Congo, gives me 
 the following additional information on the above 2 : 
 
 "At Bolobo, he writes, the Moye and Bobangi folk, living on the river banks, paid rent 
 for years to the Batende, who lived a little way inland. This was discontinued in my time, and 
 led to much trouble between them such as the stoppage of all trade, the cessation of markets, 
 and so on. On the French side, the folk inhabiting a long, low stretch of bank, flooded out 
 regularly every year, could not shift their quarters, as the owners of the higher lands refused to 
 grant sites. I am not defending their attitude, but merely quoting it as evidence of the way the 
 country was parcelled out. When I visited the Lake I was pointed out the territories of the 
 chiefs who had fled to Bolobo for refuge. Men who were then living under sufferance among 
 the Batende had once held sway over many square miles. There were well-recognised boundaries, 
 such as streams and watersheds. Even under the rule of the State this still obtained and made 
 it necessary, sometimes, for people who had no rubber vines on their own lands to buy per- 
 mission to collect rubber on the lands of other peoples."* 
 
 Belgian A letter from Captain HANSSENS (op. cit.) dated Leopoldville, 
 
 evidence October 5, 1882, further illustrates these native Customary laws as to 
 
 Stanlev land. Explaining the presence of the Bateke Chief NGA-LIEWA at 
 
 Pool. Stanley Pool, where he had settled ten years before, Captain HANSSENS 
 
 says that he " had obtained from the paramount chief of the country, 
 permission to build a village in the bay of Kintamo." 
 
 British The Rev. A. SCRIVENER in the same communication points out 
 
 mission- 
 
 IT* IPS > 
 
 - , _ "At Bolobo and Lukolela the mission sites were purchased in the first instance 
 
 from the natives, before negotiations were begun with the State authorities. The site of 
 Bolobo was purchased piece-meal from the various owners concerned as they became 
 
 Owners. agreeable, we having, in the meanwhile, to confine our operations only to those parts 
 
 purchased. I believe the other sites were purchased in the same way." 
 
 Charles The Rev. CHARLES BOND of the Congo Balolo Mission, who is 
 
 Bond s a j so an ^ Congo resident, gives me the result of his experiences which 
 
 evidence . , P T . . f 
 
 f rom comprise the neighbourhood of Lolanga, the Lulongo river as far as 
 
 Lolanga. Mampoko, the Ikelmba river as far as Boyenge, and the Congo as far 
 as Monsembe. 
 
 i Africa, No. i, 1904 ; p. 28 and p. 6o : The " K " people are the Batende. 
 
 2 Letter in the writer's possession. 
 
 3 In the mad fear and horror which the rubber "tax" inspires, " permission " is often not asked, the"taxed" 
 natives wandering distractedly wherever they can hope to find the vines, bloody feuds resulting. See 
 evidence, p. 50.
 
 " So far as my experience goes he writes there are no vacant lands in any part of the 
 country. Each town or series of towns forming a district acknowledging one head chief knows 
 the extent of forest over which from time immemorial it has been the custom to hunt. The 
 boundary, perhaps a creek, perhaps a path, a rising ground, or more frequently a stream, is the 
 margin of the territory of the neighbouring tribe. In exactly the same way, the rivers and creeks are 
 divided for fishing purposes. ... I have known not a few disputes over these old boundaries and 
 hunting and fishing rights. As a consequence of the decrease of population they are not so frequent 
 now as they were 5 or 7 years ago, but the boundaries are the same." 
 
 Charles 
 Padfield's 
 evidence 
 from the 
 Lopori. 
 
 Writing of the Lopori-Maringa basin, the Rev. CHARLES PADFIELD 
 of the same mission remarks : 
 
 "In this district there is no such thing as 'unoccupied land.' The term is a 
 complete misnomer. It is impossible to find a part of the forest which is not claimed 
 under native law and custom. No stream which is not sectionalised for the use of specific 
 communities. Not a single group of palm trees which is not owned by some village." 
 
 evidence 
 
 from 
 
 Katanga. 
 
 Vice-Consul Vice-Consul BEAK, writing of the Katanga region, says 1 : 
 
 Beak's 
 
 " Little or nothing is known locally of native land tenure, for the Congo Official 
 
 still remains strangely ignorant of all tliat concerns the native. But there are one or 
 two obvious points which the system of land tenure in the Katanga would appear to 
 share in common with that obtaining in other parts of Africa.' 1 ' . ... It may 
 probably be safely said that individual property in land does not exist. The existence of collective 
 
 property cannot be doubted The boundaries of these collective lands are frequently 
 
 natural ; more often they appear to be purely arbitrary. But they have been sanctioned by im- 
 memorial traditions, and they are perfectly well known and recognised to within a foot's length by 
 the natives themselves. This fact is abundantly clear to anyone travelling through the country, and 
 it is corroborated by older residents. ... It is the native custom for a Chief to escort the White 
 traveller to the boundary of his territory, and beyond that boundary it would not be becoming 
 for him to pass." 
 
 John 
 Harris' 
 notes from 
 the Lopori. 
 
 The following notes, which have been prepared for me by the 
 Rev. JOHN HARRIS, are instructive. They refer to the territories com- 
 prised within the Lopori and Maringa basins. 
 
 On the surface, and in practice, the claim of the Congo State to communal lands and 
 produce is as complete as it is general. At the same time, however, reposing beneath that 
 surface are the native communal boundaries, as clearly defined to-day as for generations past. 
 This fact frequently emerges and asserts itself, to the embarrassment of the Administration itself. 
 
 When Monsieur X , an official of the A.B.I.R. Company, destroyed the Baringa 
 
 towns, the people could find no dwelling place, because, on the South, all the land came within 
 the original communal area of the Bokeri people, and, on the North, within that of the Ekala. 
 
 The fishing rights on the river are equally well-defined, an island generally dividing the 
 fishing grounds, but even so, one end of the island is often occupied by one tribe and the other 
 end by a different one. 
 
 i Africa, No. i, 1908. 
 a See p. 44.
 
 ( 50 ) 
 
 That these boundaries are well-known and clearly recognised firv.ls additional empbas-s 
 from the relations between the ' Bafoto ' little hunters (not pigmies), and the resident population. 
 These small, but very strong, people are essentially nomadic, seldom living in huts, but wandering 
 to and fro from the Wambala to Monpona districts, a distance of some three hundred miles. 
 They spend their whole time hunting, and live almost entirely upon flesh, supplemented by forest 
 nuts and edible roots. Before the great confiscation of lands and produce by the State, the chier 
 of the hunters always sent ' toll,' in the shape of skins and tusks, to the tribe over whose lands 
 he was at that time hunting. ' Owing to the claim by the State and its Trusts to the ivory 
 of the district, 'toll,' in the shape of that article, has become impossible, but the hunter-chief 
 still loyally recognises his responsibility to the tribal landlord by sending larger supplies of meat 
 and skins in lieu of ivory. 
 
 In general practice, tribal lands are divided by a stream, approximately half-way between 
 two villages, and should the waters be so deep as to require a bridge, this must be built jointly 
 by the two tribes, i.e. each building the near half, the last to finish being responsible for 
 perfecting the 'joints.'" 
 
 How civil Mr. HARRIS'S evidence is, however, especially interesting, inasmuch 
 
 war and ag j t accentuates a feature of the Congo System, a direct result of the 
 
 c ii n 11 i t) 3,1 
 
 ism are appropriation of the produce of the soil by the Administration, to which 
 
 encouraged my attention was first drawn some years ago by Belgian correspondents 
 by the ap- residing in rubber districts in the Upper Congo widely removed from one 
 of the land's another, and which has since been frequently emphasised by a number 
 produce. of Missionaries 2 viz : the direct incitement to civil war which this 
 
 System constitutes. It seems desirable to give more than a passing 
 reference to this feature, if only to illustrate one specific effect produced upon the lives 
 of the natives by the nefarious economic policy introduced into the Congo. 
 
 As the rubber, growing upon the communal lands of one particular village, clan, 
 or tribe becomes exhausted, so the members of that village, clan or tribe, "taxed" 
 in this article, either by the Government or the Concessionnaires, must pass its 
 boundaries and invade the communal lands of another village, clan or tribe, if 
 they are to meet the demands made upon them, for the " tax " continues to be 
 levied with the same brutal disregard of local conditions, and unless prominent 
 attention has been drawn by the Missionaries to an individual case, no excuses 
 for shortage are accepted. The imposed natives are, therefore, in this position : 
 On the one side is the Belgian Official and his soldiers demanding rubber ; 
 the penalty for non-compliance varying from imprisonment in the hostage house, 
 seizure of women and children, and the chain-gang to violence, torture, incendiarism 
 and murder. On the other, is the violation of custom in invading the communal 
 lands of strangers, the risks attending it, the fear of reprisals. It is not astonishing 
 that, placed between the devil of Belgian rapacity and the deep sea of tribal resentment, 
 the potential danger of the latter is preferred to the immediate terrors of the former. 
 
 i See evidence of Schmitz and Scrivener, 
 a Notably by the Rev. Kenred Smith, in reports published by the Congo Reform Association.
 
 Indeed, no option is left to the native but the infringement of his own deep-rooted 
 Customary laws. Sometimes the owners of the invaded territory are themselves 
 " taxed " in rubber, and the result is a frantic struggle for possession of the vines 
 between the invaded and the invaders. Sometimes the invaded tribe or village is an 
 hereditary enemy of the invaders, and the result is murderous warfare. Sometimes, 
 and several instances of such cases were cited by my Belgian correspondents, the 
 invaders malgre eux are a vegetable-fish-eating tribe, and the invaded a cannibalistic 
 tribe, and a result, to be added to the others, is a direct incitement to cannibalism 
 as well as civil war. The ultimate consequences which follow from this forced inter- 
 tribal warfare, are endless : reprisals go on for years. Women are captured on either 
 side, plantations destroyed, and so on. In short, the natives destroy one another for 
 the benefit of the alien "landlord" in Brussels and Antwerp, in addition to being 
 destroyed singly and collectively by that " landlord's " soldiers. The measure of human 
 misery entailed by such a System is not portrayable by a mere recording of the 
 facts : neither is the measure of human wickedness in promoting it, to be estimated 
 by mere vigour of denunciation. 
 
 Harris's The specific instances given by Mr. HARRIS are so clear that they 
 
 specific render lengthy quotations from other communications in my possession 
 
 ooo i 
 
 unnecessary. Mr. HARRIS writes : 
 
 (a) The genesis of the Yandjali massacre lay in the tribe which worked rubber for the State 
 crossing the stream which, in point of fact, divided originally their communal lands from those of 
 another tribe working rubber for the concessionnaires. 
 
 () Owing to the intensity of the pressure upon the Bangala by the Mongalla Company they 
 were driven to seek rubber in the communal lands claimed by the A.B.I.R., thus creating constant 
 internecine warfare between the Mongos and Bangalas. This condition of affairs brought the 
 A.B. I.R. into frequent conflict with the Mongalla Company, which conflicts eventually forced the 
 State itself to intervene, and "drive back" the natives within what had originally been their own 
 communal lands. 
 
 (f) The people of Ekerongo and Lifumba are at constant war with those of the Juapa because 
 the rubber, being exhausted within what was once their communal lands, they now cross the 
 boundary into that of the Juapa folk. 
 
 (d?) During the time of Mons. O ' the people of Esanga crossed the river to search for 
 
 rubber in the Wala a district with the result that for three weeks there was warfare along the river 
 fronts for thirty miles." 
 
 Whitehead's Evidence of a well-defined native system of land tenure from yet 
 
 an( l another part of the Congo is afforded by the Rev. A. E. SCRIVENER, 
 
 evid from his personal experiences in the Lukolela district. In connection 
 
 from with this particular part of the Congo, attention may be drawn to 
 
 Lukolela. a passage of great significance in the evidence of the Rev. JOHN 
 WniTEHEAD, 3 of the same Mission, before the Commission of Inquiry, as bearing 
 
 i A.B. I.R. Official. 
 
 2 The Wala district being at that time " taxed " in rubber by the Official of another of the Company's stations. 
 3 Organ of the Congo Reform Association, December, 1905.
 
 ( 52 ) 
 
 upon the use still made of STANLEY'S Treaties with the Native Chiefs by the present- 
 day rulers of the Congo : 
 
 "Towards the close of the Inquiry," writes Mr. WHIIEHEAD, "I asked permission to 
 interrogate a witness, in order to elicit some information which I thought would interest the 
 Commission. My object was to show the Commission how the land was divided up among the 
 natives, and I did not wish to do so by discovering the meaning of my question to the witness. 
 But when I got from the man the extent of the land he inherited from his forbears, and when 
 I pointed out to the Commission that the State had taken a large part of the land and made a 
 tobacco plantation, then without acknowledging the man's ownership at all they brushed 
 my fact aside with the remark that the matter would have been dealt with in STANLEY'S 
 arrangements with the natives. I said the natives did not understand by anything STANLEY did 
 or said that they had parted with their land." 
 
 Of this district (Lukolela), the Rev. A. E. SCRIVENER writes: 
 
 "When our mission was first opened at Lukolela we found that the whole country was 
 divided up amongst the various villages. Thus the women of a certain village could only collect 
 firewood in certain parts of the forest, and new gardens could only be made in the territory of 
 the villages needing the gardens. There were sometimes disputes arising out of this. Any 
 animal killed by the people of one village in the territory of another was claimed by the owners 
 of the land, and even when White men shot buffaloes or antelope it was the custom to give one 
 limb to the chief of the village concerned. On one occasion I nearly got into a scrape in this 
 way. A hunter in my employ shot a buffalo and sent its tail to me with a request for help to 
 bring it to the station, The animal, however, was only stunned, and revived and got away. 
 The villagers would not believe this, but thought it a ruse on the part of my boys to retain all 
 for themselves. The other villages backed them up in their claim, and I had a lot of trouble 
 before the affair was properly settled. The river was likewise parcelled out and fishing rights 
 recognised. People from Bolobo were allowed to nsh in Lukolela waters only on paying a sort 
 of license fee, or on their agreeing to sell the fish to the Lukolela folk at reduced rates." 
 
 On the This experienced missionary's personal knowledge also extends to 
 
 Lower t h e L ower Congo. He writes of the system of land tenure there 
 
 obtaining, as follows: 
 
 "On the Lower Congo in the old days certain ferries could only be worked by certain 
 chiefs and villages, and sometimes caravans including white men would have to wait the convenience 
 of the ferry people, their rights being recognised by everybody. Thus the ferry over the Mposo, 
 close to Matadi, was the property of the Mpalabala 1 people, who for years made a good thing 
 out of it, having to pay a certain proportion to the king at San Salvador. When I lived at 
 Underbill, near Matadi, in 1886, we paid a monthly rental to the chiefs of the villages nearby, 
 who collected the rent not only from us, but also from the Dutch, and English, and Portuguese 
 houses in the vicinky." 
 
 Summing up his general experiences he concludes : 
 
 "There is not the slightest doubt but that the whole Congo was divided among the people 
 and the territory of each well understood." 
 
 Pataballa.
 
 POST-SCRIPTUM TO PART III. 
 
 The part played by the Land in the economy of 
 the Natives. 
 
 Although I have expressly confined myself in this Memorandum to the appro- 
 priation of the land by the present rulers of the Congo, in so far as that appropriation 
 is made the excuse for the real object of Belgian action, viz., the appropriation of 
 the produce of the land having commercial value on the world's markets, a short 
 reference may not inappropriately be made to another aspect of the matter. 
 
 How barbarous and anti-civilising an agency is the European Administration 
 which robs the native of Africa of his proprietary rights in the land outside the sites 
 of his towns or villages and adjacent food plantations, has been sufficiently shown 
 in this Memorial. But what has not been shown is the intimate manner in which 
 such a System interferes in every necessary of native life. 
 
 Sustenance. The native sustains himself by agriculture, fishing, and hunting. 
 
 In various parts of the Congo he cultivates manioca, millet, rice, maize, 
 bananas, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, sesame, sorghum, ground nuts (for food), etc. 
 How great is the labour involved in this branch of native economy can be doubted 
 only by those who imagine that the native has but to sit on the ground for the 
 fruits of the earth to fall at his feet, or by superficial travellers who conclude that 
 if they do not find the native working every hour in the day with the assiduity of 
 a labouring man of Northern Europe, that he is "idle." 1 
 
 By demanding his incessant labour to gather the produce of the soil of commercial 
 value on the world's markets which they have appropriated, the European rulers of the 
 Congo deprive the native of the means of adequately providing for his own sustenance. 
 They do so not only in this indirect manner, but in a direct manner also, because the 
 enforcement of their system requires the upkeep of an enormous army of soldiery and 
 
 ground nuts." (Laurent, Bull. Off, 1906). "The forest was cultivated for i to i hours' march, and 
 the plantations often as well cared for as those of Flanders "(frtem, from the Sankuru to Nyangwe). 
 'The abundance of food supplies testifies to the labommaness of the race." (Idem, Kasai). " There 
 ;ire great plantations of maize, manioca, castor oil, sugar cane. _and ground nuts.' (De Deken). 
 " Jt took five hours to cross through one Basonge centre." (Von Wissmann) etc., etc., etc.
 
 ( 54 ) 
 
 workmen, their women and their camp followers (probably not less than 100,000 souls 
 to feed). This army must be fed and the natives have to feed it. The terrible effects 
 to which this double deprivation of native power to sustain native life has led on the 
 Congo, needs no illustration here. They are sufficiently recorded in the official and 
 unofficial reports made public. What applies to native agriculture for food supplies, 
 applies to fishing and to hunting. 
 
 Agricul- Native communities, after 4 or 5 years are usually compelled to shift 
 
 taral the site of their towns, and this for two main reasons: (i) Sanitation, 
 
 necessities. , , , . . . . 
 
 unless the town is situate on the bank of a river ; (2) owing to the 
 
 exhaustion of the fertilising properties in the soil. The weeds, bush, etc., growing on 
 the worked-out soil are set fire to and the land is allowed to lie fallow until the ashes 
 from the burning, and time, have given back to the earth the recuperative forces 
 temporarily withdrawn. This occurs, of course, all over the African tropics, and 
 anything which tends to restrict Native Communities in their freedom of shifting the 
 sites of towns and food plantations tends to the promotion of disease and lack of 
 proper sustenance. 
 
 Food, The land outside the food plantations is the object of daily use by the 
 
 clothing, natives for all the necessaries, conveniences, and pleasures of life. 
 
 implements 
 
 ,. ' Plantations of tobacco and hemp are common, especially the former. 
 
 lighting, Various kinds of palm trees, the raphia palm especially, 1 the banana, 
 
 etc., etc. the bamboo, the bombax, are all called into requisition for the manu- 
 
 facture of fibres for native garments, mats, fishing nets, animal traps, belts, caps, 
 basket making, native twine. 
 
 The oil palm is a supplier of a hundred-and-one articles of daily use : oil for 
 cooking, for anointing the body (mainly for purposes of health and cleanliness and 
 protection against stings of insects) dressing the hair, lighting purposes (the internal 
 trade in palm oil has of course always been very large). It is also used medicinally ; 
 for soap ; for mixing with camwood powder. Various parts of the tree are used for 
 garments (as above stated) ; for caulking canoes and so on. 
 
 The camwood tree is used for its powder, for the purpose of rubbing into the 
 skin ; tor religious ceremonies ; burial rites, etc., etc. STANLEY was immensely struck 
 with the enormous quantities of this powder used in the interior trade. 
 
 Hard-woods of a number of kinds all well-known to the natives, are used for 
 canoe making; 2 the handles of agricultural implements, and spears and knives; beds, 
 stools, pillows ; paddles. 
 
 i This is also used for roofing purposes. 
 
 2 There used to l>e a large trade in canoes, now it is extinct, and nearly all the large canoes have disappeared 
 with the extirpation of the trade in live-stock for which they were largely used.
 
 ( 55 ) 
 
 The land outside the plantations also furnishes copper and iron for smelting 
 purposes : for weapons of the war and chase. All the Congo races have been workers 
 in iron and copper for centuries : some of their weapons (for instance, the Kasai 
 battle axes) are models of careful workmanship and artistic sense or used to be. 
 
 The forest furnishes a number of plants, all well-known to the natives and 
 distinguished by name, for their medicinal properties. 
 
 For the manufacture of salt, plaintain skins and the roots of a number of herb- 
 aceous water plants are utilised. 
 
 The product of the chase not only gives food, but the skins of slain beasts are 
 utilised for a variety of purposes, such as belts, slings and sheaths for knives, cases 
 for arrows, shields, etc. 
 
 Copal and other resins are used for lighting purposes. 
 
 In short, free access to his land, whether cultivated or uncultivated, is, for the 
 native, an absolute necessity of life. 
 
 Cut off from it, he dies.
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I am sensible of having made great demands upon the patience of H.M. 
 Government. 
 
 Yet, I venture to hope that the information here collected may be of some 
 utility to H.M. Government in their efforts to save a great part of the African 
 tropics, and the races inhabiting it, from the destruction which threatens them, and 
 which has, in part, been accomplished already. 
 
 I would, in conclusion, respectfully urge that as the terrible evils which have 
 fallen upon the races of the Congo committed by Great Britain and other Powers, 
 " in the name of Almighty God," to the trusteeship of the present Ruler of the 
 Belgian nation have their exclusive origin in the exercise of a specific claim, so 
 these evils cannot be redressed unless that specific claim ceases to be exercised by 
 the Belgian Government, or by whatever governing power may be in control of the 
 Congo. 
 
 I make bold to have shown that that claim is untenable in Law or in Justice, 
 whether it be examined from the point of view of the Treaties concluded by the 
 Agents of the International African Association (afterwards the " Congo Free State ") 
 with the Native Rulers of the Congo, and on the strength of which the Association 
 secured the separate and collective recognition of the Great Powers ; from the point 
 of view of the objects of the Great Powers in separately and collectively recognising 
 the Association, as recorded in the Protocols and in the Act of the Berlin Conference, 
 and in the Treaties severally negotiated ; from the point of view of the public acts, 
 pledges and professions of the International Association, and of the " Congo Free 
 State," up to the issue of the Edicts of 1891-2; from the point of view of native 
 rights in land and in the produce of the land as historically recorded in these pages ; 
 from the point of view of civilised usage in the treatment of native races ; from the 
 point of view of elementary morality. 
 
 I would venture, finally, to express the earnest hope that H.M. Government while 
 refusing to allow the exercise of this claim to interfere in any respect whatsoever with 
 the rights or safety of British subjects, white or coloured, throughout the Congo 
 territory, and adjacent British possessions, while declining to recognise as internationally 
 valid the act of transfer of the Congo territory to Belgium so long as this claim is 
 persisted in by the Belgian Government, and while endeavouring, in so far as their 
 Treaty rights permit, to circumscribe and limit the effects of the exercise of this claim 
 on the Congo ; will see in its perpetuation by the Belgian Government, a danger so 
 far-reaching to peace and good government in Africa and a scandal so great as to justify 
 on their part something more than a negative disapproval, and to warrant them in 
 using, to the fullest extent in their power, the influence and the prestige of this Empire 
 in the council of the nations, with a view to its condemnation and removal. 
 
 E. D. MOREL.
 
 A 000130522 6