TELL REPORTED ATROCITIES IN '.111.N./ CONGO STATE. T HE appeal of
the Aborigines' Protection Society to the British Government to intervene on behalf of the natives of the Congo State ought at once to be heard. That Society has often been accused, sometimes unjustly, occasionally with justice, of exaggerating the wrongs of its dark clients, and forgetting in its enthusiastic philan- thropy not only what is politic but what is possible. TMs time, however, they have, unless we are greatly mis- taken, a good case, they carefully refrain from ex- aggeration, and their demand is of the most modest kind,—viz., that the Powers who were responsible for handing over a million square miles of Africa to the King of the Belgians should inquire how his practically absolute powers have been employed. The allegation of the Society, which they are ready to support with masses of evidence, is that, whatever his Majesty's intentions, the practical effect of the system he has per- mitted to grow up is to subject a great portion of the black tribes entrusted to his care to sufferings such as even the Arab slave-raiders never inflicted. The first necessity of the new State, as of all States, was revenue, partly to pay the expenses of administration, and partly to repay the King for his very large preliminary outlays ; and unfortunately there was no usual source from which it could be obtained. The people were too poor to pay direct taxes, the growth of revenue from indirect taxes was too slow, and the Government was driven to the expedient of sanctioning a monopoly. The Adminis- tration first declared that all wild land in the State, probably nine-tenths of its whole area, was the property of the Crown ; and then utilised this property by selling monopolies of the rubber grown on this wild land to different companies, the State usually retain- ing, according to the Aborigines' Protection Society, half the profits. The companies set to work, and soon saw their way to large dividends ; but a difficulty arose. The people were discontented with their rewards for gathering the rubber, which by tradition, we must remember, be- longed to themselves, and practically refused to gather it. As submission to this refusal would have dislocated the whole machinery of government, compulsion was employed, and the methods of compulsion were, according to the evidence before the Society, of a most shocking kind. The only force at the disposal of the State was composed of the wildest tribes, often cannibals, who for the sake of protec- tion and some pay undertook the task, who were provided with modern arms, and who were then let loose upon the people. Their method was to surround a village, order out its adults upon a rubber hunt, and if resisted, or if the rubber brought in was insufficient, to kill, mutilate, or in some instances, as the Society affirms, eat the defaulters. If the natives fled they were hunted in the woods, and if they fought their heads or hands were brought into the stations in evidence that the resistance had been put down. The Society believe that hundreds were sold into slavery, and that, in short, in the recalcitrant districts the worst crimes of the Arab slave-raiders were repeated. while no attempt was made to establish the kind of savage order with which the Arabs, to do them justice, in many districts partly compensated the people. The Congo State has, in fact, according to the Society's Report, and if its facts are truly stated, , become a plague spot in Africa, and its people, naturally submissive enough, are becoming so savage that the very sight of a European inclines them either to flight or mutiny.
We have no wish to prejudice the case against either. the Belgians or their King, and consequently avoid quoting the frightful " instances " of oppression of which the complaint of the Aborigines' Protection Society is full. Nor are we inclined to think the original seizure of the wild lauds and the rubber so heinous an offence against humanity as it has recently been described. In all unsettled countries the unsettled lands are claimed by the State—we claim them in all Colonies, and so do the Americans in their own Republic—while as civilisation is impossible without revenue, and revenue was not attain- able without a monopoly, the seizure of the only article sure of a market, and that article growing wild, was not in itself indefensible. The methods adopted for main- taining the monopoly have, however, if the statements of the Society are correct, and they are supported by witnesses of many nationalities, been not only in- excusable, but directly contrary to the diplomatic agreements upon which the existence of the Congo State depends. The case for inquiry is therefore perfect, and for reasons both of humanity and policy the British Government should be first in demanding that it be insti-_ tuted. If the charges are disproved, or the crimes alleged are shown to be the crimes of individual agents which are regularly and adequately punished, the authority of the King will be solidified and a black cloud of suspicion re- moved from the agents of his policy. If, on the other hand, the charges are substantiated, the tribunal is quite strong enough to assign to the Congo State another destiny, —the best, perhaps, being division among Powers better able to hold their distant agents in check, and to bear the expenses of reasonable government until prosperity allows of a decent and endurable system of taxation.
We have said that policy demands this of our Govern- ment as well as philanthropy, and our reason is this. We believe that the conviction of the dark races, and. especially of the negroes, that the British Government will treat them better than any other Power would is one of the most valuable assets in the possession of this country. It facilitates expansion in all directions, and relieves us when we expand of much of the otherwise formidable danger from servile insurrection. It is our interest, as well as our bounden duty, to keep that conviction fresh, not only by lenient treatment of the blacks in our own dominions, but by an energetic defence of their rights wherever we possess a legal foothold for interference. As regards slavery, we have that foot- hold by the agreement of the whole world, and. as regards the Congo State, we have it by the written provisions of the arrangements signed at Berlin in 1885 and at Brussels in 1892. The right of interference is as clear on the face of those documents as the right to interfere on behalf of Turkish Christians, and it should be used firmly and per- istently in the regular diplomatic way by a formal appeal to the Powers who were our partners in making those two arrangements. We do not believe, though feeling for the dark races has undoubtedly declined of late years, that they will refuse to act, or will allow it to be suspected that as their interest in Africa increases their dislike to human slavery dies away. The Germans cannot wish to spread suspicion among their new black subjects, nor can the French with their reversionary claims on the Congo desire to see it reduced to a forest inhabited only by black out- laws who hold all white men in an incurable abhorrence. If the natives of the Congo State should accept Islam as so many of their kinsfolk have done, all the nations of Europe may have cause to regret that the vast region was handed over with the best intentions to a Prince who, if his motives are good, has apparently shown a lamentable want of capacity to control and guide his servants.
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