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due credit to the State for its efforts to instruct the young natives, and to open schools.
Since 1898 the general condition of the native has been still further improved. The system of carriers (“le portage à dos d’homme”), the hardships of which, so far as the native was concerned, were specially pointed out by Mr. Pickersgill, has disappeared from those parts of the country where it was most practised, in consequence of the opening of railways. Elsewhere motor cars are used as means of transport. The “sentry,” the station of negro soldiers which the Consul criticized, not without reason, no longer exists. Cattle have been introduced into every district. Sanitary Commissions have been instituted. Schools and workshops have multiplied.
“The native,” says the inclosed document,[1] “is better housed, better clad, and better fed; he is replacing his huts by better built and healthier dwelling-places; thanks to existing transport facilities, he is able to obtain the produce necessary to satisfy his new wants; workshops have been opened for him, where he learns handicrafts, such as those of the blacksmith, carpenter, mechanic, and mason; he extends his plantations and, taking example by the white man, learns rational modes of agriculture; he is always able to obtain medical assistance; he sends his children to the State school-colonies and to the missionary schools.”
As stated in the House of Commons, it is only right to recognize that the material and moral regeneration of Central Africa cannot be the work of a day. The results so far obtained have been considerable, and these we shall try to consolidate and develop, in spite of the way in which an effort is being made to hamper the action of the State, which in the real interests of civilization should rather be promoted.
The English note does not show that the economic system of the State is in opposition to the Berlin Act. It does not meet the points of law and fact by means of which the State has demonstrated the conformity of its system of land tenure and concessions with the provisions of that Act. It does not explain either how or why freedom of trade—a term used at the Conference of Berlin in its usual, grammatical, and economic sense—is incomplete in the Congo State because there are landowners there.
The note confuses the utilization of his property by the owner with trade. The native who collects on behalf of the owner does not become the owner of what is so collected, and naturally cannot dispose of it to a third party, any more than a miner can rob the proprietor of the produce of the mine and dispose of it himself. These rules are in accordance with the principles of justice and are explained in numerous documents, such as legal opinions and judicial decisions, some of which are annexed. His Majesty’s Government do not deny that the State is justified in allotting domain lands to bonâ fide occupants, or that the native has no longer any right to the produce of the soil as soon as the “land is reduced into individual occupation.” The distinction is without legal foundation. If the State can part with land, it is because the native is not the owner; by what title could he then retain a right to the produce of property which has been lawfully acquired by others? Could it be contended, for instance, that the lower Congo Railway Company, or the South Cameroons Company, or the Italian Colonial Trading Company are, on the ground that they are not at present in occupation, bound to allow the native to plunder the territories allotted to them? As a matter of fact, moreover, in the Congo State the appropriation of lands worked on Government account or by the Concessionary Companies is an accomplished fact. The State and the Companies have devoted large sums, amounting to many millions of francs, to the development of the lands in question, and more especially to that of the forests. There can, therefore, be no doubt that throughout the territories of the Congo the State really and completely works its property, just as the Companies really and completely work their Concessions
The state of affairs then which actually exists, and is established in the Independent State, is such that there is really no need, as far as the State itself is concerned, to dwell longer on the theory set forth in the note which deals in turn with the rights of the State, with those of bonâ fide occupiers, and those of the natives.
Still this theory calls for the attention of the Powers in view of the serious difficulties which would arise were it to be implicitly accepted.
The note lays down the three following propositions:—
“The State has the right to partition the State lands among bonâ fide occupants.”
“The natives will, as the land is so divided out amongst bonâ fide occupiers, lose their right of roaming over it and collecting the natural fruits which it produces.”
“Until unoccupied land is reduced into individual occupation, and so long as the produce can only be collected by the native, the native should be free to dispose of that produce as he pleases.”
- ↑ See Annex No. 1.
