take the wide view of the case which they themselves continuously urged: to treat it, i.e., not as a matter of personal injustice, but primarily as an international issue involving consequences of profound international importance.
••••••
"One idea dominates the system. All the products of the conceded territory, whatever they may be, are the property of the Concessionaire Company," thus ran the Decree which a Colonial Minister saw fit to promulgate as the result of the continuous litigation in the lower Congo Courts between British merchants and the Concessionaires. Thus officially guided, the Courts, which in several instances had rendered temporising or conflicting judgments, hastened to bring themselves into line with ministerial decisions. The Loango Court held that the Concessionaire Companies had "the exclusive right of collecting and exploiting the natural products of the soil." The Libreville Court proclaimed that "the rubber belongs to the Concessionaires, and not to the natives who gather it." This Decree and these judgments produced a painful effect among the few Frenchmen who knew what they portended. De Brazza came out of his retirement and wrote a letter to Le Temps:
France—he said—has assumed a duty towards the native tribes… We must not sacrifice them to the vain hope of immediate results by thoughtless measures of coercion. We should be committing a great mistake by enforcing … taxes upon the products of the soil… It would constitute a great blow to our dignity if such labour and such taxes were converted into a sort of draft-to-order in favour of the Concessionaires.
M. Cousin, a well-known authority on colonial questions, who had been a warm defender of the Concessionaire experiment, published a pamphlet, in which he declared that he had been mistaken. M. Fondère, another authority of repute, wrote an open letter to the Colonial Minister, in the course of which he said:
The right to sell his products to whomsoever he may please cannot be denied to the native, because he has always possessed it. Moreover, it would be quite illusory to think of taking this right away from him. That could only be done by force of arms.
No consideration of the latter kind was likely to stand in his way. The years which followed were to witness
