We have only one other subject to deal with—the slave-trade—and this brings us to the most heinous charges Fae the Congo Administration. for while it is claimed that the slave trade qua slave trade has ceased to exist, slavery is the only word that adequately expresses the condition of the native population. We cannot it the limits of one article enumerate the list of atrocities committed in the nam the State. Those who are interested in the subject will find numerony instances, accompanied by reliable evidence, in Mr. Morel's book. The include reckless murder, the carrying of rubber, mutilation in its most hori. ble forms, the placing "of peal natives under the control of savage and cannibal soldiery, chain-gangs, stanation, forced labour, and crueltioe speakable. Forced labour ix the cure of the country. In one district 820 natives of all ages and both sexes are compelled to supply food-staff ayer gating £1,605.168.8. yearly; in an other a native is forced to pridice £12 worth of gam copal a year i exchange for 1s. 4d—the valve ut an adult fowl according to local prices On the showing of the Commission of Inquiry the native in the subjugatal rubber districts of the Congo mins devote over three hundred days pr annum to the gathering of rib. ber in order to pay his obligatory tax. Is it any wonder that whole districts have been depopulated, that hundreds of natives die of starvation or exposure in the forest, whither ther have fled to avoid punishment? Consul Casement considers that the last decade hax witnessed a decline in the population of nearly three million souls, Tt is not sur that. refractory natives on the British border are terrifled at the threat that they will lo deported actes the fron
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.