Undoubtedly there is great difficulty in avoiding friction with native tribes.  All Governments have at certain times and places behaved more or less culpably towards them.  British annals have been fouled by many a misdeed on the part of harsh officials and grasping pioneers, while recent revelations as to the treatment of natives in Western Australia show the need of close supervision of officials even in a popularly governed colony.  The record of German East Africa and the French Congo is also very far from clean.  Still, in the opinion of all who have watched over the welfare of the aborigines—­among whom we may name Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Fox Bourne—­the treatment of the natives in a large part of the Congo Free State has been worse than in the districts named above[475].  There is also the further damning fact that the very State which claimed to be a great philanthropic agency has, until very recently, refused to institute any full inquiry into the alleged defects of its administration.

[Footnote 475:  Sir Charles Dilke stated this very forcibly in a speech delivered at the Holborn Town Hall on June 7, 1905.]

Some of these defects may be traced to the bad system of payment of officials.  Not only are they underpaid, but they have no pension, such as is given by the British, French, and Dutch Governments to their employees.  The result is that the Congolese officer looks on his term of service in that unhealthy climate as a time when he must enrich himself for life.  Students of Roman History know that, when this feeling becomes a tradition, it is apt to lead to grave abuses, the recital of which adds an undying interest to the speech of Cicero against Verres.  In the case of the Congolese administrators the State provided (doubtless unwittingly) an incentive to harshness.  It frequently supplemented its inadequate stipends by “gratifications,” which are thus described and criticised by M. Cattier:  “The custom was introduced of paying to officials prizes proportioned to the amount of produce of the ’private domain’ of the State, and of the taxes paid by the natives.  That amounted to the inciting, by the spur of personal interest, of officials to severity and to rigour in the application of laws and regulations.”  Truly, a more pernicious application of the plan of “payment by results” cannot be conceived; and M. Cattier affirms that, though nominally abolished, it existed in reality down to the year 1898.

Added to this are defects arising from the uncertainty of employment.  An official may be discharged at once by the Governor-General on the ground of unfitness for service in Africa; and the man, when discharged, has no means of gaining redress.  The natural result is the growth of a habit of almost slavish obedience to the authorities, not only in regard to the written law, but also to private and semi-official intimations[476].

[Footnote 476:  Cattier, Droit et Administration . . . du Congo, pp. 243-245.]