ive
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
offi