The actual sales show that
the government, over and above its own estimate of its expenses,
instead of losing, made from the _Domaine Prive_ alone $10,000,000.
We are left wondering to whom went that unaccounted-for $10,000,000.
Certainly the King would not take it, for, to reimburse himself for
his efforts, he early in the game reserved for himself another tract
of territory known as the _Domaine de la Couronne_. For years he
denied that this existed. He knew nothing of Crown Lands. But, at
last, in the Belgian Chamber, it was publicly charged that for years
from this private source, which he had said did not exist, Leopold
had been drawing an income of $15,000,000. Since then the truth of
this statement has been denied, but at the time in the Chamber it
was not contradicted.
To-day, grown insolent by the apathy of the Powers, Leopold finds
disguising himself as a company, as a laborer worthy of his hire,
irksome. He now decrees that as "Sovereign" over the Congo all of
the Congo belongs to him. It is as much his property as is a
pheasant drive, as is a staked-out mining claim, as your hat is your
property. And the twenty millions of people who inhabit it are there
only on his sufferance. They are his "tenants." He permits each
the hut in which he lives, and the garden adjoining that hut, but
his work must be for Leopold, and everything else, animal, mineral,
or vegetable, belongs to Leopold. The natives not only may not sell
ivory or rubber to independent traders, but if it is found in their
possession it is seized; and if you and I bought a tusk of ivory
here it would be taken from us and we could be prosecuted.
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