It is by serving the cause of humanity and progress that people of the second rank appear as useful members of the great family of nations. More than any other, a manufacturing and commercial nation like ours should strive to secure outlets for all its workers, for those of thought, capital, and labour. These patriotic preoccupations have dominated my life. They determined the creation of the African work. My labours have not been sterile. A young and vast State, directed from Brussels, has peacefully taken its place under the sun, thanks to the benevolent aid of the Powers which have applauded its beginning. Belgians administer it, whilst others of our countrymen, every day more numerous, profitably employ their capital in its development. The immense river basin of the Upper Congo opens to our efforts ways of rapid and cheap communication, which permit us to penetrate direct into the centre of the African Continent. The construction of the railway of the region of the Cataracts henceforth assured, thanks to the recent vote of the Legislature, will notably increase these facilities of access. Under these conditions, a great future is reserved for the Congo, the immense value of which will soon be apparent to every eye. On the morrow of this considerable act, I have thought it my duty to place Belgium herself, when death shall have struck me, in a position to profit by my work, as well as by the labour of those who have aided me in founding and directing it, and whom I thank here once more. I have therefore made, as Sovereign of the Independent State of the Congo, the Will that I send you. I ask you to communicate it to the Legislative Chamber at the moment which shall appear to you the most opportune. [Illustration: European Houses at Coquilhatville (Equateur).] The beginnings of enterprises such as those which have so much occupied me are difficult and onerous. I have held myself bound to support the cost. A king, in order to serve his country, ought not to fear to conceive and to pursue the realisation of a work, even if it be apparently rash. The wealth of a sovereign consists in public prosperity; it alone can constitute in his eyes an enviable treasure, which he should endeavour constantly to increase.