[Illustration: The Mission, Moanda.] From the foregoing and many similar decrees intended to secure the property and other rights of the natives, it will be observed that the administrators of the State consistently undertook to carry out all that was implied in King Leopold’s early declaration of his aims in Central Africa. If in the execution of the Congo State laws there has sometimes been laxity, error, and perhaps individual cases of perversion, the fact remains that the law is sound and the land system in respect of native possessions an equitable scheme devised in the interest of their general welfare and protection. The administration of the Congo Free State should be judged with due regard to the nature of its savage population, its unexplored territory of a million square miles, its early lack of organised governmental forces, the necessary newness and the rudeness of its civil institutions, and the thousand and one uncatalogued difficulties which must have beset such ambitious pioneers as that little band of Belgians which dared venture into an abyss from the safe walls of which Europe smiled derisively and shouted orders to the men below. [Sidenote: State Claims Vacant Lands.] Having provided laws securing to natives the lands occupied by them, and regulated the land titles of foreigners, the State declared as its own all unoccupied lands not subject to the ownership of the native or the foreigner. This governmental possession of unoccupied territory is not only sanctioned by the most enlightened laws of the age, it is the express duty of a State to bring under its care all territory which, if abandoned, might become the object of dispute, internecine strife, and sanguinary warfare. The very element of, and respect for, ownership of lands, chattels, or other objects of material value, preserves that order which all law seeks to enforce, for which civil society is organised on foundations of equity and justice. Was it not the very principle which actuated the Berlin Conference when, in order to remove the Congo Free State from the covetous rivalry of the Powers—their disputes and possible wars—it recognised the occupants of the Congo Basin and neutralised the Congo State? If, during the twenty years that have elapsed since the Berlin Conference settled the matter, the Congo Free State had remained in the position of territory open to the pre-emption, adverse possession, invasion, and trespass of anybody, the savage European war of words, of diplomatic missiles, or perhaps of actual arms, would have been a deadly substitute for the native savagery of the African black. Civilisation without property vested in the State or its citizens is inconceivable. [Sidenote: Various Tenures of Land.]