3. Lands cultivated over at least one-tenth of their surface with food cultivation such as rice, millet, manioc, etc.; 4. The pasturage on which shall be maintained during at least five years beasts for breeding and fattening at the rate of two heads of large beasts or four heads of small beasts per 10 hectares[40]; 5. The parts of forests of a superficies of at least 100 hectares of a single tenancy in which caoutchouc shall have been regularly collected for at least five years at the rate of at least 20 feet of trees or lianas as the average per hectare.... In exchange for these advantages the concessionaire assumes charges which are not defined with less rigour: Fixed annual rents to be paid to the colony, share of the profits, 15 per cent. of the company’s receipts going to the local budget, obligation to float on the watercourses traversing the concession steamboats of a fixed model, all without prejudice to the payment of a security.... The British merchants[41] complained of being deprived of the rights which they had exercised during many years of sending their contractors to collect the caoutchouc on the lands conceded to the new companies, a dispossession for which they demanded reparation. The Court, after having ascertained that the English firms did not claim any permanent establishment on the domain conceded, non-suited them, objecting with reason that the State as proprietor of free lands in the Congo had the right to dispose of them, and that the long tolerance which the merchants had enjoyed for the collection of the products of the soil could not constitute an acquired right in their favour. _Beaten in the French courts, the Liverpool firms lodged an appeal before a tribunal where they were certain of being heard. They set in movement the English Chambers of Commerce, interested the press and public opinion in their cause, and made the British Foreign Office intervene._ I have always admired the ardour and solicitude with which British diplomacy takes part and cause for the grievances of British subjects abroad. The British citizen, as formerly the Roman, is assured of being protected and defended. I know citizens of other countries who cannot always say as much. The complaints of the Liverpool merchants furnished in their way a fine platform for diplomacy. The Congo with the guarantees stipulated by the Berlin Conference, should it not be the chosen land, the last refuge of commercial freedom? To the complaints of merchants established in the French colony were added those of the English merchants and consuls resident in the Belgian Congo. It was the placing on trial of the Independent State in its entirety—of its commercial policy, of its native policy, which formed the subject of inquiry in the press and before the British Parliament....