These very same principles have been applied by the European nations which have shared amongst themselves the Conventional Basin of the Congo. The reservation of the rights acquired by third persons, the reservation of the rights of natives are stipulated for in our contracts of concession with a precision which leaves nothing to be desired. “The society having the concession cannot exercise the rights of enjoyment and exploitation which are accorded to it except outside villages occupied by natives, and the lands reserved to them for purposes of cultivation, pasturage, or as forest. The perimeters of these lands if it is a question of natives with a fixed residence, or the successive perimeters to be occupied or reserved if it is one of natives with a changeable residence, shall be fixed by the decisions of the Governor of the Colony, who shall equally determine the lands over which the natives shall preserve the rights of hunting and fishing. The lands and rights thus reserved shall not be ceded by the natives either to the concessionaire or to third parties except with the authority of the Governor of the Colony.” (Art. 10 of the decree of 28th March, 1879, on concessions.) These stipulations are the most liberal that could be carried out in a country where native proprietorship is not regularly constituted, where the land surrounding the villages is alone cultivated, where the villages are shifted about with extreme ease, what was field or plantation one year returning to the state of the bush in the following. _As to lands really occupied by Europeans, they have always been left outside the new concessions. What it has not been thought proper to respect is the pretension which some traders have put forward of being masters of what they never possessed, of trading in what did not belong to them...._ Up to the present I have spoken only of the concessions given on French territory. The Independent State has employed the same system. In a part of its territory it even inaugurated it. All that may be said to defend our administration from having violated on the Congo the principle of commercial liberty is, then, applicable to the Belgian concessions. [Sidenote: Grievances of Traders.] The Private Domain (_Domaine Privé_) of the Congo Free State embraces approximately one-fourth of the unoccupied lands within its borders. This is the feature of the State’s general scheme of physical development which excites its enemies to make many foolhardy assaults and become voluble with fallacy and hollow argument. It was created by a decree dated December 5, 1892. All the net revenue derived from the Private Domain is placed in the State’s treasury and applied to the payment of the cost of its public improvements and all its undertakings seeking to improve the condition of the native population, the facilities for their civilisation and the elevation of their moral nature.