The Sovereign and Government of the Congo Free State have stated over and over again that they desire justice to be rendered impartially, and that as it is necessary that offences committed by natives should not remain unpunished, so penal laws must also be applied to the whites who are guilty of illegal doings. The mere fact of having constituted a superior court of appeal with judges of different nationalities and of appointing foreign lawyers and magistrates as judges and officials of the lower courts in the interior of the country is a proof, and a more than evident guarantee, of the impartiality and seriousness of the judicial administration aimed at. The writer holds no brief for the Congo Free State; rather the contrary in fact, but in common fairness after a very lengthy study of its judicial machinery, laws, and decrees, and the instructions given to its officials, he finds it difficult to conceive what more King Leopold could have done to safeguard its internal affairs than has now been done—given the peculiar conditions of the country. The abuses which have from time to time arisen in the past have been due, as far as one acquainted with similar conditions in West Africa can see, to three things, viz.: (1) to the abuse of power by agents of the concessionaire companies before the State had fully realised the necessity of keeping a sharp control over these semi-independent individuals; (2) to the want of experience of early officials; and (3) to the lack of trained colonial servants whose known antecedents and constitutions fitted them for isolated and arduous responsibility in an unhealthy, tropical, and savage country. It is only right to add, however, that though isolated misdeeds may still continue to occur here as everywhere else, the measures now in force guard as far as possible against a repetition of the former regrettable occurrences, and where these occur the offenders are brought to trial without delay. [Illustration: Public Library, Matadi.] [Illustration: Soldiers’ Mess at Coquilhatville, (Equateur).] The native idea represents that of primitive society everywhere in the world, the European that of latter-day civilisation; and if this were always borne in mind, less nonsense would be written by those ill-informed sentimentalists who insist on treating the former on the lines of the latter. Nothing is more astounding in regard to the Congo campaign—to take a very flagrant case in point—than the utter ignorance displayed by those who, while violently denouncing every detail of Congo administration, appear to be totally unaware either of the past history of social evolution, of modern civilisation in Europe, or of the conditions existing in other African countries at the present day.