In 1901, several of these companies prohibited certain English merchants, who had been established in the country upwards of twenty-five years, from buying rubber direct from the natives, alleging that all natural produce belonged to the owner of the soil. Goods were even seized on their way to the English factories. The injured traders complained that such action was not in accordance with the General Act of Berlin, the terms of which insure freedom of trade in the Congo Basin. They appealed to the French Congo courts, whose decision was in favour of the companies. Many judgments were pronounced, all of which held that the agricultural exploitation of the forests was an exclusive right of the concessionaire companies, and did not run counter to the provisions of the Berlin Act. These judgments were rendered by the Council of Appeal at Libreville, on November 27, 1901, the petitioners being John Holt & Company (Liverpool) and the defendants the Compagnie Française du Congo Occidental. In spite of these judgments, British commercial circles persisted in the view that the concessions system was a violation of the free-trade clause of the Berlin Act. The Chamber of Commerce of Liverpool took the lead in a movement based upon this view. On September 30, 1901, a memorial was presented to the British Foreign Office protesting against the concessionaire _régime_ in the French Congo, petitioning for an inquiry into its legality under the Berlin and Brussels Acts, and urging the British Government to insist on these Acts being respected by the French. A similar memorial was presented on October 22, 1901, by the Manchester and Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, and in December of the same year delegates from ten British Chambers of Commerce were received in audience by Lord Lansdowne, who, according to the Paris _Temps_, acknowledged that their grievances were well founded and promised to do all in his power for those interested in the question. At that time _West Africa_, the journal of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, renewed its campaign against the Congo Free State, accusing its administrators of being the principal sinners, inasmuch as the Free State’s land system had been copied in the French Congo and German East Africa. In its issue of October 26, 1901, _West Africa_ called the Congo State _fons et origo mali_, and declared that it was the Belgian clique which had drawn France into the economic errors of its present system. This campaign quickly assumed large proportions. _West Africa_ continued to wage war against the French system of concessions and against the Congo Free State, the latter being bitterly denounced as the evil genius who conceived a land system which supported the State without the assistance of large revenue from the liquor trade or the presence of intriguing foreign merchants.