As long ago as 1897, Belgian statesmen were convinced that certain English statesmen, of whom Sir Charles Dilke was foremost, had espoused the cause of the commercial men of Liverpool and Manchester with intent to settle upon a purpose of hostility towards the Congo State. Whatever there may have been lacking to justify the Belgians in harbouring this belief at that time, intervening events have unfortunately confirmed them in their impression. Belgians connected with the Congo administration in Brussels still maintain what they said in 1897, that “there was a set purpose to create for the Congo State difficulties both in Africa and in Europe, to discredit it by magnifying isolated facts, and by preparing, under the colour of philanthropy, the moment when there could be produced the territorial and financial designs concealed behind that campaign. The plan is clearly traced. At the commencement a feint is made that the sacrificed interests of the native populations of the whole of Africa is the cause they have at heart, and the idea of a new conference is put forward. As soon as this idea has appeared to germinate and public opinion has been baited, it becomes a question of the Congo State alone, and the division of its territories is boldly spoken of.” On March 2, 1903, Sir Charles Dilke asked the British Government in the House of Commons whether it intended taking steps to procure the co-operation of the principal signatories to the Berlin Act with a view to suppressing abuses in the Congo Free State. In reply the British Government stated that it did not then contemplate taking steps in that direction. On March 3rd, the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Great Britain met and resolved to press their grievances against the Congo State upon the British Government. On the 11th of the same month Viscount Cranbourne declared that no action would be taken to interfere with the Congo State, as the British Government had no reason to believe that slavery was tolerated by that State. Then the Baptist Union threw in its weight on April 30th, and at a meeting held in London, denounced the concessionaire system of the Free State and attributed to that system all the cruelties alleged against the State. Meantime the British press, which reeked with stories of atrocities in the Belgian Congo, had not a word to say against the French Congo and that concessionaire system therein which was the Belgian system carried to extreme. At a meeting held in London on May 6, 1903, by the Aborigines’ Protection Society, W. H. Morrison, an American Congo missionary, from Lexington, Virginia, having returned from a visit to Brussels, where he had asked for and been refused land concessions to which special advantages should attach, delivered a series of complaints against the administration of the Congo Free State, and caused his charges to be telegraphed to the press of Europe and America. While in Brussels seeking extraordinary land concessions, Mr.