Amongst the innovations attempted by the Berlin Act was that which sought, by Article IV., to abolish all import and transit dues. Little serious account appears to have been taken—so far as the Act reveals—of the practical necessity for erecting and sustaining works of public utility to commerce, and the equity of imposing proper charges on the wares upon which the benefits of such works were bestowed. The absolute prohibition of import duties created great difficulties for the Free State which, but for the personal munificence of its Sovereign, would have wrecked a liberal undertaking, handicapped and fettered by the fanciful legislation of the Berlin Conference,—“Merchandise imported into those regions shall remain free from import and transit dues.” Fortunately the legislators of the Berlin Conference were not to become the practical governors of the Congo Free [Sidenote: A Temporary Experiment.] State, else they might have realised that the gravest body may enact farce and commit folly. It was the experiment of a new principle in colonial administrative economy which they aimed at, but there is a vast difference in substance between a mirage and a mountain. That there were misgivings in the mind of some members of the Conference as to the logic of driving traders into the Congo, on the one hand, utterly untaxed for the support of the Government and the security it afforded, while on the other the State was charged with the creation of public works and the maintenance of law and order without revenue, is manifested by that final clause of Article IV., which provides that “the Powers reserve to themselves to determine, after the lapse of twenty years, whether this freedom of import shall be retained or not.” In this case the Powers did not wait twenty years to revise their principle of free trade. Five years were sufficient to reveal its inapplicability to a new country, and the Second Brussels Conference, assembled in 1890, made of the free-trade clause of 1885 a clause allowing on merchandise other than spirituous liquors an impost not exceeding ten per cent. “It would never do,” said Baron de Courcel, at the Conference, “to renew the colonial experience gained in the sixteenth century, when colonies were brought to ruin by those who pretended to fix in Europe, from a purely metropolitan point of view, their financial and administrative system.” The experiment of prohibiting import duties proved, as already indicated, a serious hindrance to the economic life of the new State. That the experiment would not, however, be persisted in by the Powers, had been foreshadowed by the suggestion of Baron Lambermont at the Conference when he said: “It is experience which will then inspire the interested Powers with the most favourable resolutions for the development and commercial progress in their possessions.” There were, therefore, after all, men of practical political foresight at