36 
EUROPE AND AFRICA 
It was not until the Conference of Brussels in 1890 that 
any serious attempt was made to provide adequately for the 
care and protection of the native population. In the “Gen- 
eral Act,” signed July 2 of that year, the system was out- 
lined, by which the interior slave trade was to be successfully 
exterminated within the next few vears. It included the 
institution of an active military administration with a series 
of fortified stations and flying columns, and the establish- 
ment of effective means of communication and transporta- 
tion such as telegraph lines and post-routes, roads, railways, 
and steamboat lines. The sale of firearms, except at some 
central public warehouse under the control of one of the 
signatory powers, in the region between lat. 20° N. and lat. 
22° S., and reaching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, 
was strictly forbidden for twelve years. In the same zone 
the manufacture and sale of spirituous liquors were pro- 
hibited in districts “where — either on account of religious 
belief or from some other causes — the use of distilled 
liquors does not exist or has not been developed.” Those 
states, having possessions within this region not coming un- 
der the prohibition clause, were required to levy an import 
duty on liquors of 15 francs per hectolitre, at 50° C., with 
the option of raising it to 25 francs at the end of three 
years. This was raised to 70 francs per hectolitre for six 
years by the Brussels Convention of June 8, 1899. Yet the 
enforcement of all these regulations was left to the discretion 
and intelligence of the individual states, with no other in- 
centive to obedience than the code of national honor and the 
pressure of public opinion. In the protectorates of states 
like England, Germany, and France, whose governments 
of the sale of liquors and firearms on the Congo in 1885; and the Act of 
July 2, 1890, was not put into force till 1892 owing to the opposition of 
Holland, whose Government feared the new regulations would seriously 
affect the Dutch trade on the Upper Congo.