to address a request to all. The important thing for such a cause is to make it popular. Help me, then, to make it known, you who have heard me. Repeat the details that I have given to you. If you have a powerful voice, if you have access to one of those organs that make and direct opinion, it is you in particular that I dare to address my prayer. Journalists, who among you has not, in a ministry as delicate and as important as yours, committed some errors that need to be erased? Whatever your opinion may be, since I am speaking to all, without distinction, on the one condition that they have the love of humanity, of liberty, of justice, the mercy that you will use, in sustaining the poor Blacks, you will obtain for yourselves, one day, from the Infinite Justice, mercy and pardon.

Today I have nothing but thanksgiving to offer to you, Sirs, and I offer them without distinction to all of those who contributed to the popularizing of our cause and to assure them of victory. The very day after I delivered my revelations on this pulpit, the Paris press repeated with unanimity what they had heard from my lips.

To the truth—as it happens in things in which the parties hope to be able to gain some advantage each for themselves, and in particular those in which the Church is mixed up un some way—attacks, inventions and even outrages later mixed in with these witnesses of sympathy and these first endorsements.

You have already read what has been written on this subject, as I have also read it; but if these newspapers, I mean the most hostile one, are represented herein this great auditorium, may they permit me to tell them that I only hold on to the immeasurable service they rendered to our cause. The conspiracy they could hatch against it, it was the conspiracy of silence. In a campaign like ours, as I've said, the most important thing is take hold of public opinion. So if you therefore wanted to harm me personally, Sirs, it will be eternally to my profit; but I thank you even more for having, in speaking against me, served the cause of the slaves. In the end, all this had its results in its time. The governments, solicited by England, could not resist the manifestations, each day more general and pressing, of public opinion.

What, indeed, did they do, the great powers assembled at the Brussels Conference? Those of you who have read the General Act know as well as I do.

In a word, the powers discussed, adopted and consecrated, in principle, all of the measures that in the name of religion, in the name of nature, in the name of pity, we have highly solicited.

When one knows of all the public or secret difficulties that are up against such a result, on cannot help but admire it. More than just man's work was needed for it. The hand of Providence can clearly be seen there. A Domino factum est istud.

When I first heard about the Brussels Act, which was graciously addressed to me, I received the news with trembling, afraid to find measure that were insufficient or perhaps hostile to the accomplishment of our wishes; but, after reading it, I wanted to read it again and, this time, I did it after praising God, whose inspiration led all of the powers, whether Catholic, Christian, dissident, even Muslim, after inscribing his holy name at the top of their work.

It was necessary, first, to stop the slave trade at its source, in the place where, according to the current terminology, human hunting takes place. The powers provided for this, in the Brussels Act, by ordering the establishment of armed stations throughout the area where this impious hunting is practiced, to forcefully repress the violence of slavery.

They did more, they sought to suppress the evil at its root, by henceforth prohibiting, as we had asked, the entry or firearms and powder into the part of the continent that is dishonoured by the trade. It was thanks to these things that the savage Arab and métis tribes were forcing the unarmed populations of the interior to submit themselves to the yoke, to flee into the jungles, to encounter flames and smoke there, until they ended up falling into the hands of their executioners; some, like the elderly, to perish, without delay, under the blows; others, like young men, children and women, to be dragged under the yoke to where the could best be sold. All this was, from the beginning, the work of firearms. I often repeat the words of one African chief, when a missionary asked him who was the sovereign of the interior of Africa: "Here," he said, "it is gunpowder."

The powers thus made a specific law: Without their authorization, neither firearms nor power can be brought into the interior of the continent unless it is intended for their own troops or to those volunteers that are helping them in the repression of slavery.

But law, even the best ones, can be violated; they are even more so by the cunning, the violence, the cupidity of the barbarians. The Christian powers planned for it. Each of these violations must henceforth be punished with the same severity as civilized nations would apply at home. Unjust attacks, hunting, kidnapping, odious mutilations that increase the sale price of the slave, will be chastened with the care of the powers in the same way that they would be dealt with in France, in England, in Belgium, and in all the civilized nations.

 The powers are charged with the execution in the territories that concern them; they promised to give their protection to all enterprises of societies formed for this goal, or individual initiatives.

It would nevertheless be to misunderstand the elevated spirit that animated the members of the Brussels Conference to believe that they stopped there. Alongside the necessary force to henceforth permit the free action and security of civilizing works, they called directly for these works themselves. They began by enumerating them: science, industry, commerce, teaching, and finally Christian missions, to which the powers permitted liberty and protection.

You have seen, like me, that our Holy Father the Pope, after having paid homage to the means adopted by the powers, of the forceful measures, I repeat, that he recognized and proclaimed, after the Holy Spirit himself, as necessary, reminding us that we have another duty to fulfil, that of making known the name and the laws of God among those who do not know them: Hi in curribus et hi in equis, nos autem in nomine Domini.

It was myself that he addressed in a recent Brief, to make known to all the Apostolic Societies who are evangelizing in Africa: Lazarists, Jesuits, Fathers of the Holy-Spirit, Franciscans, Capuchins, his desire to see multiplied, if possible, despite the difficulties of these sad times, the number of missionaries which is daily becoming less sufficient for such a great work.

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Such is the work decided on by the powers. If they hold to their resolutions and their engagements, and, to affirm them, it is still on opinion, on that of Catholics that one must count, there can be no doubt on a definitive success.

It will not be accomplished in a day, no doubt, and we can say that such an impossible result in this timeframe, on such an immense scale, would not even be happy for Africa, whose traditions, while secular, currently assure a social structure, despite their barbarity, whose sudden suppression would throw everything into chaos. The evil would be even worse than it has previously been. The principle is thus only poised, it is on the path of implementation; if it is maintained, as we have no reason to doubt despite the momentary abstention of Holland, to whom, in the name of the entire civilized world, we address a final plea, slavery will one day be abolished in both its domestic forms as well as its forms of trade and commerce in humans.

To better assure the end of so many infamies, our Campaign decided, following the example of what the powers have done for political sovereignty,  to divide the work and give a portion of it to all of the Committees.

If, in the political order, the powers had wanted to work together, without distinction nor partition, toward the civilization of Africa, they would have faced confusion, rivalries, sterile conflicts, and maybe even disorder that is worse than that of primitive barbarity. They thus wisely agreed to give proper limits to the action of each of them and a territory specific to their influence.Beginning at the Berlin Congress, the work is now achieved with none of the battles that, in the current state of the world, we had every reason to fear. Study the most recent maps of Africa, you will no longer find any barbarous region that is not attached to some European nation. Belgium began with its Congo; England, Germany are in the eastern regions; Italy in those of the ancient Ethiopia; France in those that were called to complete its domains along the Mediterranean and the Ocean.

(More to follow)

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