Belgian Congo 43 CHRISTIANITY An essential part of the work of the Roman Catholic missions was the education of children, and for this special facilities were provided by two decrees of the State. The first, of July 12, 1890, conferred on the State the duty of educating and caring for children liberated from slave-traders, of whom at that time there were many, or abandoned, or orphans, or whose parents did not in fact care for their upbringing and education. A second decree of March 4, 1892, gave the right to exercise the same supervision over these categories of children to religious bodies approved by the State. The Protestant missions, with hardly an exception, declined to undertake this duty, which, as the children were only entitled to their liberty at the age of 25,4 raised grave problems, but the Roman Catholic Church readily assumed it as an easy and effective means to secure converts . The result was inevitable ; the Commission of Inquiry of 1904–5 made definite charges against the Roman Catholic missions, which , they stated, exercised constraint on their pupils by chains and flogging, allowed them to acquire no property of any sort, separated husbands and wives, and would only with difficulty concede permission to marry ; moreover they pointed out that many of the children alleged to be abandoned were really taken away or withheld forcibly from their parents or natural guardians, children in the Congo being regarded as objects of value and rarely, if ever, abandoned . The accusations cannot be discounted 3 on the ground that the agents of the State, who were certainly not devout Christians, disliked the missions, or that Protestant 2 1 Since reduced to 18 (decree Jan. 3 , 1911 ) . 2 Masoin , Histoire, ï . 362 . 3 As by Masoin . See Johnston , George Grenfell, i . 471-73 . The discussion of the question by R. P. de Pierpont ( Bulletin de la Société belge d'Etudes coloniales, No. 5 , mai 1912) is very unsatisfactory.