Belgium, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Sir James Emerson Tennent

BRUSSELS.

EFFECTS OF THE REPEAL OF THE UNION WITH HOLLAND.

The Belgian revolution has produced no man of leading genius—The present ministry—M. Rogier—M. Liedtz, the Minister of the Interior—An interview at the Home Office—Project of steam navigation between Belgium and the United States—Freedom of political discussion in Belgium—Character of King Leopold—Public feeling in Brussels—The original union of Holland and Belgium apparently desirable—Commercial obstacles—Obstinacy of the King of Holland—Anecdote of the King of Prussia—The extraordinary care of the King for manufactures—Prosperous condition of Belgium under Holland—Les Griefs Belges—Singular coincidence between the proceedings of the repealers in Ireland and the repealers in Belgium—Ambition for separate nationality—Imposition of the Dutch language unwise—Abolition of trial by jury—Now disliked by the Belgians themselves—Financial grievances—Inequality of representation—Conduct of the Roman Catholics—Hatred of toleration—Attachment of the clergy to Austria—Remarkable manifesto of the clergy to the Congress of Vienna—Resistance to liberty of conscience, and freedom of the press—Demand for tithes—Resistance of the priests to the toleration of Protestants—The official oath—Protest of the Roman Catholic Bishops against freedom of opinion and education by the State—Perfect impartiality of the Sovereign—Resistance of the priesthood—The Revolution—Union of the Liberals and Roman Catholics—Intolerant ambition of the clergy—Separation of the Clerico-liberal party—Present state of parties in the legislature—Unconstitutional ascendancy of the priests—State of public feeling—Universal disaffection—Curious list of candidates for the crown of Belgium in 1831—“La Belgique de Leopold,” its treasonable publications—Future prospects uncertain—Vain attempts to remedy the evils of the revolution—Connexion with the Prussian League refused—Impossibility of an union with Austria or Prussia—Union with France impracticable—Partition of Belgium with the surrounding states—Possible restoration of the House of Nassau, in the event of any fresh disturbance.

We this morning paid a visit to M. Liedtz, the minister of the interior, in his hotel at the “Palais de la Nation.” It is rather remarkable that neither the actual eruption of the revolution nor its subsequent influence, has been sufficient to draw forth any individual of leading genius, to give a complexion to the policy of the new state. The actors who have played the most prominent rôle during the last ten years have been a few of the ancient Catholic noblesse, whose titles gave éclat to the movement, but who have long since withdrawn into retirement, or ceased to take a lead in the administration—and the body of lawyers whose professional aptitude to promote or profit by any change, has enabled them to step over the heads of their less adroit, but not less qualified associates, and to appropriate to themselves the “loaves and fishes” of office. Lastly, there were “the masses” whose impetuosity achieved the revolution, the “patrioterie” who form the tools of every revolution to be worked for the benefit of their more clear sighted superiors. But the daring spirits of 1830 have all disappeared; the present times do not require such fiery agents; the violence which effects a revolution, must be the first thing to be got rid of by those who would perpetuate it, and who speedily learn to exchange the exciting demand of “delenda est Carthago,” for the milder supplication of “panem et Circenses.” In this way the Masaniello of the revolution, M. de Potter, having been given to comprehend that his services had been rendered, and his presence no longer desirable, has long since withdrawn himself to ponder over, and, it is even added, to regret the events of 1830; but certainly to lament, in strong terms, his disappointment at their practical results.

The present ministry did not, from all we could observe, command the confidence of their fellow citizens, nor do I recollect any one of them spoken of without a reference to some incapacity or disqualification for the office. M. Rogier, the minister of public works, had been a third or fourth rate barrister at Liege, and eked out an insufficient professional income by delivering lectures on French literature. His daring and energetic share in the events which displaced the old dynasty, recommended him to employment under the new, but the office assigned to him, that of the interior, involving the guardianship of trade and manufactures, was one for which he was little suited, either by education or taste, and he utterly destroyed the confidence of the merchants and mill owners, by avowing in one of his addresses to them, that they must be prepared to see “commerce die a lingering death,” if it were conducive to the permanence of the new order of things. M. Liedtz, with whom we had an interview this morning, had, like M. Rogier, been a lawyer, but of some standing and eminence in his profession. He had been, we heard, unfavourable to the revolution at its first out-break, but his talents speedily recommended him to the notice of the new authorities, who promoted him to be judge in the district of Antwerp, whence he was transferred to his present office on the removal of M. Rogier, to that of public works. He received us in a suite of very elegant apartments, much superior to those with which our own ministers are accommodated in Downing Street. He is a native of Audenarde, of humble parentage, but of considerable practical acquirements, especially on agricultural matters. He received us most affably, and after some conversation on commercial subjects, reverted at once to his own hobby, by asking after the progress of agriculture in Great Britain. The object of greatest interest with us was the duty which it had been announced that it was in contemplation by the government to impose upon the export of flax, and to which I have before alluded as the extraordinary expedient suggested by the agricultural members of the chambers, in order to protect the hand spinners from being superseded by machinery. The minister seemed fully to understand the absurdity of the suggestion, but still admitted that the “pressure from without” might compel him to introduce a bill upon the subject. He informed us, that a negociation has just been concluded with some speculators in the United States, supported by the Belgian government, with a view to running a line of steam-packets of great power from New York and Philadelphia to Antwerp and Ostend, touching at one of the southern ports of England, and thus it was expected securing a share of the passenger trade, as well as opening, by degrees, a market for Belgian produce in the United States.

One thing, in Belgium, I cannot but allude to as characteristic—the unrestrained freedom with which every individual discusses politics, and the unreserved candour and frankness with which each details his views and strictures. This is the more remarkable, because the universal tenor of opinion is, if not directly to complain, at least, to admit the existence of much cause for complaint. I never met with less bigotted politicians, and I have not seen a single individual, whom I would designate a party-man, in the English acceptation of the term, that is one who finds all right, or all wrong, precisely as the party with whom he sympathises be censured or lauded by the inference. But the fact is, there are no “optimists” in Belgium as yet, and there is so much that is unsatisfactory in every department, that the consciousness of it forces itself upon the conviction, if not the admission of every individual. The press, too, is equally unreserved, and in the shops of the booksellers, we found numbers of publications devoted to the exposure of the present condition of the country.

Still no creature, not even the most violent partisan of the House of Nassau whom I have met with, includes King Leopold in the scope of his censures. The revolution itself, its immediate agents and its consequences are the objects of their condemnation; but no one of the results from which they suffer, is ascribed to the influence or interference of the King. Those who regret the expulsion of the King of Holland, look upon King Leopold merely as his involuntary successor, and whilst they condemn the incapacity of his ministers, and the violence of the party in the house and in the country by whom they are controlled—all seemed to regard the King as only borne upon a tide of circumstances, which he is equally unable with them to resist or direct. His fondness for locomotion, his frequent visits to England and journeys to Paris, were the subject of good humoured badinage, and have procured him the titles of “le roi voyageur,” and “l’estafette nomade.” “Il s’amuse,” said an intelligent Belgian, when I asked him what share the King took in politics, “he goes out of the way to Wiesbaden, and leaves things very much to themselves, or, what is nearly the same thing to his ministers.”

In Brussels, of course, we found the revolution still popular; its population were the first to promote, and are the last to regret it. But it is an inland town, the residence of the court and the nobles, unconnected either with manufactures or commerce, and its shopkeepers have not suffered by the change, which has affected the prosperity of the trading districts. Equally independent of the loom and the sail, they only hear of the embarrassments of others, as a sound from a distance. Their intercourse is with the wealthy, who are congregated round the seat of the legislation and the palace of the sovereign; as yet their pursuits have not been affected by the diminished resources of the middle and labouring classes, and besides the constant passage of strangers, as well as the permanent residence of some thousands of English and other wealthy foreigners, is a permanent source of income. But, throughout the country and in the provincial towns, we met with but one feeling of keen discontent with the result of the revolution, and alarm for the condition and prospects of the country.

That the union of Belgium with Holland in 1815 was one conceived, less with an eye to the interests of the two countries, than in an anxiety for the erection of a substantial power in that precise locality, as a security for the peace of Europe, is admitted by all engaged in its actual arrangements; but it is equally admitted, that whatever discordances there might have existed at the time between the feelings, the peculiarities and the interests of the two states, they presented no permanent obstacle to that “complete and intimate fusion” of the two people, which was ultimately anticipated by the Congress of Vienna. It was in order to erect the new kingdom into a state of adequate importance, that England, in addition to concurring in the restoration of the ancient Netherlands of Charles V, divested herself of a portion of her colonial conquests during the war to re-annex them to Holland, thus feeding the national resources of both sections of the new alliance—the Belgian by an outlet for its manufactures, and the Dutch by a carrying trade for their shipping.

The union, too, was a natural one, not only geographically, but intrinsically. Belgium had been compelled to become a manufacturing country by the closing of the Scheldt, at the treaty of Munster which ended the Thirty years’ war in 1648, one of those unnatural acts of state policy, that seems almost an impious interference with the benevolence of providence; and which by annihilating this noble river for all purposes of trade, had the contemplated effect of driving commerce to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, thus constraining the Belgians to betake themselves to industry and handicrafts at home. With such elasticity did they conform to this necessity, that when the unnatural embargo was taken off by the progress of the French in 1794, the energies and genius of the population had made such a decided development, that they were not to be seduced back into their old pursuits of traffic, and the manufactures of Belgium continued to prosper under “the continental system” of Napoleon, down to the period of the general peace. Holland, on the contrary, with her hands fully employed by her shipping and her trade, and possessing no mines of iron or coal, had never either the inducement or the temptation to become a manufacturing country, so that nothing could apparently be more happy, than the union of one producing nation all alive with machinery, with its neighbour proportionably rich in shipping; and to open to both an extensive colonial territory, whose population the merchantmen of the one could supply with the produce of the other.