The articles which they objected to were those which guaranteed to all religious denominations of Christians perfect liberty of conscience, freedom of worship, an equality of civil rights and indiscriminate eligibility to all public employments.[36] To swear to the observance of such a law, the prelates declared to be neither more nor less than to exact equal protection for error as for truth,—and to countenance the admission to places of honour and trust, without distinction of religion, was merely sanctioning, by anticipation, measures that might hereafter be taken for permitting the interference of protestants in the affairs of the catholic community. The words of the Constitution established the unlimited exercise of public worship, “unless where it gave rise to any public disturbance,” lorsqu’il a été l’occasion d’un trouble; “but the bishops protested, that to give a power to the government to interfere under any limitation, was to submit the church to the authority of its enemies; and that to swear obedience to any constitution which presumed the Catholic Church to be subject to the temporal law was manifestly to subscribe to its humiliation.”[37] “To ascribe,” they said, “to a sovereign of a different faith, a right of interference in the regulation of national education would be to hand over public instruction to the secular power, and would exhibit a shameful betrayal of the dearest interests of the church. There are other articles of the Constitution,” continues the manifesto, “which no true child of the Catholic Church can ever undertake, by a solemn oath, to observe or to support, and above all others that which establishes THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS!”
This singular document bore the signatures of the Prince Maurice de Broglie, Bishop of Ghent, Charles Francis Joseph Pisani de la Gaude, Bishop of Namur, François Joseph, Bishop of Tournai, and of J. Forgeur and J. A. Barrett, the Vicars-General of Malines and Liege. I have preserved it and the memorial to the Congress of Vienna, as the most remarkable denunciations against liberty of conscience that modern times have produced, and a singular evidence of how little influence the example, or the intimate association of twenty years with the liberalism of France, was capable of producing on the spirit and genius of the church of Rome.
Its promulgation produced an instant effect upon the weak consciences of the people, which, for a time, was productive of the utmost embarrassment to the establishment and arrangements of the new government, as individuals were prevented from accepting offices, which were open to them, from a dread of the vengeance of the altar. Its mischievous consequences were, however, after a time, defeated by the temperate conduct of the Prince de Mean, the last Prince Bishop of Liege, and subsequently Bishop of Malines, who had not signed the document, and who took the requisite oath, subject to approval of the Pope, an example which was speedily followed by all whom the incentive of office inspired with a natural anxiety to avail themselves of so high an authority.
The King now administered the law with an apparent oblivion of every previous act of the Roman Catholic clergy. The income which was appropriated by the state for their support, was augmented at his suggestion, the remotest interference with their worship was in no solitary instance attempted, and churches were built for their accommodation in the poorer districts, to which his Majesty himself was a liberal contributor. For some years every pretext for special complaint was successfully avoided, and the country was too rapidly prosperous to be yet ripe for any efforts to excite abstract discontent. But, at length, about 1825, the striking results of the Dutch system of National Education, to which I have referred in a former chapter, were so apparent, that the spread of intelligence and instruction became too alarming to permit the church to be longer quiescent, and resistance was at once commenced, notwithstanding the fact, that the religious education in the primary schools was scrupulously reserved for the superintendence of the priests, and theology was utterly excluded from the courses of the universities, and handed over exclusively to the college of Louvain. But education, even under these limitations, must be instantly suppressed, or unreservedly submitted to the church, without any control from the ministry of the interior. Some concessions upon this point served only to give confidence to the boldness of further demands, and when these were resisted, every other grievance, civil and religious, having in the mean time undergone the necessary process of aggravation and distortion to ripen the passions of the “patrioterie” for revolt, the mine was considered ready for explosion, “and the whole country,” to use the words of Baron Keverberg,[38] “resounded with the cry of the priests, who filled Europe with their denunciations of resentment. To listen to them, one would imagine that the Catholic Church in the Netherlands groaned in the chains of an unrelenting oppression, and that the King had sworn to tear the faith of their fathers from the hearts of his subjects, and to hesitate at no measure, however furious or tyrannical, to “protestantize their country.” It is unnecessary to say that these were not only pure fabrications, “mere rhetorical artifices,” to serve the purpose of the hour, since even their authors now admit this to be the fact. In a recent publication of the journal of Bruges, which is devoted to the liberal party, it avows that William I. so far from being the “protestant tyrant which it was then expedient to represent him, was the most tolerant of princes, ‘le plus tolerant que l’on puisse s’imaginer,’ and only hated by the priesthood because he would not endure them to place the altar upon the throne itself, as they have succeeded in doing by the revolution of 1830.”
With this imperfect aperçu of the origin of the Belgian revolution, it is easy to collect its objects, its agents, and its effects. The union of the Liberals, with the priesthood and their followers, who formed the preponderating mass of the population, formed an alliance so powerful, that the whole strength of Holland was unequal to withstand it, much less the small body of reflecting and loyal subjects, who still remained faithful to the union and the crown, and who were not only overwhelmed by the violence of the commotion at the moment, but so utterly discomfited by its ultimate consequences, that they have never since been able to rally as a party. But the immediate object being once achieved, the union of the “clerico-liberal” confederacy did not long survive its consummation. The “compact alliance” between the priests and the liberals had been sought by the former only to effect a definite purpose, which could not otherwise be attained, the Repeal of the Union; and no sooner was this accomplished, than the intolerant ambition of the clergy, put an end to all further co-operation between them. The party of the priests had then become all powerful by their numbers, and no longer requiring the assistance of their former allies, they boldly attempted their own objects independently, and in defiance of them. It is rather a ludicrous illustration of their zeal and its aim, that among the crowd of aspirants who were named for the crown of Belgium in 1831, the Pope himself was put in nomination! and had the decision remained with the revolutionists, there can be no doubt that the Netherlands would have been added to the territory of the Holy See.[39] Before twelve months from the expulsion of the King of Holland, the body by whom it was effected was split into two contending factions, and, at the present hour, the two opposing parties who contest every measure in the legislation of Belgium, are the quondam allies of the revolution,—the Liberals, and the “parti prêtre,” the latter of whom have the decided majority, and rule their former associates with a rod of iron.
Every thing, in fact, is regulated by the wishes of that numerous body of the priesthood, who from their ardent exertions for ascendancy, have obtained the title of the La Mennaisiens, and whose influence in every family and in every parish, rules, regulates and determines every political movement. They it is who conduct all the elections, name the candidates, and marshal the constituency to the poll, and when I was at Ghent, the curate of Bottelaer, a rural district in the vicinity, read from the altar the persons for whom the congregation were to vote, at a pending contest, on pain of the displeasure of the Bishop. If the coincidence does not strike irresistibly every individual, who has attended to what is passing in Belgium, it is here again unnecessary to point out the parallel, between the composition of the two parties, in that country and Ireland, who sympathise in the principle of repeal and separation. In each country the majority of the “movement” is composed of the Roman Catholic clergy, and the devotees of the church, but in both their strength would be ineffectual, and certainly their object suspected, had they not been joined by honest but mistaken individuals, who, aiming at Utopian theories in politics, have been content to employ for their accomplishment, the aid of those, whose designs are more essentially sectarian, than civil or political.
In Belgium, however, the demonstration has been made, of what may be expected to ensue, should the project of Repealing the Union be ever successfully effected in Ireland. There, as in Flanders and Brabant, the priests and their followers would have the overwhelming majority; and caution or concealment being no longer essential, the triumph of their attempt, would be but the signal for discarding their allies, and proceeding boldly to the consummation of their own ambition. The union once repealed, the objects of the liberal protestants of Ireland and the Roman Catholic party, would be as distinct as the very spirit of freedom, and the genius of despotism could render them. The manifesto of the Roman Catholic prelates to the Congress of Vienna, and their protest against Liberty of Conscience, Education, and the Freedom of the Press in Belgium, made, not at any remote or antiquated era of history, but within the last ten years, sufficiently attest the animus in which their admirers and imitators would set about the regeneration of Ireland. The Archbishop of Malines would find a cotemporary and congenial spirit in the benignant prelate of Tuam, the pastoral superintendance of the clergy would be as vigorous in the elections for a domestic, as for a “Saxon” legislature, and as successful in securing a majority in the parliament of Dublin, as in the “Palace of the Nation,” and the services of the patriots who now shout in the train of the Agitator, could be as readily dispensed with in Ireland, as they have been summarily discarded in Belgium.
Were the union between the two countries once repealed, the union between the two sections, by whose co-operation direct or indirect it had been effected, would not survive it one single year—the influence of the protestant and English party in Ireland, would in such a conjuncture be as effectually annihilated, as had been the adherents of Holland, in Belgium; and the deluded liberals, by whose unwise assistance they had been overwhelmed, would find themselves in the position of the moderate section of the chambers of Brussels, the conscientious, but inefficient opponents of a despotism, more formidable than that they had overthrown, inasmuch as the tyranny of the million exceeds the tyranny of the individual, and infinitely more galling, inasmuch as they had themselves contributed unwillingly to impose it upon their country.
In such a state of things, it is easy to imagine the discontent and disunion, which pervades every department of Belgium; its trade and manufactures, labouring under wants and pressures, which the government have not the power, however anxious their inclination, to relieve; the civil grievances for the abatement of which the revolution was undertaken, only partially redressed, and in some instances, exchanged for others, the immediate offspring of the remedy itself,—and to crown all, the government and the country submitted to a religious ascendancy, which is as unwisely exercised by the party who have attained to it, as it is suspected and disliked by their opponents, who smart under its caprices and suffer from its indiscretion.
Even the very last act of the revolution, and that which might be regarded as placing the seal to the European bond, for its permanency, namely the ratification of the final treaty for the partition with Holland last year, seems to have only added to the existing insecurity; the leaders of 1830, loudly protesting against the assignment to Holland of these portions of Luxembourg and Limbourg, which have been decreed to her, and the mercantile interests, uniting in complaints, that the government of King Leopold, have been outwitted by the ministers of the Hague, and have not only submitted to surrender 350,000 of their already reduced population of consumers to Holland, but have ceded to her demands, which will inflict injury upon the navigation of the Meuse and the Scheldt.