PALACE OF JUSTICE, OR PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS, AT BRUSSELS
Religion and Education.—Almost all the inhabitants of Belgium are Roman Catholics, though complete liberty and social equality is allowed to all religious confessions. Education is not yet generally diffused through the population, and was, until recently, almost entirely in the hands of the Roman Catholic clergy. There are state universities at Ghent and Liège, an independent liberal university at Brussels, and a Catholic university at Louvain.
Products and Industries.—About a fourth of all the inhabitants of Belgium are occupied in agriculture. Besides wheat, rye, and oats, hops are cultivated on a large scale, for export chiefly to France and England. Beetroot for the sugar factories, of which there are over a hundred in the country, is also a large crop, and flax is largely grown in the Flemish lowlands.
Two great coalfields extend across the central part of the country from west to east, along the valleys of the Meuse, but Belgium is essentially a manufacturing country, and it is largely dependent upon foreign supplies for its food. The mineral kingdom yields, beside coal, iron, zinc, lead and copper. The leading industries are collieries, quarries, and metal, glass, textiles, lace, flour and starch mills, sugar, distilleries, breweries, etc.
Government.—On the re-arrangement of European affairs, after the fall of Napoleon, Holland and Belgium were formed into the ill-assorted kingdom of the Netherlands under the family of Orange. The differences between the northern and southern divisions in race and language, in history, religion, and customs, proved too great.
In 1830 Belgium separated from Holland, and her neutrality was guaranteed by a conference of the European Powers, and by a further treaty, in 1839, signed by Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, the Netherlands, and Russia.
The Belgium constitution of 1831 jointly vests the legislative power in the king, the Senate, and the Chamber of Representatives. The one hundred and ten senators (with the exception of twenty-seven elected by the provincial councils) and one hundred and sixty-six representatives are elected by the people, the former for eight, the latter for four years. Universal male suffrage, with plural voting up to three votes by property and educational qualifications, was introduced by the electoral law of 1894, proportional representation being secured by an act of 1900. There are in addition representative Provincial and Communal Councils.
Cities.—Brussels, population, 1910, with suburbs, 720,347 inhabitants, is the capital. Other towns with over 100,000 inhabitants are Antwerp, the chief port (320,650 exclusive of suburbs); Ghent (165,149), the center of the iron industry, which has also large cotton and flax spinning mills, and is the second port of importance after Antwerp, while its flower shows are famous; and Liège (174,768).
Its great harbor and commercial city is Antwerp, a strongly fortified city on the Scheldt. The other harbors are Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Nieuport, Blankenberg, and Zeebrugge.
Antwerp, the principal fortress, and Liège and Namur, also fortified, were designed to afford military protection on the line of the Meuse against a violation of neutrality by either France or Germany.