HISTORICAL RETROSPECT. 5 titude of peculiar evils, without enjoying any compensating benefits, by its association with France.* It will be conceived that, when the star of Napoleon began to decline, the Dutch waited only for opportunity to reclaim their ancient independence. On the 17th of November 1813, a junta of bold partizans of the House of Orange, at the head of less than 1000 imperfectly armed followers, proclaimed William of Nassau Sovereign Prince of Holland, in the capital of the Hague, and succeeded in maintaining their ground in spite of the French. In the course of a few months, the government was fully organized as a constitutional monarchy under the authority of William First. Meanwhile, the destiny of Belgium seemed uncertain. After Napoleon's abdication it was provisionally governed by Baron Vincent, an Austrian general; but by the treaty of London of June 1814, it was annexed to Holland, and made subject to the Constitution and the Prince adopted by the Dutch. This measure was taken without consulting the wishes of the Belgians themselves, being intended as the means of interposing a barrier power between the French and the Germans. It was not promulgated until February 1815, and in the ensuing month Napoleon reappeared in France. Of course, the Belgians had little time to express the discontent, which they really felt, in view of their new destination, although previous to February some efforts were made among the upper classes to be restored to Austria. In the crisis of the Hundred Days, the Duter entered with their whole soul into the coalition against the French, and the Belgians themselves were not backward in the great battle fought on *De Reiffenberg, Résumé de l'Histoire des Pays-Bas, tom. ii, p. 116. 2 their own blood-fattened soil. Its result was conclusive in regard to the union of Belgium and Holland. Steps were immediately taken to organize the new Kingdom of the Netherlands, in the progress of which the germs of future discord developed themselves with sufficient distinctness. The Belgians, although by no means unanimous in their own wishes, seemed to agree in aversion to the authority of a Dutchman and a Protestant. While no class of persons felt any attachment for Holland, the nobles were manifestly partial to Austria, and a majority of the intelligent and industrious of the middling classes were equally partial to France. They had ample experience of the advantages they derive from a close protecting system, with full access to the markets of France for the sale of their productions, and anticipated the decline of all their interests from the system of free trade, which alone could enable Holland to subsist. So that, independently of the terms of union, and of the mode of imposing it upon them, the Belgians were predisposed to receive with reluctance the sceptre of the House of Nassau.* First, the junction of Holland and Belgium was resolved upon by the Allies, of their own mere motion, and for their benefit, not for that of the parties to the arrangement. The Belgians were disposed of as a conquered people having no rights of their own, and as mere makeweights in the scale of European politics. Their union with Holland, and the outline of its conditions, was decreed in Paris and London in May and June of the year 1814, and the subsequent forms of voluntary organization were forms only, destitute of the substance of independent action. Nay, the Constitution, or Fundamental Law, * Grattan's History of the Netherlands, p. 286. UNION OF BELGIUM AND HOLLAND. 7 as it is called, of the Kingdom of the Netherlands was actually rejected by the Belgians; and the proceedings by which a rejection was metamorphosed into adoption are a curious passage of the political jugglery of those days. The Grondwet, Loi Fondamentale, or constitutional Charter, had been adopted in Holland by an Assembly of 600 Notables convened in Amsterdam in March of 1814, and in February of 1815 a commission was appointed to revise the Constitution, and adapt it to the enlarged state of the Kingdom. They made report in the July following, and William thereupon summoned a Convention of Belgian Notables, selected by himself, to the number of 1603, to consider the revised Constitution. Of them, 1323 assembled and actually rejected the Charter by a vote of 796 to 522, being a majority of 266 in the negative. Of these, 126 had assigned, as the reason of their vote, the difference in religion between the Belgians and Dutch; and King William deeming this an inadequate reason, decided that their votes ought not to be counted. Again, 259 of the persons summoned having absented themselves from the meeting, they, said the King, are to be considered in favor of the Charter, since they have not voted against it.Accordingly, in the teeth of the vote of rejection, the Loi Fondamentale was declared to have been adopted, by the same process of royal wisdom, which afterwards pronounced the bed of a river to be a chain of highlands.* Nor were the provisions of the Fundamental Law just and equitable in themselves, at least in the estimation of the Belgians. An equal repre *This decree does not appear to be printed usually with the Grondwet voor het Koningrijk der Nederlander;' at least it is not in my copy; but it may be seen in De Reiffenberg, tom. ii, p. 155, ! sentation in the States General, of 55 members In the Fundamental Law, imposed on them the people being thus debarred of those means of constitutional resistance to an oppressive government, which were indispensably necessary for their safeguard. And while the Belgians perceived themselves to be thus hampered by the provisions of the Charter, they soon had ample evidence how little their peculiar interests were to be regarded, although, to give the semblance of equality to the Dutch and Belgians, the States General were held alternately at Brussels and the Hague. GRIEVANCES OF THE BELGIANS. 9 It was a favorite object with William to impress on his subjects a complete nationality of character. Especially was he anxious to obliterate from their institutions every thing, which savored of predilection for and fellow feeling with France. Unfortunately for him, the French was not only the language of society and of literature in Belgium, but it was also the language of the law and of legal documents, the Flemish being in the condition of a patois, or provincial dialect, rather than a written tongue. But in 1819 an ordinance appeared, requiring the Dutch or Flemish to be used in all stamped paper; and this, from the universal application of the stamp-tax, was tantamount to excluding the French language from contracts and legal writings. This absurd attempt to change the language of the Belgians occasioned infinite distress among the legal employés, and great inconvenience to the whole people; and it was so difficult, not to say impossible, to execute it, that after the measure had been modified repeatedly by successive ordinances, it was at length wholly abandoned in 1830, when from this and other causes the discontent of the people had grown to be almost irrepressible. In In the distribution of public offices, the partiality of the King for the Dutch was so extraordinary, that, were it not vouched on respectable authority, it would seem scarcely credible. 1816,' says a well informed writer in the Edinburgh Review, 'of eight ministers of state only one was a Belgian; of 28 diplomatic agents, one; of 244 ministerial officers in various civil departments, 60; of 85 generals, 16. The officers of the King's guard were all Dutch, and so were three fourths of the artillery. Against a Dutch court, a Dutch ministry, an army commanded by a large majority of Dutch officers, what had Bel |