(2) There shall be no change in those Articles of the Fundamental Law which assure to all religious cults equal protection and privileges, and guarantee the admissibility of all citizens, whatever be their religious creed, to public offices and dignities. (3) The Belgian provinces shall be in a fitting manner represented in the States-General, whose sittings, in time of peace, shall be held by turns in a Dutch and Belgian town. (4) All the inhabitants of the Netherlands thus having equal constitutional rights, they shall have equal claim to all commercial and other rights, of which their circumstances allow, without any hindrance or obstruction being imposed on any to the profit of others. (5) Immediately after the union the provinces and towns of (6) The debts contracted on the one side by the Dutch, and (8) The cost of the making and upkeep of the dykes shall be It is important to quote these Eight Articles in full, for they stand as a permanent record of the essentially good and fair intentions of their real author, the Prince of Orange; they are conciliatory, broad-minded, and painstaking in their endeavours to place Dutch and Belgians on an absolute equality of privilege and opportunity. The Eight Articles were not made public until a year later, but, after being approved by the Conference of Sovereigns in London (June 21), they were formally accepted by the Prince (July 21). The Allies had at the same time issued a protocol setting forth the principles on which they were acting. The first Article of this protocol unfortunately betrayed the presence of another influence in the words" elles mettent ces 1 See No. 26 of this series, p. 39 seq. and pp. 204-205. principes en exécution en vertu de leur droit de conquête de la Belgique." These words, implying that Belgium took her place in the new kingdom of the Netherlands as a subject province of Holland, boded ill for the future of that "perfect amalgamation" of the Dutch and Belgian provinces, which in the protocol is stated to be the supreme object of the Allied Sovereigns. On August 1 the Sovereign Prince, after his official acceptance of the Eight Articles, took over the government at Brussels. The thoroughness of the understanding between Great Britain and the Prince was evident from the terms of the Convention of London concluded between Castlereagh and the Dutch Minister, Fagel (August 13). In 1814, the English had possession of all the Dutch colonies by conquest from the Batavian Republic. Java, and all the other rich island possessions of Holland in the Indian Archipelago, were now restored. Ceylon had been ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, and the Cape Colony was retained. both cessions being due to the fact that these colonies had furnished naval bases for the French fleet during the revolutionary war, and that Holland was navally too weak to defend them.1 In the West Indies, Holland received back Surinam, Curaçoa, St. Eustatius, but surrendered Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, in which colonies, during eighteen years of occupation, large quantities of British capital had been invested. But these cessions were not made without an adequate return. Great Britain contributed £2,000,000 towards the erection of the new fortresses on the French frontier, £1,000,000 as compensation to Sweden in connection with the restoration of the island of Guadeloupe to France, and half of a sum of £6,000,000 due from Holland to Russia. The compensation in cash payment was certainly in excess of the value of the surrendered 1 See on this and upon the character of the Convention of London generally the admirable defence of England's part in the transaction, and of Holland's justification in accepting the terms offered, in Colenbrander's De Belgische Omwenteling, pp. 98-101. territories, to which, on the grounds of conquest and possession, Great Britain had a perfect claim. The terms of the Convention were as honourable to both parties as they were advantageous. (iii) William becomes King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxemburg The Vienna Congress met in October, but its proceedings were prolonged and discordant. Foiled in her effort to incorporate Saxony, Prussia sought compensation in the west. This led to an abandonment of the proposal of granting to Holland any increase of territory in the direction of the Rhine; and an understanding was arrived at between the Sovereign Prince and his first-cousin and brother-in-law, the Prussian King, for the cession of his Nassau estates to Prussia in exchange for the Sovereignty of Luxemburg, henceforth to be a Grand Duchy and one of the States of the German Confederation. This proposal had the serious drawback that Luxemburg had for centuries been an integral part of the Belgic Netherlands, and had no relations with the German Diet. William, however, had good reason to conciliate the friendship of a Great Power with whose ruling family he was so closely allied, and which would be his eastern neighbour. He wished, moreover, to retain his position as a member of the Germanic Diet; and his later conduct testified that, in accepting the personal Sovereignty of the Grand Duchy, he intended to treat Luxemburg simply as a province, like Brabant or Flanders, of the new Netherlands State. The deliberations of the Congress were rudely interrupted by the return of Napoleon from Elba, on March 8, 1815; and hasty preparations were at once made by all the Allies for a renewal of war. The Sovereign Prince in this emergency resolved to assume the title of King without awaiting the consent of the Powers. He issued a proclamation, as William I, King of the Netherlands and Duke of Luxemburg, on March 16, and called upon all his subjects to defend their common country against the enemy. The Powers raised no protest against the fait accompli; and the new kingdom was officially recognised on May 23. The King lost no time in carrying out the modification of the Grondwet of Holland, stipulated by the Eight Articles. He appointed a Commission (April 22), again under the presidency of Van Hogendorp, consisting of twelve Dutch and twelve Belgian members, carefully chosen so that Catholics and Protestants should have equal representation, and different schools of political opinion have their spokesmen. Theirs was a difficult task; but, when Dutch and Belgian soldiers were fighting side by side at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, the duty of completing it as quickly as possible in a conciliatory spirit was The powers paramount. conferred upon the Sovereign by the Dutch Committee of 1814 were left unchanged. The States-General was to consist of two Chambers the First Chamber to contain sixty members appointed for life by the King; the Second to contain 110 members, fifty-five each for North and South, under a very restricted franchise. No change was made in the autocratic powers vested in the King. The new Fundamental Law was adopted by the Dutch States-General on August 8, 1815, by a unanimous vote, but encountered strong and not wholly unjustifiable opposition in Belgium, where it was rejected by an Assembly of Belgian Notables on August 18. The King, however, overrode this decision, and on September 26 made his state entry into Brussels, and publicly took his oath to the Constitution. With this act the Kingdom of the Netherlands began its legal and administrative existence. The boundaries of the new kingdom had been determined by the Congress of Vienna in a treaty bearing the date May 31, 1815. It consisted of the former United Provinces and the Austrian Netherlands (less Luxemburg) as they existed in 1792, together with the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, the Duchy of Bouillon, and several smaller pieces of territory. On the eastern frontier, however, a number of border strips had been cut off from Luxemburg, Liège, Limburg, and Gelderland, and annexed to Rhenish Prussia. (iv) The Fifteen Years of Union. Belgian Grievances It is unnecessary to relate in detail the tale of the grievances which after fifteen years of union led to the Belgian revolt of 1830. They are set forth in the paper1 dealing specially with the history of Belgium. The chief causes of dissatisfaction were: (1) the unfair representation of the Belgic provinces in proportion to population in the Second Chamber of the StatesGeneral; (2) the bestowal of almost all important offices--political, diplomatic, and military on Hollanders; (3) the imposition of unpopular taxes in face of the solid opposition of the Belgian deputies; (4) interference with the education of the Catholic seminarists; (5) arbitrary and harsh press laws; (6) the attempt to enforce Dutch as the national language. These were real grievances. but there was something to be said on the other side. The Dutch claimed that (1) though the population of Holland itself was less than that of Belgium, account must be taken of the Dutch Colonial Empire, at that time the second largest in the world; (2) there were many more trained diplomatists and ministers in Holland than in Belgium, during the period 1795-1815; Holland had its own army, officered by Dutchmen, while Belgians, after the annexation, had served in the French armies; in 1815 there was no separate military organisation in Belgium; (3) the unpopular taxes fell just as hardly on the Northern Province as on the Southern; (4) the Clerical party in Flanders and Brabant was intransigent and suspicious of the motives of the well-meaning Protestant King; (5) though the press prosecutions were politically unwise and of doubtful legality, they were provoked by the virulence of the attacks made in news 1No. 26 of this series, |