the subject, and with our own recollection of events, we will proceed on our undertaking; premising, that we are at present mainly stimulated to it by a recent article in an eminent English periodical, reprinted in the United States, which suggests the preposterous project of a reunion between Belgium and Holland; and by the accounts of a frustrated conspiracy for that object lately detected at Brussels, the chiefs of which, Generals Vandersmissen and Vandermeere, are justly stigmatized in the European prints as men without influence and of damaged reputation.

The whole range of historical research presents nothing so attractive as the early growth of nations, their struggles for independence, and their admission into some vast system of civilization. It is under those circumstances, almost exclusively, that the romance of history exists. The energy

and the ardor of men, the two main elements of that quality,

are much more frequently exhibited during the rise of states than in their greatest elevation or decline. Patriotism is oftenest found before public wants are merged in private pursuits, and while the interests of the country are so unsettled as to give to individuals no solid security for their own. As long as the higher objects of the general weal are unattained, few minds are base enough to turn into channels of mere personal advantage. At those periods selfishness has little time for developement. Every one considers himself but as a unit, of no value except as a part of the great whole. It is when the community is formed, and each man begins to find that his particular success has a direct influence on the general welfare, that, enlightened as to his importance but possibly deceived as to his motives, he insensibly begins to work for himself alone; and, losing the stimulus of public spirit, sinks into an instance of individual ambition, the aggregate of which is sure in the end to peril, and perhaps destroy, the state.

It is thus, before this period of a country's progress, that it is most likely to awaken the sympathies of mankind. The rude virtues of the Grecian republics in their early insignificance, and the bold integrity of infant Rome, have far greater charms for those who pause over the page of history, to analyze its effects, than the epochs of Spartan and Athenian greatness, or imperial dominion, when foreign conquest was disgraced by home corruption, and slavery formed a drag upon the chari

ots of triumph. The modern annals of the world forcibly strengthen the truth of these remarks, which it is unnecessary to illustrate by any particular instances, as an introduction to a sketch of one of the most remarkable social and political events of our times.

The establishment of a new and independent kingdom, in the very centre of European civilization, and close to the long existing monarchies, is undoubtedly a spectacle of abounding interest. The formation of Belgian nationality and the working of the machinery by which it is sustained, are therefore well worthy of the attention of us, the contemporaries of the great transaction, which involved in its progress the peace of all Europe, and may consequently have a considerable influence, though a remote one, on the interests of the new world as well as of the old.

It was those considerations which excited so many conflicting feelings in the public mind of Europe from the year 1830, when Belgium struck the final blow for independence, down to 1838, when Holland, her inveterate and only enemy, urged a last feeble effort against its consolidation. Had the local affairs of Belgium been alone in question, this general excitement could never have arisen. The world is now too much alive to the real nature of national interests to care much for what does not affect the mass of mankind. The best proof that it is of importance to the world at large to uphold Belgian independence in, at least, its present integrity, is the unceasing anxiety which the question caused during eight years in every other country of Europe.

An almost miraculous combination of causes tended to the accomplishment of this result. Belgium, during several centuries, had been agitated by that occult desire for nationality common to every people, and for the formation of which it contained all the necessary elements. The previous experience of unpropitious efforts showed the way to success through the medium of former faults. A long sequence of

subserviency proved the inutility of a reliance on aught but its own exertions. The country to which it last appertained, as a portion of territory, was neither powerful nor politic enough to resist a bold and well-timed movement. The incapacity of the monarch led the way to a junction, for a common purpose of relief, of the two great parties into which

the people were divided. The example of France gave the first impulse to revolt; her protection, a confidence in its progress; while, finally, the state of European peace, and the necessity of its continuance to all the great powers, secured a fair field for the operations of the newly enfranchised country, which demanded, arms in hand, its admission into the scheme of European policy.

The Belgian Revolution of 1830 has been generally considered as an event merely accessory to that of France of the same year. This arises from erroneous views of the nature of the facts involved, and extreme ignorance of the provocations which led to them. Fifteen years of bad government, resting on a vicious title, produced a mass of discontent, which only wanted an opportunity to ripen into revolt. Had it even not burst forth at the time it did, the causes of a revolution were still existing; and the explosion could not have been long delayed. Belgian independence was an inevitable necessity. The destinies of nations must sooner or later be fulfilled, whether it be for greatness or for ruin. Providence often works out its ends by mean instruments and negative means. But, the principle of independence once proclaimed and put into active execution, men were abundantly found, of power sufficient to carry out the consummation of what seemed to common observers an accident, but to deep thinkers a doom. It was thus, that, while the distinctive nationalities of Europe appeared merging into a common fund, so to call it, of general ideas, and respectively sinking or rising to a common level, a new people sprang forth, asserting their claims to constitute a state, on a title of inherent right, long disallowed and despised by European diplomacy.

Four centuries of submission to other powers, and the various characteristics insensibly borrowed from each, had given to the population of Belgium a piebald aspect, which led to a false estimate of its capacities. The Belgians themselves were discouraged with a belief of their own unfitness for independence. But if we consider their persevering pursuit of freedom for many ages, their vigorous struggles against each new foreign domination, and the unswerving firmness of their social organization, we must at once admit the justice of the claim, which they had the sagacity to put forward at the right time, and the courage to enforce by the right means. The obstacles to Belgian independence were manifold. NO. 114.

VOL. LIV.

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It is due to the nation, that we should appreciate the causes which so long retarded it.

The majority of our readers have, we doubt not, a general knowledge of the early history of Belgium; of its successive junctions with the three great powers, Spain, Germany, and France; and its more recent annexation to Holland, with which it formed the kingdom of the Netherlands; as well as of the main causes which led to the dissolution of that kingdom, by the violent catastrophe of 1830. Our present object is to give a faithful sketch of the Revolution of that year, and of the transactions which led to the present independence and prosperity of Belgium; prefaced by a rapid glance at its previous political struggles, which will serve to refresh the memory of those to whom the subject has not been recently familiar.

After having furnished to France the Mayors of the Palace, who formed the stock of the second dynasty, the Belgian provinces were partitioned out among the successors of Charlemagne; and Charles the Bald joined Artois and Flanders to his other states. This division was the source of a long series of misfortunes to the country. For the German empire and the French monarchy growing simultaneously into greatness, each took a position on this ground of their bloody and long-continued contests, beginning at Bouvines to end at Waterloo.

Had the fiefs composing the Dutch and Belgian provinces all along derived from the Imperial crown, these countries would have finally been formed into circles of the Empire; and, from the Germanic origin of the majority of their population, they would have gradually blended with the nationality of Germany, like the electorates in the neighbourhood of the Rhine. But Flanders and Hainault became from the first involved in the plan of French polity; and the ramifications of feudalism gave, on each new succession, pretensions to the respective vassals of the Empire or of France, to the possession of the numerous territorial fractions into which the country was divided. Thus it was that, under two opposing influences, the Low Countries long remained without cohesion, in spite of all their natural tendency to coalesce.

While the principle of social activity in France was gradually concentrated in the monarchy, it became scattered over the whole surface of Belgium. In this country of communal

privileges as well as of chivalric associations, the noble and the burgher grew side by side into power; without any third estate rising up, superior to, yet dependent on both, to establish and secure that political unity, which is the perfection of social government. Immediately beyond the frontiers were two great rival suzerains; within them princely houses and powerful corporations, but no royalty; that is to say, two hostile powers without the counterpoise required to form the "compound motion," which in politics as well as in mechanics is necessary to the composition of forces.

The titles of Counts of Flanders, Hainault, Luxembourg, Gueldres, Bouillon, and Namur and Dukes of Brabant and Zealand, glitter through the annals of the Middle Ages. But their rank and fame have been sterile; and their possessions were gradually merged in the sovereignty of the House of Burgundy, which had not, any more than they, the power to become nationalized in its vast possessions, acquired by a combination of inheritance, purchase, conquest, and spoliation.

The warriors of Flanders, superior in wealth and refinement to almost all the other champions of Christianity, bore their ample share in the furious battles of the Crusades, those impulses of fanaticism and means of civilization, but their native country reaped few of the political advantages which the influence of those events procured to other states, beyond the greater extension of burgher power, from the absence and death of so many of the nobles in the Paynim wars. Godfrey of Bouillon, Engelbert of Tournay, Robert of Flanders, Guy of Namur, have left the impress of their renown through the whole series of these fierce exploits; and many Flemish knights perished in the final struggle of chivalry, at Nicopolis, the last faint reflection of the glory of the Crusades.

The burgher classes of Flanders and Brabant flourished meanwhile in increasing liberty and wealth. Their workshops supplied the commerce of the world. The Belgian cities raised armies, more numerous and better equipped than those of the contemporary kings. The citizens treated on equal terms with princes; and the reign of the Arteveldes preceded by a century the monarchy of the Medicis. But all this combination of courage, industry, and power failed to produce that national unity, which required, in the then existing state of Europe, a sovereign dynasty, as a centre round which to revolve and gravitate.