The interest of the Belgian Constitutional Revision consists for Englishmen
almost wholly in the adoption or rejection of the Referendum. The proposal is, as we have before noted, that the King, who possesses a veto which he cannot use, shall in practice exchange it for a right of appeal to the whole body of electors, who may be asked not only to reject an Act passed by Parliament, but to forbid the passing of a proposed measure. The decision to submit the question to the Con- stituent Assembly which will now be immediately elected, was passed in the Chamber by 78 votes to 46; but of course it has still to be ratified by the people at the elections. The King is ardently favourable to it, and the Conservative Ministry ; but the Liberals dislike it, fearing the peasant vote, and many Conservatives, thinking its effect will be too clerical, ref use their support. We fancy the mass of voters will not see the objection, and that we shall see this grand corrective of representative government tried in a country where it can do no harm. We call it a corrective because it corrects a monstrous evil, the apparent popularity of measures which in each constituency are approved only by minute per-centages of the voters.
