THE BELGIAN DEBATE.
THE Belgian Ministry,—which, as our readers are aware, is at present the Ministry of the Roman Catholic party,— in defending before the Chambers its policy in relation to the recent correspondence with Germany, has shown not a little anxiety to avoid the slightest display of official sympathy with the Catholic party in Germany and with the Ultramontane manifestoes of the Belgian Bishops. The debate, therefore, is very curious reading. As M. Frere-Orban and the other Oppo- sition orators are careful to point out, the Roman Catholic Administration is appealing to the country for support, not in virtue of its Roman Catholic policy, but in virtue of its spirited appeal on behalf of free institutions, on behalf of the right of expressing freely wrong opinions, and of conscientiously misleading the people ; whereas true wisdom, tact, and moderation would have enjoined, it is intimated, at all events Episcopal silence, and so far as regarded the German ecclesiastical legislation, if not sympathy with it, at least a disposition to depreciate its importance, and to deny the severity of the persecution it has initiated. Thus, while the Liberals give support to the Conservatives, they do so on the express condition that they shall represent the Liberal and not the Conservative creed in the matter. It is not because the Bishops have taken up the Catholic side that they are to be defended, —on the contrary, it is because they have exercised (inju- diciously) a right of private judgment which no free State can -afford to abandon. The Belgian Bishops have some of them been denouncing all Liberalism with the most terrible anathemas. Not the less the Ministry which the Belgian Roman Catholics raised to power are compelled to apologise for the Bishops not on the ground that they are right, but on the ground that they are wrong, and that by virtue of the Constitution which Liberal ideas founded, Bishops, like other human beings, have the right to be wrong. That is a very curious
line for the Belgian Conservatives to take. But they are quite right—politically speaking—in taking it. In the first place, it is a line which consolidates—for the purpose of this dispute with Germany—the Conservatives and the Liberals. In the next place, it is a line which disarms Germany, and renders it comparatively easy to deal with Prince Bismarck. To defend the substance of the Bishop of Namur's pastoral, for instance, would be to invite interference. But to plead that the Constitution does not allow of any positive control of the Bishops,—allows only of advice given somewhat authoritatively, against such pastorals as the Bishop of Namur's,—is not only a very tenable line even in corre- sponding with Prince Bismarck, but is one which admits- of any number of implied censures of what the Bishops have said. It was evidently a great point with the Chamber to -elicit this censure in as distinct a form as possible, in part for party purposes, but more for the sake of the country. To exonerate Belgium officially from any sympathy with violent denunciations of Prince Bismarck's policy, was even more desirable for the independence of Belgium than for the interests of Liberalism. But it could be used for both pur- poses. Plead that the priests talk folly, but that the Govern- ment are not responsible for the priests, and you give Germany no excuse to interfere. Plead that the priests talk folly, but that the Government are not responsible for their talk, and you give the Liberals the great advantage of quoting against you, for generations to come, the evidence furnished by Con- servatives against the Conservative policy and against the lead- ing ideas of that policy. If M. Frere-Orban could but in- duce the Government to acknowledge that Constitutional Liberalism was the only sound basis for government, he would use it against them long after the alarm about Germany has passed away. The Conservatives cannot appeal to the pro- tection of laws one day, and yet propose to undermine them the next.
Bub after all, though the Liberal party were very skilful and very crafty in their use of the occasion for party purposes, it is perfectly obvious throughout the debate that even they cared much more for the national results of inducing the Government to wash its hands of the Belgian Bishops, than for the party results. In every line of the debate we read the anxiety of the nation concerning its independence, and the subdued feeling that it would be simply impossible to retain that independence if the Belgian Government were to be- come for all intents and purposes the organ of the Ultramontane party in Europe. "Neutrality," said M. Frere-Orban, "is not a fortress in which one can so shut oneself up as to evade our obligations," and it was obvious enough that while, on the one hand, the Government said as much as it dared in condemnation of the Bishops' addresses and of- the violence of the, Ultramon- tane Press, the Liberals were most anxious to convince Germany that they had spread their shield over the Government only because it had thus repudiated the Episcopal attacks on German policy,—of course a very much more significant fact than would have been found in any like repudiation of these pastorals by a Liberal Government, had the Liberals happened to be in power.
The debate, too, reads to a foreigner not unlike a deliberate attempt made by both parties in Belgium to avoid a change of Government which would be ascribed all over Europe to German pressure, and which would therefore be nationally humiliating,
— the Conservatives going as far as they can in condemnation of the Belgian assailants of Prince Bismarck's policy, and the Liberals as far as they can, while stopping carefully short of an unpatriotic assault on the Cabinet, in represent- ing the Government as carrying out Liberal views, and as acting for the purposes of the present crisis not as Roman Catholics, but as Liberals. That a serious fear is entertained lest German pressure should produce some mortifying consequences to Belgium, is clear enough, It is also clear enough, fortunately, that the politicians of both parties in Belgium are Belgians first, and partisans afterwards,
— and this will probably enable them to tide over the mis- understanding with Germany, without allowing foreign pressure to-impose a change of government. But the Belgian incident is not over yet, and the sense of weakness and alarm may yet be too powerful for the sense of national dignity. Up to the present moment, however, the course of the Belgian crisis is exceedingly creditable to both sides of the House, to the good sense of the Ministers, and to the patriotic moderation of the Opposition.
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