THE BELGIAN ELECTIONS.
TAE Elections to half the whole number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies, which have just been held in Belgium, leave the relative strength of the Liberal and the Catholic parties substantially unchanged. The Ministers have hitherto had a majority of fourteen, and they now have a majority of twelve. The point on which the contest turned is said to have related to Education, but political parties in Belgium have a more than common power of quarrelling with nothing to quarrel about. In fact, it is almost a mis- nomer to call them political parties ; they are much more like rival theological sects. It is almost impossible in Belgium to get any question discussed without reli- gious considerations being imported into the contro- versy. At this moment, the extreme Liberals are very much excited about a project of reform. They complain that the electoral districts are so arranged that the votes of the great towns are completely neutralised by the votes of the rural electors, who are grouped with them, and that the tax- paying franchise is fixed at too high a figure. But the demand for a change in these two respects seems merely to express the impatience of a beaten party at the constitutional conditions under which they have been defeated. There is not even a profession of any desire to see the nation better represented ; there is only the perfectly natural, but not very statesmanlike, wish that the opposite party should be worse represented. Reforms which are avowedly undertaken to redistribute the balance of power in the community are naturally resisted with extraordinary energy, and urged with corresponding zeal. It is not probable, however, that either the extension of the fran- chise or the redistribution of seats would exert any very notice- able influence on the strength of parties. It may be irritating to the Antwerp Liberals to see themselves out-voted by the peasantry of the neighbouring villages, but the peasantry of the neighbouring villages must be represented somehow, and though the deputies of Antwerp might represent the opinion of the townspeople more accurately than at present, they would find their votes balanced in the Chamber by the votes of the deputies returned by those who had formerly been their co-electors. An old system of arranging votes may go on for a long time without change, but when something approaching to electoral districts has once been introduced, it is difficult to overturn it for no better reason than that you do not like the results of the voting. The effect of lowering the municipal franchise some years back was to increase the strength of the Ultra- montanes in the provincial and communal councils, and a similar effect might be produced in the Chamber of Deputies by lowering the Parliamentary franchise. The Liberals who are deprived of votes under the present law may have more political activity than those of the opposite party who are similarly deprived. But supposing that both are admitted to the franchise, the vote of a sluggish Catholic, who does not care whether he has a vote or not, but having one, takes care to give it as the priest directs, will go for just as much as the votes of an intelligent Liberal, who is eager to get a vote that he may use it at the bidding of some Central Committee. Under any circumstances, the broad fact will remain that parties in Belgium are very equally divided, and wherever this is the case, there will always be a margin of moderate men or trimmers who will be alienated by the violence of the party in power, and so induced by degrees to support the Opposition. Such small successes as the Liberals have gained of late years are probably mainly owing to this feeling, and there seems no reason to doubt that if the Liberals came into power, they would very shortly set a counter-process on foot.
It would be strange that in a free and well-governed country parties cannot live peaceably together, and accept the usual alternatives of success and defeat without having recourse to rioting, if we did not know that toleration is a virtue which is rarely found in combination with strong feelings about reli- gion. Toleration presupposes the existence of a certain sphere within which religion must not be dominant, yet from which religion must not be excluded. This latter condition is as essential, though not, perhaps, as obvious, as the former. The consideration to which, within this marked-off area, all others must give way, is the convenience of the community, and if religion is altogether shut out from it, the conveni- ence of the community will often suffer. Thus in Belgium, as in England, the school belongs to this exceptional sphere, and it is plain that no attempt to impose the teaching of any par- ticular religion, either on all schools, or on all the scholars in any one school can be permitted. But why, asks the Secularist in both countries, should not religion be left to the parent or to the priest, instead of being imported into the school, which is the common meeting-place of all religions ? The answer is, that though this may be a practicable solution of the difficulty where different religions are pretty equally divided, it will never be en- dured where any one religion commands a large majority of the inhabitants. If of 200 children in a village half are Catholics and half Protestants, it might conceivably be arranged that they should learn the " three R's " in common, and be taught their religion separately. But supposing that of these 200 children, 190 were Catholics, and only 10 Protestants, the parents of the 190 would never consent to forego the con- venience of having their children taught their religion at school to spare the sensibilities of the parents of the ten. This is precisely what happens in various ways alike in Belgium and England. In the one country, the religion taught in the parish school is that of the majority of the inhabitants ; in the other country, it is the religion of the majority of the School Board or of the school managers. The principle is the same in both cases. The convenience of the community decides that the majority of the parents, or of those who bear the cost of the school, shall be allowed to teach what religion they like to their own children, or to children whose parents are of the same creed as themselves. This sort of compromise is equally offensive to the extreme Catholic and to the extreme Secularist. In this country these extremes are composed of a very small per-tentage of the whole population, so that their objections only find expression in print. But if Mr. Chamberlain or Mr. Dale are to be judged by their writings, they would not allow religion to be taught in a school supported or aided by the State, no, not though the parent of every child within ten miles of the school-house held precisely the same doctrines. Archdeacon Denison, on the other hand, holds, if our memory does not betray us, that even a conscience-clause is more than he can honestly accept, since the clergy have no right to withhold the full teaching of the Church from any of the children who come under their influence. The parent may keep his child away from the Church school, but the parson must not allow any child that comes to his school to be absent from the religious lesson. Here we have, on a small scale, the very same convictions that are to be seen at work in Belgium on a large scale. As we have said, these strong feelings in England are felt only by the few, and these few do not move those who are less excited on the subject than themselves. The example of the Birmingham School. Board has not been followed, and Archdeacon Denison has found scarcely any one to share his scruples. But in Belgium the Catholic party is largely made up of extreme Ultramon- tanes, and those who are not themselves extreme Ultramon- tanes follow the dictation of those who are ; while the Liberal party is largely made up of extreme Secularists, and those who are not themselves extreme Secularists follow the dictation of didate opposed by one-third of the Convention ; but it is those who are. too frequently necessary even on the Republican side, where Whose fault is it that things have come to this pass in the managers are content with a plain majority,--a point, by Belgium, and that all distinctions of politicians among them- the way, as to which we were in error a fortnight since. In selves are subordinated to a distinction which is not political I the present case, • for instance, the Republicans, after a whole This is not a question that can be answered within the compass day spent in balloting, have been obliged to select the least of an article. The enmity between the Church and the prominent of the candidates before them. It appeared from Liberals in Belgium, as in France, has been fostered by ex- the very first that Mr. Blaine had the largest party at his back ceases on both sides. We should be inclined to say that, on in round numbers, 300 out of 750—and as long as the pro- the whole, the theory of the Liberals and the practice of the ceedings were public, his chances appeared to be beyond dis- Catholics had been the worst, did we not remember the acts pute the best. Upon one test-vote, indeed, the admission or of the Convention and the writings of M. Veuillot. But of rejection of a delegation from Alabama, whose claim to vote late years the Church has made one great mistake, which has was questioned, Mr. Blaine was joined by the whole Bristowe prevented her from reaping the benefit which she might other- party, and the total vote of 500 to 250 was received by his wise have derived from the growing disposition to live and let live friends as almost equivalent to his election. The ballot, how- which,with many exceptions is a characteristic of modern politics. ever, showed a different state of feeling. The managers for That disposition demands from the Church a very large mea- the candidates in the minority showed themselves singularly sure of abstention from politics, and even if the home polities stubborn, Mr. Blaine won over but few adherents, and at of Continental countries did not often supply the clergy with last all the minorities coalesced upon a man who was sup- the plea that they must mix in theta for self-defence's sake, ported originally only by his own State, Ohio. Even this was, the absorbing interest which the Ultramontanes have in foreign we are given to believe, something of a surprise. Up to the politics would prevent them from conceding this abstention. meeting of the Convention, the party managers, especially those A creed which makes the temporal sovereignty of the Pope a who inform New York, thought that if an outsider were to be part of the divine order of society is a creed which cannot selected, it would be Mr. Washburn, the American Minister at concern itself simply with the welfare of individual souls. Its Paris. Yet when it came to the ballot he had only three votes, members must take part in politics, in the hope that they may possibly because he was absent, but possibly also, as the Herald ultimately attain such a political position as may enable them suggests before-hand, because his name was of all others most to guide the course of Italian affairs in the direction in which detested by the men, half-speculators, half-politicians, who de- they wish them to go. It is this that gives the Continental sire to plunder the Union through land grants in aid of in- secularist so much more influence over the Continental dustrial enterprise, a wasteful form of jobbery to which Mr. moderate than his counterpart in England has. The moderate Washburn was known to be resolutely opposed. Mr. Hayes Liberal in Belgium and France is continually irritated by the was therefore selected, first by a majority, and then unani- intrusion of the Church into politics with which, except on the mously ; all his opponents hastened to give in their ad- Ultramontane theory, she is not concerned, and he listens all hesion, and the grand business of all newspapers for the the more readily to the argument of the Secularist that she next three months will be to instruct the electors what ought to be excluded from that region of mixed politics with manner of man Mr. Hayes is. As yet extremely little is which, on any reasonable theory, she is concerned. known about him outside Ohio. That he was bred a
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