TOPICS OF THE DAY.
BELGIUM:
Fox many reasons the fate of Belgium must always possess high interest for this country; and the struggle which is at present going on in that small kingdom is of a nature to suggest painful anxiety. It is difficult for the foreigner at a distance to form anything like a positive estimate of the causes at work, or of their immediate effects, but some circumstances axe only too evident. A bill was passing through the House of Representatives to establish fresh regulations for charitable bequests ; an objection was raised, that the law -which the Radicals consider favourable to the influence of the clergy was incompatible with the law of 1842 relative to primary instruction ; and it was on this question that the contest in the Parliament turned. The Conservatives professedly appeared as the friends of freedom : they 'wished that testators might be at liberty to bequeath their property as they should please, for the benefit of the poor, of schools, or of hospitals ; and that the testator should indicate the persons to have custody of the property. The Radicals, who strove in the interest of popular education to put restraints upon the power of the clergy, and especially of conventual managers, found themselves in a minority, unable to carry the point. Beaten within the Chamber, they grew stronger and stronger in their language, making appeals to popular feeling. Tumultuous assemblages in the street became an accompaniment obligate to the debates in the Chamber ; the assemblages grew riotous ; the military were called out to arrest an agitation which was advancing from riot to civil conflict ; and the King prorogued the Chambers sine die. It might be inferred that King Leopold did not altogether refuse his sympathy to the Protestant Radical party, for the dispute did not begin upon this particular bill. Sonic time since, the clerical party called the attention of Government to an address delivered by Professor Verhaegen in his professorial capacity ; and the works of the Professor were imported into the discussion. The Government, in fact, was virtually challenged to restrain Professors of Universities from publishing works on subjects of science and religion. Although not repudiating responsibility in the matter, the Government refused the degree of interference demanded; but a hint was thrown out that the Professors would be more discreet, and the matter dropped. It was then considered that the Professors had not been supported by the Government so vigorously as they ought to be ; and the present bill certainly did appear to be a further step in the seine direction, strengthening the Priest party by opening some opportunity for encroachment. Such, in very general terms, is the nature of the conflict that now rages in Belgium ; and the circumstances of the day are of a nature to exasperate it. The working classes have suffered from the coincidence of dear food and low wages ; the kingdom has been the resort of exiled revolutionists, who ha' perhaps not much to do with the present conflict, but have unquestionably infused a certain excitement into the state of the popular feeling. We do not make the remark with any idea that Belgium should have shut out the exiled fugitives ; we are simply estimating some of the influences that are now in operation. The party whom we have called that of the Protestant Radicals is the more excited because its policy is identical with that avowed by all the advocates of intellectual advancement and political freedom in other lands ; while the party feels -that it is in a numerical minority in Belgium—a very small minority indeed, according to the mere arithmetic of the census. On political subjects it has had with it the body of the nation, for it has vindicated national independence and has assisted in the severance from Holland ; but it is now losing ground before the encroachments of the Papal power. It is probably this feeling which imparts a certain bitterness if not violence to -the language and bearing of the Liberal party.
Now the Liberal party of Belgium has reason to fear that its best hopes may be frustrated, its worst fears realized ; and if it is in some degree justified in charging the Court with vacillation, the Court might reply that it has not received the support that it might have expected against the overwhelming pressure of the Papal party. Pressure has been exercised systematically for a long time past, but we need go no farther back than 1814— the starting-point for a course in which the Papal Church has persevered with a success disguised but not neutralized by the vicissitudes that have since happened in Europe. At the-Congress of Vienna, the Vicar-General of Ghent claimed, as "essential to 'the establishment of the kingdom of the Netherlands," that "there should be a reestablishment of all the articles of the ancient inaugural pacts, constitutions, charters, &c., in whatever concerned not only the free exercise of the Catholic religion, but also of the rights, privileges, exemptions, and prerogatives, of bishops priests, prelates, religious houses, and other religious institutions whatsoever." According to the principle proclaimed at Vienna, the chief if not the sole duty of the temporal power in relation to the Catholic Church and its clergy was limited "to protect the religion and its ministers to cause the laws of the Church to be executed, and to punish act; from without injurious to religious society." We have pleased ourselves with the idea that opinion has been making great progress in our day, and has obtained a larger share of influence over political institutions and administration ; nevertheless, at the present moment we see the priestly power steadily advancing to consummate in Belgium the claim laid down before
the Congress of Vienna in 1814. Its advance may be checked for a moment by the demonstrations of the Liberal party in the large towns; but in a-country where ninety-nine per cent of the populace are Roman Catholic, and three-fourths are without education, the real power, the overwhelming balance, lies with 'the Roman Church ; and it is now calling up its reserves to overrule the Crown, the Legislature, the town population, and the intelligence of Belgium. There is therefore some reason to fear that the Liberal influence whioh has hitherto maintained itself and has even extended in Belgium may be overthrown. Is it possible -that we in England should be indifferent to such an issue ? Have we no concern in it? Is it for the interest of this country, in reference to political influence alone, that the outposts of spiritual, intellectual, and political freedom, should be gradually conquered by the enemy? We cannot but answer these questions in the negative ; and then we must ask, whether there is any probability of support for Belgium from without ? Is there anything that we can do -to better her condition ? And that question suggests another—what has our Government hitherto done to encourage Belgium in this long-enduring contest ? We have no official answer, but the answer suggested by the facts before us is disagreeable. Throughout many of the most important oountries in Europe the priesthood has been making exactly the same advance that it has accomplished in Belgium. It has done so in France, where it has regained much of the direct power over the spread of literature, the periodical press, and the education of the people, that it had lost during the reign of Louis Philippe. Among the untoward oircumstanoes of the day in this behalf, has been the fact that Louis Napoleon, either by the tendency of his own mysticism, or by self-interest, or by both, has formed a holy alliance with Rome. We have had occasion to explain how Count Leo Than has laid Austria prostrate before Rome. Even the Belgian Government has been drawn into the same track, and King Leopold marries his children into the French family ; Protestant Prussia coquets with the Scarlet Lady to secure her own Rhine Provinces. What, then, have we done to counteract this combined movement of the priesthood and the imperial powers ? We need not go book to the time when we indorsed the French occupation of Rome—that step which completed the Papal alliance of France, and which we find ourselves now so powerless to undo—if our Government, indeed, has seriously contemplated the undoing of it. In accepting the aid contributed by Sardinia during the war lately ended, it was understood that WE were pledged to give that Italian constitutional Government an opportunity of submitting the question of "Italy," involving, of course, the vitiated compacts of 1814-'15, to the next European Conference. In the letter we fulfilled our pledge to Sardinia at the Paris Conference, but the upshot has been a mere 'burlesque of good faith; and we have left Sardinia to struggle for herself against the Pope on one hand and Austria on the other. With reference to Belgium our conduct was still worse. Count Walewski obtruded upon the Paris Conference a question respecting the press in the neighbouring kingdom, utterly trivial in itself, and deserving only to be scouted by the representative of England. In terms' again, Lord Clarendon professed to repel any interference with Belgium and its press ; yet he put his hand to a protocol hinting an admonition to the Belgian Government.
Thus the power and the influence of this country have been administered on the Continent entirely in a onesided spirit. We are not bound to interfere at all, perhaps it were best that we should not ; but if we do interfere, we should not act to defeat alike our own professions and our real interests. As it is, we have not fulfilled the just expectations formed of us by our natural Mends ; we have not formally redeemed even our pledges in the alliance with our natural Mends, who guard the outposts of those liberties whioh we profess to be inherent in the institutions and polity of this country. We have been in the spirit as well as in the letter most faithful to all the alliances on the side of despotism, political or spiritual. The English alliance has acted like a turnstile which can be passed through in one direction but not in the other. And it has thus operated as an insidious and frail barrier to the encroachments a the Church ; it has been part of an irresistible and immoveable barrier to the advancement of freedom political or intellectual.
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