Agriculture received equal attention.  Marshy districts were impoldered or turned into pasture-land.  More especially did the Maatschappij van Weldadigheid, a society founded in 1818 by General van den Bosch with the king’s strong support, undertake the task of reclaiming land with the special aim of relieving poverty.  No less zealous was the king for the prosperity of Belgian industries; Ghent with its cotton factories and sugar refineries, Tournai with its porcelain industry, and Liege with its hardware, all were the objects of royal interest.  The great machine factory at Seraing near Liege under the management of an Englishman, Cockerill, owed its existence to the king.  Nor was William’s care only directed to the material interests of his people.  In 1815 the University at Utrecht was restored; and in Belgium, besides Louvain, two new foundations for higher education were in 1816 created at Ghent and Liege.  Royal Academies of the Arts were placed at Amsterdam and Antwerp, which were to bear good fruit.  His attention was also given to the much-needed improvement of primary education, which in the south was almost non-existent in large parts of the country.  Here the presence of a number of illiterate dialects was a great obstacle and was the cause of the unfortunate effort to make literary Dutch into a national language for his whole realm.

Nevertheless the king’s political mistakes (of which the attempted compulsory use of Dutch was one) rendered all his thoughtful watchfulness over his people’s welfare unavailing.  Great as were the autocratic powers conferred upon the sovereign, he overstepped them.  Plans, in which he was interested, he carried out without consulting the States-General.  His ministers he regarded as bound to execute his orders.  If their views differed from his, they were dismissed.  This was the fate even of Van Hogendorp, to whom he owed so much; Roell and Falck also had to make way for less competent but more obsequious ministers.

The chief difficulty with which the king had to contend throughout this period was the ceaseless and irreconcilable opposition of the Catholic hierarchy and clergy to the principle of absolute religious equality established by the Fundamental Law (Articles CXC-CXCIII).  Their leader, Maurice de Broglie, Bishop of Ghent, actually published a jugement doctrinal in which he declared that the taking of the oath to the Constitution was an act of treason to the Catholic Church.  In this defiance to the government he had the support of the Pope, who only permitted the Count de Mean to take the oath on his appointment to the Archbishopric of Malines on the understanding that he held Articles CXC-CXCIII to refer only to civil matters.  From this time to take the oath “dans le sens de M. Mean” became with the ultra-clerical party a common practice.