dated December 11, of which he and his friend Tielemans were originators, appeared (January 31,1830) in seventeen news-papers, for raising a national subscription to indemnify the deputies who had been ejected from their posts and salaries for voting against the budget.  Proceedings were taken against De Potter and Tielemans, and also against Barthels, editor of the Catholique, and the printer, De Neve, and all were sentenced by the court to banishment—­De Potter for eight years, Tielemans and Barthels for seven years, DeNeve for five years.  These men had all committed offences which the government were fully justified in punishing, for their language had passed the limits not only of good order but of decency, and was subversive of all authority.  Nevertheless they were regarded by their Belgian compatriots as political martyrs suffering for the cause of their country’s liberties.  Their condemnation was attributed to Van Maanen, already the object of general detestation.

The ministry had meanwhile taken the wise step of starting an organ, the National, at Brussels to take their part in the field of controversy.  But in the circumstances it was an act of almost inconceivable folly to select as the editor a certain Libri-Bagnano, a man of Italian extraction, who, as it was soon discovered by his opponents, had twice suffered heavy sentences in France as a forger.  He was a brilliant and caustic writer, well able to carry the polemical war into his adversaries’ camp.  But his antecedents were against him, and he aroused a hatred second only to the aversion felt for Van Maanen.

We have now arrived at the eve of the Belgian Revolt, which had its actual origin in a riot.  But the riot was not the cause of the revolt; it was but the spark which brought about an explosion, the materials for which had been for years preparing.  The French secret agent, Julian, reports a conversation which took place between the king and Count Bylandt on July 20,1823[11].  The following extract proves that, so early as this date, William had begun to perceive the impossibility of the situation: 

I say it and I repeat it often to Clancarty (the British Minister) that I should love much better to have my Holland quite alone.  I should be then a hundred times happier....  When I am exerting myself to make a whole of this country, a party, which in collusion with the foreigner never ceases to gain ground, is working to disunite it.  Besides the allies have not given me this kingdom to submit it to every kind of influence.  This situation cannot last.

Another extract from a despatch of the French Minister at the Hague, Lamoussaye, dated December 26, 1828, depicts a state of things in the relations between the two peoples, tending sooner or later to make a political separation of some kind inevitable: