66 



BELGIUM. 



asking your Eoyal Majesty, as well as the other Con- 

 federate Princes and Free Towns for their_opinipn, 

 I am, with the assurance of my highest consideration 

 and friendship, your Koyal Majesty's friendly brother 

 and cousin, LUBWIG. 



All the governments of Germany expressing 

 their approval of this proposition, the King of 

 Prussia was formally called upon to assume 

 the title of Emperor, and complied with the 

 request. (See GEEMANY.) 



BELGIUM, a kingdom of Europe. King, 

 Leopold II., born April 9, 1835 ; succeeded his 

 father, Leopold I., on December 10, 1865. 

 Heir-apparent, the brother of the King, Count 

 Philip of Flanders, born March 24, 1837; 

 married April 25, 1867, to Princess Maria of 

 Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen; has one son, Bald- 

 win Leopold, born June 3, 1869. A new 

 ministry was appointed on July 1, 1870, as 

 follows: President, Minister of State and of 

 Public Works, Count Anethan; Minister of 

 Justice, Cornesse; Minister of Finances, Ja- 

 cobs ; Minister of "War, Guilleaume ; Minister 

 of the Interior, Kervyan. Mr. Kussell Jones 

 was accredited minister resident of the United 

 States, at Brussels, July 14, 1869, while Bel- 

 gium is represented at Washington by its 

 minister resident, Mr. M. Delfosse. 



The area of Belgium is 11,873 square miles, 

 with a population, according to the official cal- 

 culation of December 31, 1868, of 4,961,644 

 inhabitants. Nearly the entire population of 

 Belgium are Roman Catholics, the Protestants 

 being estimated by Heuschling, in 1862, at 

 10,000, and the Jews at 2,000 ; the greater half 

 of the Protestants and Jews live in the prov- 

 inces of Antwerp and Brabant. The follow- 

 ing table gives the area of the various provinces 

 and their population at the close of the years 

 1867 and 1868 . 



The population of Belgium consists of various 

 nationalities. According to the census of De- 

 cember 31, 1866 : 

 2,406,491 inhabitants spoke Flemish only. 



2,041,784 



308,361 



35,356 



20,448 



1,625 



4,966 



6,924 



French only. 

 French and Flemish. 

 German only. 

 German and French. 

 German and Flemish, 

 all the three languages, 

 foreign languages. 



1,878 were found to he deaf and dumb. 



Although, as this table shows, Flemish is 

 the language of the majority of the people, the 

 French language has been for many centuries 



and still is predominant. Since 1832 there has 

 been, however, a "Flemish movement," the 

 object of which is to secure equal rights for 

 the Flemish language. The movement is 

 making steady progress ; the number of Flem- 

 ish societies is rapidly increasing, and in 1860 

 there already were in Belgium 76 political and 

 31 other periodicals published in the German 

 language. The following table shows the com- 

 bined number of Belgians speaking either 

 Flemish or German in each of the Belgian 

 provinces, and in the adjacent grand-duchy 



The public debt of Belgium, on May 1, 1869, 

 amounted to 706,446,214 francs. Although 

 heavy sums have been expended for railroads 

 and other public works, the aggregate indebt- 

 edness of the country is steadily diminishing, 

 as will be seen from the following statement : 



Of these 706,446,214 francs, 9,916,000 francs 

 were paid off from May 1, 1869, till April 30, 

 1870. The budget for 1870, as approved by 



* Each square in this table denotes 10,000, the black 

 squares being used for Flemish and German, the white 

 squares for the French or Walloon nationality. Of the 

 two figures given under Luxemburg, the smaller one re- 

 fers to the Belgian province, and the larger one to the 

 grand-duchy. The figures are taken from BCckh, fier 

 Deutschen Volkszahl (Berlin, 1870). They slightly diflfer 

 from the figures given above for the population of each 

 province, as they are derived from an earlier census. 

 The table which so conspicuously illustrates the numeri- 

 cal proportion of the two nationalities in the several 

 provinces, was kindly furnished by Dr. Edwin Leigh. 



