BELGIUM. 



79 



nial partial election to fill half the seats of the 

 Chamber of Deputies, which took place June 

 10th, embarrassed by an unfortunate financial 

 record and by dissension in the Liberal party. 

 In Brussels the Janson faction, which, besides 

 extreme anti-Clerical views, advocated univer- 

 sal suffrage and a revision of the Constitution, 

 broke away from the Moderates, who divided 

 the representation of the city equally with 

 them. The consequence was a victory, for the 

 first time in forty years, for the Clerical party, 

 which elected its list of 16 deputies by a ma- 

 jority of 1,200. The Clericals gained enough 

 seats in other places to give them a majority 

 of 32 votes in the Chamber of Deputies, as 

 compared with 20 majority possessed by the 

 Liberals in the late Chamber. Ministers Van 

 Humbeek and Olin were unseated. 



Change of Government. The day after the elec- 

 tion M. Frere-Orban and his colleagues resigned 

 their portfolios. M. Malou was intrusted with 

 the formation of a new Cabinet. The Ministry 

 of Education, which was created by the late 

 Cabinet, was made a subordinate department 

 of the Ministry of the Interior. The composi- 

 tion of the Cabinet, which was approved by 

 the King June 15th, was as follows : Premier 

 and Minister of Finance, M. Jules Malou ; of 

 Foreign Affairs, M. Moreau d'Auday; of Com- 

 merce, M. Beernaert ; of Public Works, M. Van- 

 denpeereboom ; of War, Gen. Pontus ; of the 

 Interior, M. Jacobs ; of Justice, M. Woeste. 



The Senate, which had a Liberal majority of 

 four, was dissolved and the elections appointed 

 for July 8th. Although the Liberals regained 

 the vote of Brussels and Nivelles, the result 

 gave the Clericals the large majority of 25. 



The Government inaugurated the new pol- 

 icy by ordering all legal proceedings begun 

 against communes for violations of laws relat- 

 ing to schools, charities, or ecclesiastical ad- 

 ministration to be at once dropped. New pro- 

 vincial governors were appointed, a course for 

 which the late Cabinet had been severely con- 

 demned by the present ministers in 1878. The 

 King was requested to dismiss the heads of 

 communes and order new elections, but de- 

 clined. The desire of the Pope to resume dip- 

 lomatic communication with Belgium, which 

 was broken off in 1880, was notified to the 

 Cabinet and an agreement made to that effect 

 soon after they entered upon their duties. One 

 of the first acts of the Chambers, which met 

 July 22d, was to vote an appropriation for a 

 Belgian legation at the Vatican. 



Baron Pitteurs, serving at the time as Minis- 

 ter to Stockholm, was appointed as the Belgian 

 representative at the Vatican in the beginning 

 of November. On the first day of the session 

 the Government presented a new school bill. 

 The principle of the act was to leave every 

 commune free to determine which kind of edu- 

 cation it would support. The supervision of the 

 state was limited to seeing that suitable school- 

 buildings with efficient teachers are maintained 

 in every commune, and that compulsory edu- 



cation is dispensed, without charge for the 

 poor. The appointment of teachers and the 

 control of the schools was transferred to the 

 communal councils. To the poorer communes 

 Government subsidies were extended. If the 

 commune establish a clerical school, where 

 twenty or more fathers of families object to 

 religious teaching, separate class-rooms and 

 teachers are provided, or, if necessary, an entire 

 school. Where the commune decides in favor 

 of a secular school, twenty families can demand 

 religious teaching for their children. In allow- 

 ing conventual schools to be maintained out of 

 the rates, the Jacobs bill went beyond the act 

 of 1842. Three classes of schools were defined 

 in the bill: 1. Public or communal schools; 

 2. Private schools ; 3. Private schools adopted 

 and subsidized by the communes. 



Of the votes in the city districts transferred 

 to the Conservative party in the June elec- 

 tions, or to its adjunct, the Independent Mod- 

 erate party, which decried the centralistic tend- 

 encies of the FrSre-Orban Government, few 

 were intended to upset the school system. 

 They were a protest against the new taxes, 

 the increase of the army, and the radical pro- 

 gramme of universal suffrage. The 16 Inde- 

 pendents and Conservatives of Brussels, who 

 gave the Government their majority, were 

 elected on the financial issue. When it was 

 known that the result placed a Catholic min- 

 istry in power, the disappointment and dismay 

 in the cities were unbounded. On the night of 

 the elections riots took place in Brussels and 

 Antwerp. Day after day the deputies were 

 hooted at the doors of the Parliament hall. 

 When the burgomaster seemed lax in sup- 

 pressing such manifestations, the Government 

 would have ordered out the military but for the 

 injunction of the King. As soon as the draft 

 of the new bill was announced, the Liberals 

 arranged a series of demonstrations with the 

 object of inducing the King not to sign the act 

 without giving the country a chance to pro- 

 nounce upon it by a general election. On 

 August 9th more than 500 town councilors, 

 among them 200 burgomasters, met in Brus- 

 sels to sign an address to that effect. The 

 authorities of all the cities and of 800 villages, 

 representing 2,690,000 of the population, joined 

 in the protest. 



The Malou Cabinet found themselves in an 

 embarrassing position on other questions be- 

 sides the educational difficulty. They were 

 unable to redeem their pledge not to impose 

 fresh taxes. An increase in the excise duty 

 on spirits was proposed, which would add 

 5,000,000 francs to the revenue and take over 

 3,000,000 francs away from the communes. 

 They were also obliged to entertain the scheme 

 of creating an army reserve, which the Minis- 

 ter of War agreed with the military authori- 

 ties in considering necessary. 



The crisis in the sugar industry prompted 

 the Government to propose a bill, which waa 

 adopted, for imposing a surtax on foreign su- 



