ation."[1]
In the Low Countries religion has up to the present been a stronger
nation-making force than nationality. Three nationalities, each with its
own language, live there side by side,--the Dutch, the Flemings, and the
Walloons; but of these the Dutch and the Flemings are very closely allied
racially, Flemish being only a slight variant of the Dutch language. It
would therefore seem natural on the face of it that these two sections
would amalgamate together, leaving the Walloons to attach themselves
to their French cousins. That it is not so is due to the fact that the
Flemings and the Dutch are adherents of two different and mutually hostile
creeds, and that this distinction in their faith has been stamped upon
the national memories by the whole history of their past. Holland, the
stronghold of Calvinism, had at the end of the sixteenth century thrown off
the yoke of Catholic Spain and asserted its independence, while the Belgic
provinces, after Alva had cruelly crushed out such Protestantism as existed
among their peoples, returned to the faith and the allegiance of their
fathers, and remained part of the Hapsburg inheritance until the Congress
of Vienna. Thus the cleavage between Protestantism and Catholicism has made
two nations out of one Low German nationality in the Netherlands, as it
threatens to do with one Celtic nationality in Ireland. On the other hand,
their common Catholic faith has welded Flemings and Walloons together,
making one nation out of two nationalities far more racially distinct than
the Flemings and the Dutch, and this amalgamation has acquired a certain
flavour of common nationality from the fact that the language of the upper
classes is French.

[Footnote 1: _Expansion of England_, p. 59.]

It is obvious therefore that the attempt of the diplomatists in 1814 to
ignore both historical and religious differences and to combine Holland
and Belgium into a single State was doomed at the outset. Fifteen years of
constant friction were followed in 1830 by a rising in Brussels against
"Dutch supremacy," which quickly spread to the rest of Belgium. The Great
Powers, recognising the inevitable, interfered on behalf of Belgium, she
was declared a neutral State, separate from Holland, and took to herself a
king in the person of Leopold I. It is, however, highly significant that
directly the Dutch menace was removed from Belgium the internal cleavage of
nationality began to be felt. "In 1815 the diff