eheading: BELGIUM]

_The King of the Belgians to Queen Victoria._

_19th April 1839._

... I am glad I extracted some spark of politics from your dear
Majesty, very _kindly_ and _nicely_ expressed. I know that your
generous little heart would not have wished at any time but what was
good for a country in which you were _much beloved_. But the fact is,
that certainly your Government have taken the lead in maintaining a
condition which time had rendered difficult to comply with. Physicians
will tell you that often an operation, which might have been performed
at one time, could not, without great danger for the patient, be
undertaken some years later. We have not been listened to, and
arrangements _are forced_ on us, in themselves full of seeds of
danger, when by consulting the _real interests_ of Holland and
Belgium, both countries might have been placed on a footing of
_sincere peace_ and good neighbourhood. This country feels now humbled
and _desenchante_ with its _soi-disant_ political independence as it
pleased the Conference to settle it. They will take a dislike to a
political state which _wounds their vanity_, and will, in consequence
of this, _not wish it to continue_. Two things will happen, therefore,
on the very first opportunity, either that this country will
be involved in war to better a position which it thinks _too
humiliating_, or that it will voluntarily throw up a nominal
independence in which it is now hemmed in between France and Holland,
which begins on the North Sea, and ends, of all the things in this
world, on _the Moselle_!

I think old Pirson, who said in the Chamber that if the treaty was
carried into execution I was likely to be the first and last King
of the country, was not wrong. Whenever this will happen, it will be
_very awkward_ for England, and _deservedly so_. To see, after eight
years of hard work, blooming and thriving political plantations cut
and maimed, and that by those who have a real interest to protect
them, is very melancholy. I do not say these things with the most
distant idea of bringing about any change, but only because in the
high and very responsible position in which Providence has placed
you, it is good to tell you the truth, as you ought to have weight
and influence on the affairs of Europe; and England, not being in
the possibility of making territorial acquisition, has a real and
permanent interest in the proper maintenance of a balance of political
power