GOVERNMENT OF BELGIUM

I. THE CONSTITUTION--THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY

*588. The Constitution: Liberalism and Stability.*--The constitution of
the kingdom of Belgium was framed, consequent upon the declaration of
Belgian independence October 4, 1830, by a national congress of two
hundred elected delegates. It was promulgated February 7, 1831, and
July 21 of the same year the first independent Belgian sovereign,
Leopold I., took oath to observe and maintain it. Circumstances
conspired to give the instrument a pronouncedly liberal character.
Devised in the midst of a revolution brought on principally by the
autocratic rule of King William I., it is, and was intended to be,
uncommonly explicit in its definition of the royal prerogative. There
were Belgians in 1831, indeed, who advocated the establishment of a
republic. Against such a course various considerations were urged, and
with effect; but the monarchy which was set up, owing clearly its
existence to popular suffrage, is of the strictly limited,
constitutional type. "All powers," it is asserted in the fundamental
law, "emanate from the people."[745] The principles of liberalism are
the more in evidence by reason of the fact that the framers of the
constitution deliberately accepted as models the French instruments of
1791 and 1830 and were likewise influenced profoundly by their
admiration for the constitutional system of Great Britain.

[Footnote 745: Art. 25. Dodd, Modern Constitutions,
I., 130.]

A striking testimony to the thoroughness with which the work was done,
and to the advanced character of the governmental system established,
is the fact that the text of the Belgian fundamental law endured
through more than half a century absolutely unchanged, and, further,
that when in our own generation the task of amendment was undertaken
not even the most ardent revisionists cared to insist upon more than
the overhauling of the arrangements respecting the franchise. Leopold
I.(1831-1865), and Leopold II. after him (1865-1909), frankly
recognized the conditional basis of the royal tenure and, although
conspicuously active in the management of public affairs, afforded (p. 535)
by their conduct slight occasion for popular criticism or disaffection.
Even the revolutionary year 1848 passed without producing in Belgium
more than a mere ripple of unrest. In 1893 the constitution was
amended to provide for universal male suffrage,