of
the mass of the people have undergone singularly little change;
they mind their own affairs, and are wisely indifferent to the
affairs of others. Both as importers and as exporters they are
useful to the world, and if the prophecies of those who foretell
a general clash of the European powers should be fulfilled, it
is likely that the Dutch will be onlookers merely, or perhaps
profit by the misfortunes of their neighbors to increase their
own well-being.

As we have seen in the foregoing pages, Belgium did not unite
with the Hollanders in their revolt of the sixteenth century;
but appertained to Burgundy, and was afterward made a domain
of France. But after Napoleon had been overthrown at Waterloo,
the nations who had been so long harried and terrorized by him
were not satisfied with banishing the ex-conqueror to his island
exile, but wished to present any possibility of another Napoleon
arising to renew the wars which had devastated and impoverished
them. Consequently they agreed to make a kingdom which might act
as a buffer between France and the rest of Europe; and to this
end they decreed that Belgium and Holland should be one. But in
doing this, the statesmen or politicians concerned failed to take
into account certain factors and facts which must inevitably, in
the course of time, undermine their arrangements. Nations cannot
be arbitrarily manufactured to suit the convenience of others.
There is a chemistry in nationalities which has laws of its own,
and will not be ignored. Between the Hollanders and the Belgians
there existed not merely a negative lack of homogeneity, but a
positive incompatibility. The Hollanders had for generations been
fighters and men of enterprise; the Belgians had been the appanage
of more powerful neighbors. The Hollanders were Protestants; the
Belgians were adherents of the Papacy. The former were seafarers;
the latter, farmers. The sympathies or affiliations of the Dutch
were with the English and the Germans; those of the Belgians
were with the French. Moreover, the Dutch were inclined to act
oppressively toward the Belgians, and this disposition was made
the more irksome by the fact that King William was a dull, stupid,
narrow and very obstinate sovereign, who thought that to have a
request made of him was reason sufficient for resisting it.

But over and above all these causes for disintegration of the new
kingdom lay facts of the broadest significance and application.
The arb