258 Chapter XI
The Estates of Brabant, for example, met at the Hotel de Ville in Brussels.
Though they voted as three houses, they met in a single room. Clergy and nobles
sat in upholstered armchairs, while the Third Estate perched on benches, almost
out of sight in the embrasures of the windows. Certain great abbots sat ex officio as
the First Estate; neither bishops nor parish priests had anything to do with the
assembly. As for the nobles, only those with four quarters of nobility and 4,000
florins a year could take part. In the Third Estate only the three chefs- villes of Bra-
bant were represented—Brussels, Louvain, and Antwerp. What the Third Estate
represented was actually the corporations des métiers, or gilds of these three towns.
The gilds were trade associations of small employers, who resisted economic mod-
ernization. Each gild, in each town, characteristically required that apprenticeship
be performed in the town itself; that no gild member employ more than a certain
number of workmen; that no “foreigner,” or non- townsman, engage in the trade
within the town or the surrounding country; and that no new masterships or gild
memberships be created. The gild memberships, thus fixed in number, had become
mainly hereditary. Sons, nephews, or sons- in- law followed their elders in a known
routine. The gilds stood firmly against economic expansion, new markets, or new
methods, at a time when a quarter of the population of Antwerp, Ghent and Bru-
ges was on poor relief.^30
The power of the gilds was enormously magnified through the procedures used
at the Brabant assembly. Unanimity of the three orders was necessary to the ap-
proval of any measure. The Third Estate thus had a veto. It voted only after obtain-
ing the views of its constituents, the gilds of the chefs- villes. Hence any gild, in any
of the three towns, could prevent action. Despite the modesty of the seating ar-
rangements, and the custom of humbly voting last, the Third Estate of Brabant,
that is the doyens des métiers, were persons of consequence whose desires were
heeded, and opinions sought, by prelates and noblemen. “It is characteristic,” ac-
cording to one authority, “that in August 1787,” at the beginning of the Belgian
revolution, “not the Duke of Arenberg or the Count of Merode was sent to Vienna
as spokesman for the Estates, but Monsieur Petit.”^31
The other provinces had arrangements much as in Brabant. No Estates General
of all provinces met from 1634 to 1790.
The politically active or privileged elements, under the Joyous Entry and other
such provincial constitutions, were in short the great landowning abbeys, certain of
the nobles, and the gildmasters of certain towns. The agricultural population had
no voice, but was well off and without sense of grievance. The urban poor were si-
lent. The unrepresented towns did not care. The secular clergy were content. The
most eminent lawyers handled the business of the great landed convents and no-
bles, with whom they were closely allied. There were lawyers with more modest
clients, and also, among those excluded from political life, a few men of modern
economic interests, even under the unfavorable conditions obtaining in Belgium:
bankers who wished a wider field for profitable investment; organizers of manu-
30 On the central problem of the gilds see, in addition to Tassier and Mitrofanov, R. Ledoux, La
suppression du régime corporatif dans les Pays Bas autrichiens (Brussels, 1912), in Mémoires de l ’Académie
royale de Belgique, 2nd series, vol. X.
31 Mitrofanov, Joseph II, 626.