Democrats and Aristocrats 261
against our will.” Church bodies and town corporations, because they also owned
manors, could have said the same. The numerous lawyers bred by the old system of
courts (there were 260 at Mons alone) also protested. “Many of us,” declared the
Brussels lawyers, “have sacrificed all our means to obtain a post costing 700 florins;
from our youth we have labored to acquire the needed knowledge, and we hope
thereby to support our wives and children, since our rights rest on the sacred and
inviolable Joyous Entry.”^34
The issue was clear. It was between social change and constitutional liberty. Re-
form would come at the cost of arbitrary government overriding the articulate will
and historic institutions of the country. Or liberty would be preserved at the cost
of perpetuating archaic systems of privilege, property, special rights, class structure,
and ecclesiastical participation in the state. The Belgian Revolution was in its ori-
gin conservative. It was a revolution against the innovations of a modernizing gov-
ernment—in a sense, a revolution against the Enlightenment. It was not in this
respect untypical of the time. The American Revolution had also been conservative
in a way, a defense of historic liberties against a modernizing government in Great
Britain, which was by no means unenlightened, at least in its colonial policy. The
difference lay in the content of conservatism, and the meaning of liberty, as be-
tween the American colonies and the Belgian provinces. Nor was the Belgian
Revolution essentially different in its origins from the French, as is often asserted.
The French Revolution really began in this same year, 1787, with the resistance of
nobles and prelates to the modernizing program of Calonne. In all cases, Ameri-
can, French, and Belgian, upper- class people took the lead in the first marshalling
of discontent, and in all these cases a democratic movement soon emerged. The
same was true to a degree in the Dutch Patriot movement, and in the parliamen-
tary reform movements in Ireland and England, though no one had to resist forc-
ible enlightenment at the hands of William V or George III.^35
At the end of 1788 the Estates of Brabant and of Hainaut refused the grant of
subsidies to the Emperor. Joseph II thereupon declared himself absolved from the
Joyous Entry. Revolutionary manifestations occurred in the early months of 1789.
A brewer of Brussels painted the door of his house with the colors of Brabant: red,
yellow, and black. It was the first tricolor.^36
34 Ibid., 574 –75.
35 Professor Geyl, in the article cited in note 29 above, draws a sharp distinction between the
Dutch Patriot movement, sharing in the general Franco- Anglo- American Enlightenment, and the
conservatism of the Belgian Revolution, since in Belgium it was the government that was “enlight-
ened.” But the matter was complicated, because of ultimate ambiguities in liberty and equality
themselves.
36 Ta s sier, Démocrates belges, 89. The French tricolor appeared in July 1789; the Italian tricolor—
red, green, and white—in May 1795; the Dutch tricolor—red, white, and blue in horizontal stripes—
in September 1795; a Swiss tricolor—red, black, and yellow—in 1798. After vicissitudes, these are the
national colors of these countries today, except that Switzerland in 1840 adopted the white cross on a
red field. The present Irish, Yugoslav, Rumanian, Syrian, South African, Mexican, and other Latin
American tricolors betray the same inspiration. I do not know whether the Irish tricolor has any con-
nection with the rebellion of 1798. Certain Germans wishing a Rhineland Republic in 1797 raised a
standard of red, blue, and green; but I know of no anticipation in this period of the later German re-
publican colors, the present German tricolor, red, black, and gold.