Democrats and Aristocrats 265
invited the estates of other provinces to send delegates to a conference. The confer-
ence met and pronounced itself to be the Estates General of the [Belgian] Neth-
erlands, defunct since 1634. It adopted an Act of Union which created the United
States of Belgium. The Act was closely modeled on the American Articles of Con-
federation, which in places it textually followed. It set up a Congress as the federal
government (Congress and Estates General both existing for a while), whose pow-
ers were carefully limited to foreign policy and defense. As in America before
1789, the member states remained sovereign. Van der Noot became chief minister
to the new Congress.^44
It is worth noting that the framework of the American Articles of Confedera-
tion, which according to one view was more “democratic” than the United States
federal constitution of 1787, was perfectly suited to the perpetuation of oligarchy
in Belgium. The framework, in both countries, was designed to guard the position
of men whose importance lay in local assemblies; it was also conservative, reflect-
ing resistance to new ideas. In Belgium, however, as generally in Europe, the em-
phasis on local assemblies and on customary sentiments expressed the privileges of
lord, burgher, and cleric. In America, to recur to the ambivalence of the American
Revolution, the customary and the ancient were already radical by European stan-
dards; and in any case the American states, before adopting the Articles of Con-
federation, had undergone internal revolution, some more than others.
The Belgian democrats objected to the assumption of sovereignty by the Estates
of Brabant, and to a union which was only a confederation of such estates. Such a
regime, they said, was in fact more aristocratic than what had existed before. The
“intermediate powers” were now sovereign; the doctrines of Montesquieu were vi-
olated. Who would now watch out, as the Emperor had done, for the interests of
persons who had no voice in the estates—the bankers, the greater merchants, the
investors of capital, the emerging industrialists, and even the common people?^45
The American state constitutions were also brought into the argument by the
democrats, to justify reorganization of representative and electoral machinery
within the particular provinces. The Estates party, as it came to be called, replied
that the American Revolution had been primarily only a war of independence.
Few Belgians denied the appropriateness of American precedent. They differed
only on the nature of the American Revolution.
The democrats could do little except write pamphlets and organize political
clubs. There was no lower- class upheaval, in town or country. From lists of persons
later imprisoned for “Vonckism” we can form an impression of who the democrats
were. One list gives the names of seven lawyers, a notary, two doctors, a surgeon, an
apothecary, an architect, three merchants, three who called themselves only rent-
iers, three wig- makers, three coffee- shop proprietors, two printers, and three
priests.^46 The banker Walckiers was an important member of the party, and so was
44 On Belgian use of United States constitutional models see T. K. Gorman, America and Belgium:
a Study of the Influence of the United States upon the Belgian Revolution of 1789–1790 (London, 1925), in
which a great many quotations are gathered to establish the fact of “influence,” but without critical
observation.
45 Ta s sier, Démocrates belges, 215 –17.
46 Ibid., 381–83.