Cologne, October 21. We always revert again, and always with 
renewed satisfaction, to Belgium, our “model constitutional state”. 

We proved in a previous number of our newspaper that “pauperism” is “Leopold’s greatest vassal”. We showed that if the crimes 
of just the boys and girls under 18 years of age were to continue to 
develop spontaneously at the same ratio as in 1845-47, “by 1856 all 
Belgium would be in gaol, the unborn children included”. We 
proved in the same article that the drying up of Belgium’s industrial 
sources of income keeps in step with the growth of pauperism 
and crime (No. 68 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung).* 

Today we will look at the financial situation of the “model state’. 

Francs 

The regular budget of 1848 . . . 2... 2... 119,000,000 
The first compulsory loan . 2 2. 1. 1 ee eee 12,000,000 
The second compulsory loan . . . . . 2. ww we 25,000,000 
Banknotes with a fixed rate of exchange . . . . ... . 12,000,000 

Total sum: 168,000,000 

In addition banknotes with a fixed rate 

of exchange guaranteed by the state. . . . - .. . 40,000,000 

Total: 208,000,000 

* See this volume, pp. 333-36.— Ed. 

Belgium, so Rogier tells us, stands like a rock amid world-historic 
tempests, but is not affected by them. It stands on the bed-rock of its 
broad institutions. The 208,000,000 francs are the prosaic translation of the miraculous power of those model institutions. Constitutional Belgium will not be brought down by revolutionary development. It will perish ignominiously through bankruptcy. 

The liberal Belgian Government, the Rogier Government, like all 
liberal governments, is nothing but a Government of capitalists, 
bankers and the big bourgeoisie. We shall see right away how in spite 
of growing pauperism and declining industry, it does not disdain the 
most cunning means to exploit ever anew the entire nation for the 
benefit of the bank barons. 

The second loan listed in the above compilation, has been chiefly 
wrested from the Parliament by the assurance that government bonds 
were to be redeemed. These government bonds had been issued 
under the Catholic de Theux Government by the Catholic Finance 
Minister Malou. These were the government bonds issued against 
voluntary loans made to the state by a few financial barons. They 
constituted the main theme, the inexhaustible theme of the howling 
diatribes which our Rogier and his liberal accomplices directed 
against the de Theux Government. 

And what does the liberal Government proceed to do? It 
announces in the Moniteur—Belgium has its Moniteur—a new issue of 
government bonds at 5 per cent. 

What shamelessness to issue government bonds after a compulsory 
loan of 25,000,000 francs has been obtained surreptitiously solely 
under the pretext that the so much maligned government bonds 
issued by Malou were to be redeemed! But that is not all. 

The government bonds are issued at 5 per cent. Belgian securities, 
which are also guaranteed by the state, yield an interest of 7 and 8 
per cent. Who then will put his money into government bonds? And 
besides, the situation of the country in general and the compulsory 
loans have left few who are able to make voluntary loans to the 
State. 

What then is the purpose of this new issue of government bonds? 

The banks have not yet been able by far to put into circulation all 
the notes with a legally fixed rate of exchange which the liberal 
Government had authorised them to issue. There are in their 
portfolios still several million of these useless securities which 
naturally yield nothing as long as they remain hermetically sealed in 
the portfolios. Is there a better way of putting these securities into 
circulation than to give them to the state in exchange for government 
bonds which yield 5 per cent? 

Thus the bank draws 5 per cent on several million scraps of paper 
which have not cost it anything and which only have an exchange 
value at all because the state has given them an exchange value. The 
taxable Belgian masses will find in the next budget a deficit of an 
additional several hundred thousand francs which they will be in 
duty bound to raise, all for the benefit of the poor. bank. 

Is it surprising that the Belgian financial barons find the constitutional monarchy more lucrative than the republic? The Catholic Government cherished and protected primarily the holiest, 
i.e. the material, interests of the landlords. The liberal Government 
looks with equally tender care after the interests of the landlords, the 
financial barons and the court lackeys. Is it any wonder that under its 
skilful direction these so-called parties, which equally voraciously 
pounce upon the national wealth, or rather in the case of Belgium, 
upon the national poverty, and which on such occasions sometimes 
quarrel amongst themselves, now, fully reconciliated, fall into each 
other’s arms and form only one big party: the “national party’ ?