The status of neutrality not only affected foreign politics, it reacted very strongly on Belgium's internal life. If it crippled her activity with regard to home defence, it developed to an abnormal degree party warfare. It shut the door on international problems and all questions which may be considered as national issues and before which party strife ought to cease in consideration for the common weal. Social, philosophic or religious differences were not balanced, in modern Belgium, as in other countries, by international consciousness. In the close atmosphere of the tutelage of the Powers, party politics absorbed the whole public life of the nation and external problems were practically ignored. It thus happened that the people who stood in the forefront of Europe, and who were more directly interested than any other in the fluctuations of European politics, were about the worst informed on foreign affairs. From 1839 to 1885, the electorate being limited by a property qualification (only 35,000 electors out of 4,000,000 inhabitants taking part in the first election), the struggle was confined to the two middle-class parties, Catholics and Liberals. Roughly speaking, the Catholics stood for the defence of religious interests, more especially in the domain of education and relief, the Liberals for the supremacy of a nominally neutral State in all public matters. It is easy to realize how this purely political quarrel could degenerate into a conflict of ideals, some ultramontanes distrusting the motives of "atheists" and ignoring the public spirit of men who did not share their creed, while some agnostics, steeped in the narrow doctrines of Voltaire and Diderot, made the Church the scapegoat of all social evils and even denied the wholesome influence of religion on social education.