In such a combination of circumstances, one is impatient to discover the specific causes of discontent which could inflame an entire population into all the fury of revolt, and to the expulsion by blood and the sword of a King, under whose sway they acknowledge themselves to be debtors for so many blessings. This is not the place to canvas their merits, but in merely enumerating the principal grievances of which they complain, the “_griefs Belges_,” as they were specially headed in the newspapers of the time, it is impossible to avoid being struck with the identity between the vast majority of the pretexts for revolt propounded by the “patrioterie” who Repealed the Union in Belgium, and the “patriots” who clamour for “the Repeal of the Union” in Ireland. Nor did this similarity escape the promoters of the revolution in either country. In Ireland, it has been ostentatiously and perseveringly dwelt upon, and even down to the present hour, the example of the Belgians is paraded as an incentive to the ambition of the enemies of British connexion; and in Belgium, even before the revolution, the position of the two countries, as regarded their several legislative connexions with England and Holland, was the subject of repeated comparisons and condolence. The “Belge,” a journal which was active in the encouragement of the movement, thus alludes to the coincidence of their circumstances in 1830. “Belgium has been long the Ireland of Holland, the relation of the dominant power has been in almost every particular, that of “_the Sister Island_” to England--with the intolerable addition, however, that while Ireland has had the less population by far, Belgium had by far the greater--that Belgium paid much more than her proportion of the taxes, whilst Ireland paid much less--that Ireland often sent her inhabitants to share in the distribution of places, pensions and honours, whilst such a distribution amongst the Belgians was of extremely rare occurrence.”