Another complaint had reference to the disproportionate distribution of government patronage between the subjects of Holland and Belgium, in which there may have been much truth, and to which the government did not take the most wise nor the most soothing steps to reconcile the minority, by ascribing it to the _dearth of talent_ amongst their countrymen. _Like the Irish_, the Belgian agitators protested against the taxes of Belgium being made applicable to the discharge of the national debt, of which the largest proportion had been contracted by Holland before the period of the union--but having by the Revolution secured the management of the national revenues in their own hands, _an evil of more serious magnitude has been discovered, in the fact, that the expenditure of Belgium in every year since the Revolution, with the single exception of 1835, has exceeded the revenue by some millions of francs_. In 1831 and 1832 this was strikingly the case, the expenses of the war and of new establishments leading in the former year to an expenditure of upwards of four millions, and in the latter to eight millions sterling. In 1833 the revenue was £3,441,519 and the expenditure 3,765,993 excess £324,474 1834 the revenue was 3,371,182 and the expenditure 3,554,960 excess 183,778 1835 the revenue was 3,695,225 excess 112,852 the expenditure 3,582,373 1836 the revenue was 3,382,286 and the expenditure 3,469,031 excess 86,746 1837 the revenue was 3,436,468 and the expenditure 3,817,621 excess 381,153 1838 the revenue was 3,784,253 and the expenditure 3,885,232 excess 100,979 1839 the revenue was 4,163,821 and the expenditure 4,476,613 excess 312,792 The interest upon the national debt of the independent state exceeds at the present moment £800,000 a year. Besides, during the Dutch regime, it appeared that in Belgium, _as in Ireland_, the malcontents bore the most trifling proportion of the national burthens, the revenue of the three years preceding the revolt being paid in the proportion of sixteen florins per head for every inhabitant of Holland, and only ten for those of the Netherlands.