Another grievance, no less _Irish_ than Belgian, was that the number of representatives was not regulated exclusively in proportion to the _population_ of the two states, totally irrespective of the relative territory and possessions of each--and although the representation was exactly divided, one half of the States General being Dutch and one half Belgian, a division warranted by the large territorial interests of the former; the patriots and their disturbers complained “_Si l’on nous avait attribué une représentation en rapport avec la population_, NOUS AURIONS DOMINÉ LE NORD.”[33] The frankness of this avowal has not yet been imitated by the Repealers of Ireland; but its aspiration is not the less manifest in the similarity of their pretensions; and the frequent references of the Irish agitator in the House of Commons to the relative population and comparative electoral constituencies of the counties of England and Ireland, irrespective of their relative wealth and property, parrotted as they have recently been by members of her Majesty’s government, may no doubt be construed into an ill-concealed adoption of the sentiments of the repealers of Belgium. These, and a few other minor points, were the burthen of all the _civil_ grievances against which the oppressed patriots of Belgium had to protest; and it is not difficult to perceive that it required but a little complaisance on the part of the Dutch government to redress them, although it is too late to regret that that redress was not timely applied. It is impossible, however, for any sober minded citizen to discern in the entire mass of these complaints, even in all their aggravation, any adequate ground for a resort to the last remedy of oppression--war, and revolution; and in vain would the restless promoters of the revolt have laboured to inflame the populace by rhapsodies on the glory of independence, or diatribes against the pronunciation of Dutch,--in vain would they have attempted to sting them into madness by calculations of finance, or lamentations over the exclusion of some provincial orator, from a seat in the legislature or a portfolio in some public bureau,--all these whips and stimulants would have been powerless and unfelt, had not _religion_ been introduced in association with each, and the ascendancy of the Roman Catholic church been made the alpha and the omega--the beginning and the end--the burthen of every complaint, and the object of every exhortation.