the university of Louvain; and lastly, the restoration of the _monks and religious orders_ which had been suppressed by the Emperor Joseph II, and “_as one of the most excellent means, and, perhaps, the only one, at the present day, to secure to youth the blessings of an education combining, at once, the principles of genuine religion and the acquirements of human learning, the re-establishment of the Jesuits throughout Belgium_.[35]” Whether this extraordinary document was really framed with a view to influence the deliberations of the Congress, or written with a full anticipation of their ultimate conclusion, and designed only as a defiance and a bold forewarning of the consequence, it had but little weight at Vienna, and the provinces were consigned, without the required stipulations, to the King of Holland. The constitution of the new state was based upon principles of the most unrestricted toleration and protection for all denominations of religion. But toleration and freedom of opinion are the very essence of the reformation, and the Roman Catholic clergy had the discernment to perceive that no more effectual system could have been established for the silent but ultimate subversion of their church, than by reducing it to an equality with every other, thus lending the authority of the state in ascribing to many the possession of that saving faith, which it is fatal to the very spirit of catholicism to have attributed to any but one--and that one, herself. Equal rights and protection were to her more pernicious than proscription and persecution, and no other course was left to her than that precisely which she adopted to protest against toleration in the first instance, and to revolt against it in the end. By an arrangement of the new government, no public functionary or officer connected with any department of the state, was to enter upon his functions before having taken an oath to maintain all the principles and observe all the enactments of the Constitution. But as amongst these were comprised the fundamental law of “toleration,” another manifesto was instantly issued by the prelates, prohibiting all Roman Catholics from subscribing to the obnoxious oath, as subversive of all the principles of the church of Rome, and ruinous to her attributes and claims!