At length, on the 14th of June, 1825, two royal decrees were published, by which it was sought to transfer to the hands of the Protestant Government of Holland the education of the whole of the youth of all classes in Catholic Belgium. The chief provisions of the first of these decrees were as follow: “Whereas many schools and institutions for the teaching of the Latin and Greek languages; and for the training of youth for the ecclesiastical state, as well as for other professions, have been established without our consent; and whereas Article 226 of the Fundamental Law[17] has given us the charge of public instruction … desiring at the same time to facilitate and favour every arrangement by which young men may be fitted to become well educated ecclesiastics for the Roman Catholic Church,… we have decreed and do hereby decree…. “Art. 2. No Latin school, college, or athenaeum, shall be established without the express authorisation of the Department of the Interior. “Art. 3. No one shall teach the Latin and Greek languages _to the children of more than one family at once_, either in primary schools or in private houses, without having first obtained in one of the universities of the kingdom the degree of _candidat_ or of _Docteur en Lettres_. “Art. 4. All colleges, athenaeums, or Latin schools, are placed under the control of the Department of the Interior. “All colleges, athenaeums, or Latin schools, named in Art. 1, which at the date of this decree have not been approved as such by former decrees, _shall be closed at the end of the month of September_, 1825, unless sanctioned before that time”. By the second royal decree a “Philosophical College” was established in Louvain for aspirants to the priesthood. “Whereas some of the heads of the clergy have represented to us that the preparatory education given to young men intended for the ecclesiastical state is insufficient, and whereas we are desirous of providing means to form able ecclesiastics for the Roman Catholic Church. “Art. 1. An establishment for the preparatory education of young Roman Catholics aspiring to the ecclesiastical state, shall be provisorily erected at one of the universities in the northern provinces of the kingdom. This establishment, under the title of ‘Philosophical College’, shall be installed in a suitable building…. The students shall be received therein, with permission to wear the ecclesiastical habit.