Such was the religious position of Belgium when the Belgian episcopacy determined to found the Catholic University of Louvain. Public functionaries, barristers, physicians, merchants, manufacturers, nearly all the men of influence in the country, were infected with that false liberalism which, as Mgr. de Ram himself declared in November, 1830, made many who cried out most loudly for liberty, intend to use it only for self-aggrandisement and at the expense of Catholicity. The prospect was uninviting; but the bishops were not to be daunted, although in February, 1834, on their publishing their decree establishing the university, there were disturbances in Brussels and in nearly all the episcopal cities. In December, 1833, they had obtained from Pope Gregory XVI. the sanction of their project and an apostolic brief for erecting the new university; and in June, 1834, they published in another meeting the general statutes for its government. On the same occasion the assembled prelates decided that the youthful M. de Ram――he had not yet completed his thirtieth year, and was then a canon of the Metropolitan Church of Mechlin, and professor of canon law and church history in the seminary of that diocese――should occupy a distinguished place in the new institution. He was formally appointed, within the next few months, head of the Catholic University of Belgium, with the title which in past ages appertained to that office――_Rector Magnificus_, and in that capacity assisted at the solemn inauguration of the university in the Cathedral of Mechlin, on the 4th of November of the same year, 1834.