e Netherlands, signed a treaty
of separation from, and independence of, each other. It is in this
treaty that the original pledge of Belgian neutrality is to be found.
The clause of the treaty reads: "Belgium in the limits above described
shall form an independent neutral State and shall be bound to observe
the same neutrality toward all other States." On the same day and at the
same place, (London,) a treaty, known in the history of diplomacy as the
Quintuple Treaty, was signed by Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria,
and Russia, approving and adopting the treaty between Belgium and
Holland. A little later, May 11, the German Confederation, of which both
Austria and Prussia were members, also ratified this treaty.

In the year 1866 the German Confederation was dissolved by the war
between Austria and Prussia, occasioned by the Schleswig-Holstein
question. In 1867 the North German Union was formed, of which Prussia
was the leading State, while Austria and the German States south of the
River Main were left out of it altogether. Did these changes render the
guarantees of the Treaty of 1839 obsolete and thereby abrogate them, or
at least weaken them and make them an uncertain reliance? The test of
this came in the year 1870, at the beginning of hostilities between
France and the North German Union. Great Britain, the power most
interested in the maintenance of Belgian neutrality, seems to have had
considerable apprehension about it. Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister,
said in the House of Commons: "I am not able to subscribe to the
doctrine of those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an
assertion that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is
binding on every party to it, irrespective altogether of the particular
position in which it may find itself when the occasion for acting on the
guarantee arises."

A One-Year Treaty.

Proceeding upon this view, the British Government then sought and
procured from the French Government and from the Government of the North
German Union separate but identical treaties guaranteeing with the
British Government the neutrality of Belgium during the period of the
war between France and the North German Union, the so-called
Franco-Prussian war, which had just broken out, and for one year from
the date of its termination. In these treaties it is also to be remarked
that Great Britain limited the possible operation of her military force
in maintaining the neut