in all.

One of the most urgent problems with which the Sovereign-Prince had to
deal on his accession to power was the state of the finances. Napoleon
by a stroke of the pen had reduced the public debt to one-third of its
amount. William, however, was too honest a man to avail himself of the
opportunity for partial repudiation that was offered him. He recalled
into existence the two-thirds on which no interest had been paid and
called it "deferred debt" (_uitgestelde schuld_); the other third
received the name of "working debt" (_werkelijke schuld_). The figures
stood at 1200 million florins and 600 million florins respectively.
Every year four millions of the "working debt" were to be paid off, and
a similar amount from the "deferred" added to it. Other measures taken
in 1814 for effecting economies were of little avail, as the campaign of
Waterloo in the following year added 40 million florins to the debt.
Heavier taxation had to be imposed, but even then the charges for the
debt made it almost impossible to avoid an annual deficit in the budget.
It was one of the chief grievances of the Belgians that they were called
upon to share the burden of a crushing debt which they had not incurred.
The voting of ways and means for ten years gave the king the control
over all ordinary finance; it was only extraordinary expenditure that
had to be submitted annually to the representatives of the people.

The dislike of the Catholic hierarchy in Belgium to Dutch rule had been
intensified by the manner in which the king had dealt with the vote of
the notables. Their leader was Maurice de Broglie, Bishop of Ghent, a
Frenchman by birth. His efforts by speech and by pen to stir up active
enmity in Belgium to the union aroused William's anger, and he resolved
to prosecute him. It was an act of courage rather than of statesmanship,
but the king could not brook opposition. Broglie refused to appear
before the court and fled to France. In his absence he was condemned to
banishment and the payment of costs. The powerful clerical party
regarded him as a martyr and continued to criticise the policy of the
Protestant king with watchful and hostile suspicion. Nor were the
Belgian liberal party more friendly. They did not indeed support the
clerical claim to practical predominance in the State, but they were
patriotic Belgians who had no love for Holland and resented the thought
that they were being treated as a dependency of their northern
ne