ejected by 55 votes to 52. The Finance
Minister in this emergency was obliged to introduce fresh estimates for
one year only, from which the _mouture_ and _abbatage_ taxes were
omitted. This was passed without opposition, but in his vexation at this
rebuff the king acted unworthily of his position by issuing an _arrete_
(January 8, 1830) depriving six deputies, who had voted in the majority,
of their official posts. Meanwhile the virulence of the attacks in the
press against the king and his ministers from the pens of a number of
able and unscrupulous journalists were too daring and offensive to be
overlooked by any government. Foremost in the bitterness of his
onslaught was Louis de Potter, whose _Lettre de Demophile au Roi_ was
throughout a direct challenge to the autocratic claims advanced by the
royal message. Nor was De Potter content only with words. An appeal
dated December 11, of which he and his friend Tielemans were
originators, appeared (January 31,1830) in seventeen news-papers, for
raising a national subscription to indemnify the deputies who had been
ejected from their posts and salaries for voting against the budget.
Proceedings were taken against De Potter and Tielemans, and also against
Barthels, editor of the _Catholique_, and the printer, De Neve, and all
were sentenced by the court to banishment--De Potter for eight years,
Tielemans and Barthels for seven years, DeNeve for five years. These men
had all committed offences which the government were fully justified in
punishing, for their language had passed the limits not only of good
order but of decency, and was subversive of all authority. Nevertheless
they were regarded by their Belgian compatriots as political martyrs
suffering for the cause of their country's liberties. Their condemnation
was attributed to Van Maanen, already the object of general detestation.

The ministry had meanwhile taken the wise step of starting an organ, the
_National_, at Brussels to take their part in the field of controversy.
But in the circumstances it was an act of almost inconceivable folly to
select as the editor a certain Libri-Bagnano, a man of Italian
extraction, who, as it was soon discovered by his opponents, had twice
suffered heavy sentences in France as a forger. He was a brilliant and
caustic writer, well able to carry the polemical war into his
adversaries' camp. But his antecedents were against him, and he aroused
a hatred second only to the aversion felt