POTTER United Families

Belgium is composed of the flat northern Flanders, attached to
French Flanders where Louis' family produced textiles, and the
rolling hills of southern Wallonia, a metal-working region where
Louis’ family had produced iron pots long before. During the
"Belgian" revolution, more Walloons were sympathetic to a reunion
with France, while Flemings were in favor of independence. Modern
Belgium was created in the eighteenth century by her various invaders
breaking borders.
Political domination of the Netherlands was imposed upon the
Belgians at the time of the reunion. Holland had, adopted a
Constitution. It was based on old Dutch Protestant laws. A
Commission was appointed for eleven Dutch, eleven Belgians, and
two Luxembourgers, to broaden it into a new “Constitution”.
The Upper Chamber of the Belgian parliament was composed of
peers appointed for life by the King. The Second Chamber was
composed of hundred members by the States-Generals, fifty-five
from Holland, fifty-five from Belgium. This was in spite of the fact
that Belgium had three-fifths of the population !
William was crowned in Brussels on September 21, 1815. The Dutch
held most of the public offices and ran the United Kingdom of the
Netherlands for their own benefit. In 1830 only one out of the nine
Ministers of State was Belgian, and of 219 men at the Ministries of
Interior and War, only 14 were Belgian.
Friend of Louis in Switzerland, Benjamin Constant, said a few years
after the Union, that of those holding the foremost offices in the
kingdom, 139 were Dutch and only 30 Belgians. King William also
made the mistake of deciding in 1819 to banish French as the official
language in Flemish provinces and Brussels, which he followed up
with a ruling in 1823 that henceforth Dutch would be used for all
administrative purposes in these provinces.
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