POTTER United Families

le roi Guillaume affecte purement et simplement le pouvoir de droit
divin, et la faculté qui en résulte de régler comme il l'entendait les
institutions du pays, doit faire juger de tout l'ensemble du document.
William declared a new and stricter law against freedom of the press,
supposedly to prevent attacks on the government. He vowed it was
necessary to combat the Catholic religion's renewed attempts at state
domination, and he spoke against ministerial responsibility, which he
did not feel was a parliamentary right.
Louis thought that the king, who had divine rights, was alone
responsible for the acts of his ministers, and that he alone should
decide when they were wrong. He replied quickly with a new
pamphlet attacking the King's position.
The “Letter of Demophile to the King” regarding the new law project
was issued on December 20, 1829. Louis took a grave and serious
tone in the public address he made.
This pamphlet was the first to mention "the threat of a separation",
even if administrative only, between Holland and Belgium. The
opposition was at this point still only agitating for reform, and the
idea of a parliamentary separation did not find support until after the
revolt nine months later, in August 1830.
Apparently Louis' pamphlet was written as sincere advice, not just an
inflammatory writing, as his letter to Tielemans written December 18,
1829, seems to indicate. In this letter he wrote: “I write to the King
to tell him about the spilling of resources and men of good will, a ruin
for the homeland and its allies.”
The beginning of 1830 found Louis still in his cell at the Petits-
Carmes, in the street just behind the present Royal Palace. When not
writing pamphlets or letters to the journals, he was occupied revising
his ecclesiastical history, which was to be published further at Paris
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