POTTER United Families

Van De Weyer helped his friend Louis with the working of the
Congress. The combination of the fact that only citizens of a certain
educational level, the capacitive system, and those who paid a certain
amount of taxes, the “censitairy” (wealth) system, meant that "out of
a population of approximately 3,921,000, only 46,000 could vote."
By November 3, Louis had reached impatience. He wrote to
Gendebien saying that he did not want such forms of “weighted
voting” system, management by classes, “people” instead of
“universal” rights. Frenchman Rogier seemed to prefer the Belgian
meriting classes than the French one.
Nine years later, Louis wrote to Gendebien, who was still in the
government, and commented him on his opposition to the Treaty. It
is interesting that in 1859, Gendebien, once his loyal friend,
afterwards his bitter enemy, walked in Louis' funeral cortege.
Rogier had empathy for Louis' state of mind and acted as a mediator
with Gendebien, begging Louis to stay on at least until the opening
of the Congress, a week later. Louis reluctantly agreed. In 1833 a
pistol fight took place between ministers (!) Rogier and Gendebien
who pierced the mouth of Rogier in the royal park, breaking his
teeth…
On November 10, Louis, dean of the Government, inaugurated the
Congress of the new state: “Dear colleagues: in the name of the Belgian
citizens, the Provisional government opens the assembly of the representatives of
the nation, entrusted with the mission to found, upon solid and wide bases of
freedom, the institution of a new social order which will be for Belgium the principle
and the guarantee of a long-term happiness…”
322