The securities furnished, as well as the payments made, by Belgian accountants, the judicial deposits and consignments, shall equally be restored to the parties entitled thereto, on the presentation of their proofs.

If, under the head of what are called the French liquidations, any Belgian subjects should still be able to bring forward claims to be inscribed, such claims shall also be examined and settled by the said commission.

XXIV. Immediately after the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty to be concluded between the two parties, the necessary orders shall be transmitted to the commanders of the respective troops, for the evacuation of the territories, towns, fortresses, and places which change domination. The civil authorities thereof shall also, at the same time, receive the necessary orders for delivering over the said territories, towns, fortresses, and places, to the commissioners who shall be appointed by both parties for this purpose.

This evacuation and delivery shall be effected so as to be completed in the space of fifteen days, or sooner if possible.

XXV. The courts of Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia guarantee to his majesty the king of the Belgians the execution of all the preceding articles. XXVI. In consequence of the stipulations of the present treaty, there shall be peace and friendship between their majesties the king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the emperor of Austria, the king of the French, the king of Prussia, and the emperor of all the Russias, on the one part, and his majesty the king of the Belgians on the other part,

their heirs and successors, their respective states and subjects, for ever.

XXVII. The present treaty shall be ratified, and the ratifications shall be exchanged at London, in the space of two months, or sooner if possible. In witness whereof, the respective plenipotentiaries have signed the same, and have affixed thereto the seal of their arms.

Done at London, the 15th November, 1831. "(Signed)

(L.S.) PALMERSTON.
(L.S.) ESTERHAZY.
(L.S.) WESSENberg.
(L.S.) TALLEYRAND.
(L.S.) BULOW.
(L.S.) LIEVEN.

(L.S.) MATUSZEWICZ
(L.S.) SYLVAIN VAN DE
WEYER.

ANSWER to the NOTE addressed to the CONFERENCE by the PLENIPOTENTIARIES of the KING of the NETHERLANDS, dated December 14, 1831.

London, Jan. 4, 1832.

The undersigned plenipotentiaries of the Courts of Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia, have had the honour to receive the note and memoir which their excellencies the plenipotentiaries of his majesty the king of the Netherlands addressed to them on the 14th of December 1831. The Conference of London was anxious to learn the opinion of the cabinet of the Hague on the 24 articles, which it had submitted to the knowledge of the plenipotentiaries of the king on the 15th of October. Their last communication has at length satisfied this reasonable expectation.

The Conference has seen in it with pleasure, the expression of the wishes of the government of the Netherlands for the speedy settlement of the important questions which have arisen during the last fifteen months from the relative situation of Holland and Belgium; but the Conference cannot avoid expressing its regret at the same time that this communication had not been made to it at the time when the plenipotentiaries of the Netherlands addressed their note of the 16th of November, without being able to add to it any official explanation. If, instead of the general principle of which the cabinet of the Hague now demands the plain and simple adoption, the plenipotentiaries of the King had been authorised to lay down the particular and often conciliatory views which are stated in their note and memoir of the 14th of December, more than one doubt would have been removed, more than one difficulty would have been explained. The state of the affair is no longer the same. In the mean time it is with the hope of removing the grounds of the objections which the plenipotentiaries of the Netherlands have made; it is in the hope of accelerating a happy understanding, and attaining the great end of peace which the Government of the king of the Netherlands as well as it has in view, that the Conference proposes to answer the important papers, the contents of which it has weighed with the most mature deliberation. Without intending by the opinion which it will express, the least attack on the rights of his majesty the king of the Netherlands as an independent sovereign, rights which it has recognized to their full extent, the Conference cannot

subscribe to the interpretation which the cabinet of the Hague persists in giving to the 4th section of the protocol of Aix-laChapelle, dated November 15, 1818. The section in question relates to the sittings of the Sovereigns, or Plenipotentiaries accredited between the five Powers which have signed that protocol; and it reserves to those states which had caused the intervention of the five Powers in affairs especially connected with the interests of the aforesaid powers, the right of participating in the sittings, directly or by their plenipotentiaries, that is to say, by the presence of their sovereigns themselves or by accredited envoys.

The section has not-nor ever could have had-any other sense. Besides which, it cannot be too often repeated, that it lays down nothing relative to the form of the deliberations which the Five Powers might have to open with the plenipotentiaries of the states which claimed their intervention. It leaves them, on the contrary, in this respect, a free latitude, and above all it leaves them the right, a right which it could not refuse, of deliberating on the positions which that intervention might require on their part, and the right of communicating these propositions unanimously. Undoubted in its principles and nature, the right now under consideration acquires additional strength when with the interests of the states which have required the intervention, are associated, as in the negotiations of London relative to Belgium, the most important interests of the intervening Powers themselves. According to these considerations, in inviting the plenipotentiaries of the Ne

therlands to explain in writing the rights and wishes of their Government; in engaging them to reply to the arguments and demands of the adverse party; in offering them besides the means of making known their thoughts and wishes on all the questions to be subjected to final arrangement; in addressing to them, finally, the unanimous communications of the 15th of last October, the Conference thinks itself bound to maintain that it has acted entirely in accordance with the 4th section of the protocol of Aix-la-Chapelle.

The note and memoir of the plenipotentiaries of the Netherlands discuss the 24 articles of the 15th of October, in their relations to the eight articles of the protocol of July 21, 1814, on which the junction of Belgium with Holland was founded, and to the basis of separation annexed to the protocol of January 27, 1831. However, before the plenipotentiaries of the Five Powers had assembled in Conference in London, the principle of a separation between Belgium and Holland had been proclaimed in the united kingdom of the Netherlands. The adoption of this principle was to annul that of the essential dispositions of the protocol of July 21, 1814; it went also to invalidate the authority of this act. In making this observation the Conference is far from wishing to impute blame to a measure taken in the midst of circumstances of extreme difficulty. It is satisfied with settling a point of right and fact, from which it results that it is only in their bearings upon the basis of the separation of January 27, 1831, upon the protocol to which they are joined, and upon the propositions accepted by the Government

of the King since the commencement of negotiations at London, that the 24 articles of the 15th of October last can and ought to be considered.

The Conference will not hesitate to enter upon this examination. It flatters itself to be able to prove as it proceeds—

That the 24 articles present only the development of the basis of the separation already mentioned.

That they embrace the application of all the principles proposed in favour of Holland in the protocol of January 27, 1831.

That these principles have been maintained with a view to the interest of the government of his Majesty the king of the Netherlands.

That, in the question of the grand duchy of Luxemburg, the Conference, in making a portion of the grand duchy serve for an exchange of territory, and in connecting this negotiation with the Belgic question, properly so called, did but conform with the authority it had received from the diet of the Germanic Confederation, on the demand of the minister of the king of the Netherlands and grand duke of Luxemburg himself.

That the example of the kingdom of Hanover does not at all appear applicable to the case.

That the articles which, according to the note and memoir of the plenipotentiaries of the Netherlands, contained positions unprecedented and derogatory to the rights of the sovereignty of Holland, are easily explained, are not without precedent, and ought not reasonably inspire the apprehensions that they seem to have given rise to.

That, finally, if the Conference thought they ought to secure to

Belgium the means of existence and prosperity, it was confined in this respect to following up the steps pointed out by the protocol of January 27, 1831, and accepted by the government of the Netherlands.

The plenipotentiaries of his majesty the king of the Netherlands, will find the development of these assertions in the subjoined memoir. Strong in the conviction of having discharged the engagements contracted by the five courts towards the government of the Netherlands-full of confidence in the intelligence and justice of the king, the Conference flatters itself that his majesty will bear in mind the difficulties it has had to overcome, the events which have marked the course of its labours, the dangers of every description which it had to meet, and finally the obligations under which it lay, and which it has discharged, to maintain that general peace which, in the same degree, the true interests of Holland as well as of Europe demand. It flatters itself that the king will perceive that it was impossible, in an arrangement of the sort with which the Conference was occupied, to reconcile claims essentially contradictory; to unite opinions in themselves of an opposite nature; without the establishment of a system of compensation; and which consequently it will deem equitable, not by judging each article that has been communicated to it in an isolated manner, but by taking the whole together -not by detaching from the combined whole some partial changes, and by so detaching them increasing their difficulty, but by seeing if the combined whole does not offer advantages superior to its inconveniences, from which no diplo

matic transaction has ever yet been wholly exempt.

At the close of such an examination of the 24 articles, and the explanations contained in the memoir of this day, the Netherlands government will find, the Conference entertains no doubt, that all the means, by signing these articles, have been supplied of arriving at the conclusion that Europe, wearied with trouble and apprehension, expects with a just impatience, as an honourable one, which will settle the long disquieted state of Holland herself, and lead finally to that general disarming, the proposition for which the Conference approves of highly.

It cannot, on the other hand, too strongly regret the suspicion of its not wishing to give Holland henceforth an honourable position in the European family. Such an object never entered into the wishes of the five Powers; and would be as opposed to their sentiments as their own interests.

Again placed involuntarily, and by the march of events, under the obligation of contributing, as in 1814, to settle the future destiny of Belgium, the courts have not abused their position; and by the financial arrangements which diminish the burthen of the ancient debt of Holland, by affixing good boundaries, a state of compact possessions, and a contiguity of territory on the two banks of the Meuse; and by a formal guarantee of all these stipulations, they have offered to Holland advantages in vain sought for in the most glorious epochs of her history.

In these memorable times it was not from a junction with Belgium, it was from herself, from the noble qualities of the House of Nassau and the Dutch nation, and from

her own resources, that Holland derives her power.

It only remains for her to fill the same character now; and far from desiring to make the king of the Netherlands descend from the high rank which he fills in Europe, the courts represented in the Conference of London have had only in view to maintain him in all his dignity, all his influence, and all his importance.

The undersigned, &c.

(Signed) ESTERHAZY.
WESSENBERG.
TALLEYRAND.
PALMERSTON.
BULOW.
LIEVEN.
MATUSZEWICZ.

ANSWER of the DUTCH PLENIPOTENTIARY to the NOTE of the CONFERENCE.

London, Jan. 30.

The undersigned Plenipotentiaries of the king of the Netherlands, assembled this day for the purpose of replying, in the name of their sovereign, to the communication with which their excellencies the plenipotentiaries of the courts of Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia, assembled in conference at London, honoured them on the 4th instant, feel it their duty to acquit themselves of this task by the present

note.

When the undersigned had communicated to them the twentyfour articles concerted by their excellencies as conditions of a definitive arrangement between Holland and Belgium, they declared, by their note of the 7th of November, that, relying upon the full powers transmitted to the Conference on the 4th of August, and

containing the authority to discuss, decide upon, and sign it with, a treaty of separation between Holland and Belgium, and after new instructions received from their court, they were ready to discuss the modifications which the twentyfour articles above-mentioned were to experience, conformably to the principles previously adopted.

Since the 7th of November the government of the Netherlands have thus expressed their opinion, that the twenty-four articles required modifications, and also its eagerness to make it known.

The Court of the Hague having learned by the note of the Conference to the undersigned, of November 10, that their declaration had not been received, found itself under the painful necessity of postponing to a more favourable period its communications, which the nonadmission of the general principles on which they were founded seemed to render ill-timed. The discussion to which the Conference devoted its note and its memoir of the 4th of January, in reply to that of the undersigned of the 14th of December, afforded reason to believe that there might be more success than the first time in the choice of the moment when the said communications might be effected. That discussion, and the declaration with which the Conference were good enough to accompany it, that it would not delay to make known the opinion of the cabinet of the Hague respecting the twenty-four articles, seemed a happy augury as to the issue of the negotiation, and presented a new pledge of the conviction of the Conference that the course of mediation was the only one which could be resorted to. This principle will also be found