7 "Article 4 of the draft declares that all the powers (the political, it is probable) come from the nation. The structure of the Belgian Constitution now followed the French Constitution of 1791: Descamps, La mosaïque. 45 Its decrees, as well as the Constitution, were likewise issued in the name of the Belgian people.
Unicameralism was one of the most striking elements of the counterproposal by Joseph Forgeur and his associates. He argued that legislature was an inalienable and inseparable feature of sovereignty and argued that it should belong exclusively to the nation's deputies.
Nation Versus King
Nothomb invoked sovereignty almost literally as a last resort and put it in the hands of the people. Opposite these fictions appears, always threatening, the sovereignty of the people, which in extreme cases comes and destroys them.
The Royal Veto and the National Will
During the plenary debates, only Delegates Wannaar and Henry spoke in favor of a suspensory veto. 95 "The decisions of assemblies must express the will of the nation they represent. Therefore, he must have the right to appeal to the opinion of the state by dissolving the chambers".
The report spoke of the "serious inconvenience" caused by the introduction of the suspensive veto. The report of the Central Division reveals that such a practice would go directly against the spirit of the Constitution. It is nevertheless noticeable that the restrictions imposed on the use of the veto were not made explicit in the constitutional text.
The Congress delegates did not stop to think about the most extreme consequence of the constitutional system they had created. There are many similar references to the revolutionary power of the people facing an irresponsible or unconstitutional government.
Republican Monarchism
In the quote above, Nothomb mentioned the "ever-threatening sovereignty of the people", which is ready to break royal power in the event of an extreme event. Montesquieu was omnipresent in the arguments of both camps, turning the issue into a debate about the character of the Belgians and their compatibility with both forms of government. 112 To this end, it was considered essential that all power be based on the consent of the people.
It would prove unstable, as a monarch would not be comfortable with the sovereignty of the people on which the system was based. Since sovereignty was safely vested in the nation, a hereditary head of the executive did not threaten the "republican." Evidence of republican foundations was that the monarch received his mandate from the people through their representatives in Congress.
The vigilance of the Belgian people would ensure that the future monarch would be reminded of his duties enshrined in the Constitution. All sovereignty comes from the people, this principle must be the title of the new.
The King-Magistrate
His candidacy was approved on the condition that he fully accept the constitution drawn up by the Congress. 137 "To bear all the fruits that we have the right to expect from it, our revolution must ascend the throne of the first king of the Belgians and take its place there, next to him, undamaged". 142 The dedication ceremony in Brussels' Place Royale on 21 July 1831 was organized around Leopold's public swearing-in.
After Leopold took the oath before the President of Congress, the delegates retired to their conference room to conclude their final session. In his closing speech, President De Gerlache emphasized the popular origin of the power of the newly appointed king. De Gerlache's formulation of the voice of the people as the ultimate source of legitimacy was quoted in the article about the events of 21 July in the Belgian Official Gazette.
143 “Elect of the nation, generous prince, come and occupy the throne to which the unanimous cries of a free people call you. 145 "You have a constitution, a regular government, a king; A king who is legitimate because of the people, and it is certainly possible to imagine that in this the voice of the people is the voice of God!”
The Constitutional Powers of the King
150 He was not to act on any power of his own, but he had to intervene in the actions of the other powers when the interests of the nation required it. 151 "There is stability when at the center of the political order there exists a power which perpetuates itself and which escapes all human vicissitudes. 153 This arrangement is consistent with the Central Section's argument regarding the royal veto of normal legislation.
153 Pierre Wigny's objection that the King cannot really refuse to approve a constitutional revision rests on evidence provided by Belgian political custom rather than on the provisions of the Constitution itself: Wigny, Droit constitutionnel, 223; 618. That is the position of the Crown, which by co-signature is subject to the will of the council”. It cannot be denied that the cornerstone of the system described by Lebeau, the political responsibility of ministers to parliament, was missing from the Constitution.
In his view, control of the budget was sufficient to force the king to take his ministers out of the parliamentary majority. Contrary to what some writers have concluded with hindsight about developments in the second half of the nineteenth century, parliamentary government did not materialize in the first decades after the promulgation of the Constitution.
A False Opposition
Constitutional manuals and commentaries from the first decades after the promulgation of the Constitution offer very different interpretations of the meaning of Article 25. God's legitimacy (God's grace) of kings disappeared before the will, power and unity of the people.” . Sovereignty is divided between the king, the representatives of the people and the courts in a manner determined by the constitution.
All the powers come from the nation: their exercise is attributed to the King, the representative of the people and the tribunals”. What is striking about the constitutional manuals and commentaries cited above is that many have explicitly identified national sovereignty with the sovereignty of the people. Tellingly, in the official Dutch version of the Constitution, which had no legal force, 'nation' was translated as.
In this speech, quoted above, he insisted on the "voice of the people" as the Constitution's ultimate source of legitimacy. Likewise, the French name of the Congress' meeting hall, Palais de la Nation ("Palace of the Nation"), has been translated into Dutch as Volkshuys ("House of the People").
The Limitation of Political Participation
At the same time, Constant agreed with Sieyès that the people must necessarily delegate the exercise of sovereignty to their representatives, so direct democracy was excluded. 197 Moreover, both considered the limitation of the right to vote to a part of the population as an obvious necessity. In other words, in the language of political theory at the time, and contrary to later interpretations, popular sovereignty did not equal universal suffrage.
Since the National Congress recognized the people as the source of all legitimate authority, it had no intention of letting the voice of the people dictate policy. 206 The voting capacity, which had been allowed for the election of Congress itself, was removed on the pretense that it created a privilege. The debates of the Congress do not allow to distill a particular picture of the nation as it existed in the minds of the delegates.
What is clear, however, is that the idea of limited suffrage was not considered to conflict with the sovereignty of the nation or the people. The right to vote had to be delegated by necessity to a part of the population that could speak for the whole.
The Contested Nature of Popular Sovereignty
The Courrier des Pays-Bas, based in Brussels, was one of the leading liberal and anticlerical newspapers of the opposition to the regime of William I. Who, in the presence of the Belgian Congress, will convince us that kings derive their powers directly from God , and not by the will of men. 218 In every human society, the exercise of power is necessarily delegated to a fraction of the population.
217 "(….) the sovereignty of the streets, which is a terrible, sudden, blind, deaf, cruel and inexorable sovereignty. Her fears were compounded by the composition of the National Congress, which she judged to be too democratic. In addition, the new constitution gave far too dominant a position to the House of Representatives at the expense of the monarch.
Le Vrai Patriote, based in Brussels, was the short-lived successor to the defunct Orangists newspaper Gazette des Pays-Bas. They differed on the questions of the division of powers and the extent of political participation.
Legal Order, Legitimate Representation and Political Participation
236 As the opposition left the legal order behind, the rights of the nation were increasingly cited as the only legitimate source of authority. Currently, any measure is legal as soon as it is based on the approval of the nation". The mandate of the Provisional Government was considered legitimate acting in the interest of the nation.
240 "War is declared, that is the legitimacy of its mandate, improvised in the middle of the battle". The newspapers thus supported De Potter's justification for the actions of the Provisional Government presented at the opening session of the National Congress. While the paper approved of the actions of the Provisional Government, it denied that its mandate was based on popular or national sovereignty.
In particular, the mandate of the Constitutional Commission was the subject of debate in the press, as was the case in Congress. It has abused its power to deprive nine-tenths of the nation of its power.
