ABSTRACT
Three small countries of western Europe, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, followed patterns of historical development from 1830 to 1880 which have much in common. All three countries had shared the violent and colourful past of the rest of western Europe. All three countries experienced internal violence and bloodshed in the 1830s. The twentieth-century image of the three countries – smug, over-civilized and self-satisfied little democracies – is based only on the last century of their histories. Since 1848, it is true, all three countries have evolved an ordered political life in which disputes formerly leading to bloodshed have been settled by debate and votes in the assembly hall. Almost overnight these three ancient European communities discovered that even bitter religious and political issues could be settled within a system of constitutional rules and without resort to the older barbarisms. The questions at issue remained largely the same: what should be the relations between Church and State? Who should control education? How large a section of the community should be allowed to elect representatives in government and parliament? But these questions, basic and vital though they are in any society, were found to be capable of settlement within a universally accepted institution of debate – a parliament.
