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Originally Posted by jfuh  I can not say I know too much about Belgium so help me out here. But from the wiki article it seems to suggest that the monarchy and aristocracy still nevertheless retained special privileges that the common man did not - an injustice so to speak. |
To be honest, yes, it has been written in the constitution (since 1831) that all men are equals etc...but on the other hand there were still inequalities:
1) Military duty was compulsory: 1 male/family had to do it. But if you paid a certain sum of money you were allowed not to do it = rich people could avoid military duty.
2) Until around 1880 only people who payed the "cens" (special tax for rich citizen who owned land) could vote = there were only 40,000 voters in a country which had 4,000,000 inhabitants. Then everybody could vote, but those who were over 30 and had kids had 2 votes, and those who had a diploma had 3 votes. It wasn't written in any law that women could not vote, but they didn't do it until 1948 (that's extremely late I know) (but we had a female senator in 1921!)
So, according to the constitution there was no inequality, but in fact rich people had several advantages. That's off topic so I won't say more about this, but if you want me to do so I'll be pleased to do it in the history subforum
