Behind The Scenes Of Unionism: There is a tradition in Belgian historiography to consider the end of the Union between catholics and liberals a consequence of the ratification of the 24-Article Treaty by the Belgian Parliament in 1839. According to this vision, the Dutch king William thus caesed to be a common foreign enemy, both for the catholics and liberals. There are, however, several reasons for looking upon the break of Unionism in 1839 as a consequence of the changed relative power between liberals and catholics, rather than as a result of this ratification.