Jules Malou

Malou was born in Ypres. He was a civil servant in the department of justice when he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies by his native constituency in 1841, and was for some time governor of the province of Antwerp. He served as Minister of Finance in the coalition ministry of Jean Baptiste, Baron Nothomb in 1844 and formed with B. T. de Theux de Meylandt a Catholic cabinet in 1846 which lost power after the Liberal victory of 1847.

Malou then became a member of the senate, and his party only regained ascendancy in 1870. The distinctly clerical ministry of Baron Jules d'Anethan retired in December 1871 after serious rioting in Brussels, and Malou was the real, though not the nominal, head of the more moderate clerical administrations of de Theux and Aspremont-Lynden (1870–1878). He disavowed the sympathy of Belgian Ultramontane politicians with the German victims of the Kulturkampf, and, retaining in his own hands the portfolio of finance, he subordinated his clerical policy to a useful administration in commercial matters, including a development of the railway system.

As prime minister

It was only after the fall of the ministry in 1878 that he adopted a strongly pro-clerical policy, and when he became chief of a new government in June 1884 he proceeded to undo the secularisation of education instituted by the Liberal Frère-Orban ministry. His legislation in favor of the Catholic schools caused rioting in Brussels, and in October the king demanded the retirement of Jacobs and Woeste, the members of the cabinet against whom popular indignation was chiefly directed. Malou followed them into retirement.