1831, Rogier was made Governor of Antwerp, a post rendered difficult by the continued presence of Dutch troops in the citadel. In October 1832 he was made minister of the interior in the Goblet cabinet. In June 1833 he intervened in a quarrel in the chamber of deputies between Paul Devaux, then a minister, and the opposition leader, Alexandre Gendebien, and fought a duel in which he was severely wounded. During his term of office he carried, in the teeth of violent opposition, a law that established in Belgium the first railways on the continent of Europe, and thus laid the foundation of her industrial development. Owing to dissensions in the cabinet, he retired in 1834, together with Lebeau, and resumed the governorship of Antwerp. When Lebeau returned to power in 1840, Rogier became Minister of Public Works and Education. His educational reform proposals were defeated, and when the ministry resigned in 1841 he supported a compromise that passed into law the next year. He then led the Liberal party in Opposition until 1847, when he formed a cabinet in which he was Minister of the Interior. He at once embarked on a programme of political and economic reform, and took effective steps to remedy the industrial distress caused by the decay of the Flemish linen trade. The limits of the franchise were extended, and as the result of the liberal policy of the government Belgium alone escaped the revolutionary wave that spread over the Continent in 1848. He passed a law in 1850 organizing secondary education under the control of the State, and giving the clergy only the right of religious instruction. The opposition Clerical party, though unable to defeat this measure, succeeded in shaking the position of the cabinet; and it was finally undermined, after Louis Napoleon's coup d'état of 1851, by the hostility of the French government, whose political exiles had been welcomed by the liberal cabinet at Brussels. Rogier retired in October 1852, but was brought back into office by the liberal reaction of 1857. He again became president of the council and minister of the interior in a cabinet of which Walthère Frère-Orban was the most conspicuous member. The first important measure passed by the ministry was one for the fortification of Antwerp. In 1860 the fear of French designs on the independence of Belgium led to a movement of reconciliation with the Netherlands, and