Sir James Emerson Tennent

“ Its political fortunes would require something more than ordinary foresight to predict, and the recent possibility of an European war, elicited the avowal of how slightly France would regard the treaties of 1831 or 1839, did Belgium stand for one moment in the way to obstruct her designs, either of aggression or defence. But those for whose future lot the strongest sympathy is excited, are her skilful artisans and her energetic and adventurous manufacturers and merchants. ”

“ But Belgium has been so long accustomed, both under France and Holland, to “government interference” in the minutest concerns of the nation, even to the prejudice or supersession of individual speculation, that the habitual policy of the country may have rendered its intervention indispensible. And as the entire extent of all the lines projected, in progress, and open, will not exceed three hundred miles, and these can be completed, at a cost infinitely lower than anything that has yet been attempted in Great Britain, the undertaking is not so very gigantic as at first sight it might appear. ”

“ There is a flax-spinning mill at Liege with 10,000 spindles, the property of a joint-stock company, of whom Mr. Cockerill was the chief proprietor. Its works are now languid, owing to a want of consumption, and a gentleman acquainted with its affairs, spoke very despondingly of its prospects. Coals, though found in the immediate neighbourhood, are dear, as they lie deep, and we saw them generally mixed into balls with clay for the use of the stoves in the hotels and private houses, an indication that their price is a stimulant to economy. ”

“ We share our own home markets with our rivals, whilst they effectually exclude us from any participation in theirs. Here is a constant source of our weakness, our competitors reaping advantages from our errors that strengthen them to contend with ourselves. The true economy of machinery and the only means of selling cheaply is to sell largely. But in Belgium the consumption is the least conceivable, divided and attenuated as it is by importations from abroad. ”

“ Napoleon, enamoured of his theory, that France was nothing unless with the Rhine for her eastern boundary, and the Scheldt for the northern station of her navy, conceived numerous projects for its realization. At one time planning to build a city at Terneuse, at another, fixing on the vast alluvial plain that surrounds the Tête de Flandres, but finally determining to make Antwerp, herself, the object of his ambitious care, and render her, in his own words, “a pistol, perpetually at the throat of England.” ”

“ Liege had been the See of a Bishop for fourteen hundred years, when the annexation of Belgium to France put a close to the dynasty of its sovereign prelates. Its rank was such amongst ecclesiastical cities, that it was visited by the Popes and the Emperors; and its citizens intoxicated, at once, with affluence and arrogance became the most turbulent and insubordinate faction that ever “strangled the prosperity” of a community. M. Ferrier in an historical résumé, prefixed to his “Description de Liège,” thus sums up the condition of the burghers in the 12th century. ”

“ The entrance to the city, by the Porte de Borgerhout, gives a striking impression of its great strength, its fortifications rising in huge mounds of brickwork, above broad and river-like fosses, and the road after passing draw-bridge after draw-bridge entering a ponderous arch, apparently hollowed out of the ramparts, on emerging from which the wheels rattle and re-echo over the rough pavement of the narrow gloomy streets, that lead into the heart of the city. ”

“ I cannot but fear, that these large establishments have been inconsiderately run up in Belgium, and that the recent demand for machinery, both for railroads and factories, has given a hectic air of prosperity to Belgian manufactures, that has led to investments of this kind, far beyond her real wants. Even at present we find an universal protestation, that the quantity of machinery already in action, is more than sufficient to supply all the demands of her trade. ”

“ Workmen have been employed for some years in restoring all the decayed portions of the stone-work, and the steeple is still filled with their scaffolding and machinery. But the view, long before gaining the extreme summit, is by far the finest in Belgium, extending, as it does, over the broad current of the Scheldt, whose windings can be traced from Ghent to Flushing, whilst to the north, the eye can reach Breda and the frontiers of Holland; to the south and east, the distant cities of Brussels, Mechlin, Turnhout, and Louvain. ”

“ Charles V spoke of placing the Cathedral of Antwerp under a glass shade, but actually one is inclined to wish for something of the kind to keep the dust from discolouring the florid tracery of the Hôtel de Ville at Louvain. It is situated in a little ancient square in which Marshal Villeroy held a council of war by torch-light on the night of the Battle of Ramilies, in 1706. The building itself, which is of the fifteenth century, is small, but its proportions and ornaments are of the most delicate elegance. ”

“ Factory after factory closed its doors, some in ruin, others to transfer their capital and industry to Holland, whose extensive colonies afforded that outlet for their produce, which they could no longer find at home. The ministry to check the downward career, resorted to the absurd and childish expedient of purchasing up the surplus production of the manufacturers, in order to export it at a loss, and thus get it out of the country and out of the way, only to make room for fresh accumulation of stock, and renewed adventures by the government. ”

“ The period of its union with Holland, however, from 1815 to 1830, may be said to have been the golden age of Antwerp. Its situation for trade is by far more favourable [41] than either Rotterdam or Amsterdam, and being admitted, along with them, to an equal participation in all the resources of the kingdom, it rapidly outstripped them in every department of trade, so much so, that, at the period of the revolution, “Antwerp did more business, in every article of colonial produce, with the exception of tobacco, than Amsterdam and Rotterdam united.” ”

“ The quantity of actual creative power which it engenders and pours forth, year by year, is, perhaps, equal to that of a whole generation of artizans, in the best days of Flemish prosperity; and a river, of ordinary current, flowing through a country of manufactures scarcely communicates a greater impetus to the production of the necessaries, or the comforts of life, than the steam engines which Seraing is capable of sending forth in the compass of a single year. ”

“ The park, on the verge of which the village is built, has been for centuries the vice-regal residence for the Austrian governors of the Netherlands. It is beautifully wooded, and the irregularity of the grounds afford some exquisite landscapes. The present palace was erected by the nation, and presented along with that at Brussels to the Prince of Orange, as a recognition of his services at Waterloo. Like it, it has been waiting the fate of the final treaty of partition, and its gorgeous furniture, which has been undisturbed since 1830, is now in process of removal to the Hague. ”

“ The lover of the picturesque will shudder to be told, that it is through this charming valley that the railroad is to be carried to connect Liege with Verviers on its way to Cologne, and even now the engineers are at work levelling, blasting, and uprooting to make way for it, cutting off a projecting cliff here, and filling up a useless ravine there, and flinging lofty [196] embankments across the entrance of the sweetest recesses of the valley, into which you are only admitted to have a peep through the archway on which the train is to traverse the highway. ”

“ Heavens! how unlike their Belgian sires of old,
Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold,
War in each eye and freedom in each brow,
How much unlike the sons of Belgium now!
Having come by the railroad to Louvain, we hired a calèche to return across the country to Brussels by Terveuren. The drive is a very beautiful one, running along the slope of the gentle, wooded hills, at the foot of one of which Louvain is situated. Terveuren is a pretty village built down the glen between two hills, with a picturesque old church on the summit of one of them. ”

“ After disclaiming all implication of the cotton trade in the over speculation and imprudences which had ruined other branches in the years preceding, they go on to say, that “notwithstanding every circumspection and expedient that, as prudent men, they could adopt to make head against the storm, they find themselves silently and fatally undermined by an evil which they have long foreseen, and against which they have been guarding since the revolution with less success than earnestness. ”

“ In Belgium, in fact, there has been a mania for joint-stock speculation, scarcely equalled by the bubbles of 1825 in Great Britain, and attended with equally ruinous results. Mr. Cockerill’s encouragement and participation in these adventures to such an extent, is one source of the activity and astonishing development of Seraing; the funds of these adventurers and his own, along with the rest, being vested in the purchase of machinery manufactured by himself. ”

“ Individual enterprise was superseded rather than assisted; and the expedients of the government tended to injure it in one respect by relieving it from the effects of its own errors, feeding it with capital, and carrying off its surplus production through societies which purchased at a handsome price to export at a loss. Even with all these appliances, her resources and powers were developed beyond the legitimate means of their employment, and the 15,000,000 of her population and colonies, whom Holland, compelled to give a preference to her productions, were inadequate to their consumption. ”

“ Mechanical and commercial education, both theoretical and practical, has been duly attended to; prizes and honours have been awarded to successful industry; and communications, both by highways, railroads, and canals, have been lavishly provided to invite consumption and demand; but no government can possibly afford the Belgians or procure for them, that which alone can be a fundamental remedy—a market proportionate to their machinery.
In every thing that is the offspring of manual labour brought to bear upon native produce, their manufactures are successful ”

“ Their trade would lose its pre-eminence could the Irish be once induced to adopt their processes for the preparation of flax; their cotton manufacture is in the agonies of dissolution, and their silk has already departed. Their woollens, their sugar refiners, and other once fruitful fields of enterprise and wealth, are no longer to be relied on; and, in a word, the whole frame-work of their system is labouring under a plethora, for which no ingenuity has yet sufficed to invent an effectual relief. ”

“ The mania originated with some similar undertakings projected by the King of Holland, but which being prudently conducted [206] were moderately successful. But never was theory more vividly exemplified, in practice, than were the warnings of Adam Smith realized in the case of the Belgium companies; without either of his two essentials to success—“monopoly or defined and limited action;” they burst at once into all the pathless wilds of speculation and extravagance. To success in any industrial undertaking, two things are essential, mind and money ”

“ The ultimate preservation of the cotton trade of Belgium, in all its branches of spinning, weaving and printing, seems to me utterly hopeless by any ordinary policy, and only to be achieved by a resort to some expedient as yet untried. ”

“ At Andennes we passed the first of those vast manufactories, the establishment of which has made the name of one Englishman more renowned in Belgium than those of all its native speculators combined—Mr. William Cockerill. Every district of the kingdom exhibits some memorial of his enterprise, and there is scarcely a branch of the national industry which, if it does not owe its introduction to his suggestion, is not indebted to his genius for its improvement. ”

“ So ended the revolution of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Aix-la-Chapelle is still a venerable old city, especially when seen from a distance, [227] and its very name is connected with imperial ideas; Charlemagne and his chivalry, Kings, Emperors and Popes, wars, congresses and treaties, all of which have, at one time or another, been associated with its name. But it has now few objects of great interest within itself—its interest is with the past. ”