CHAPTER IV.

HUY, SERAING, LIEGE, AND VERVIERS.

Huy—The citadel—Churches—The mineral and coal districts of Belgium—Prosperity of coal mines—Quantity produced in Belgium compared with other countries—Its price at Ghent, Brussels, and Antwerp—Panic in 1836 for the exhaustion of coal in Belgium—Scenery of the Meuse—Remarkable individuals born in its vicinity—Chateaux of Aigremont and Chokier—Seraing—Immense extent of the works—Its produce within its own walls—History of the establishment—Palace of the Prince Bishops of Liege—Encouraged by the King of Holland—The building—Huge steam engine—Surprising extent of the operations carried on—Iron works—Halls for construction of machines—Vast numbers of workmen employed—Its exports—Mr. John Cockerill—Extent of his speculations—Development of Seraing attributable to them—Its future prospects—Policy of England in regard to the export of machinery—Importation of machinery into Belgium—Road to Liege—Liege—No sympathy with its history—Turbulent and unamiable character of its ancient populace—Prince Bishop declares war upon France—Share of the Liegois in the revolution of 1830—Her threatened attack upon Seraing—The town—Manufacture of fire-arms and cannon—A flax mill—Its churches poor—The Palais de Justice—University—Scenery of the Vesdre—The railroad—Chaud-fontaine—Spa—Deserted—Verviers—The town—Conduct during the revolution—The woollen trade of Belgium—Want of native wool—Extent and decline of the trade—Its causes—Statement of M. Briavionne—Joint Stock Companies in Belgium—Account of two at Verviers—The mania for speculation—Its failure—The Prussian frontier—Limbourg—Prospects of Belgium—Her bad condition—Policy of the King of Holland—That of the present government—Present aspect of their trade—Impossibility of competing with England—Character of the Belgian mechanics—Ruinous effects of the “Repeal of the Union.”

Huy is beautifully situated at the angle, where a mountain torrent pours past it to the Meuse. Its fortress stands on a bold detached rock, of great height and breadth, around the base of which the town is built almost upon the sands of the river; and beneath its shelter are collected the churches, monasteries, and houses of the ancient city. The fortifications are now in excellent repair, having been restored after the war by English engineers under the direction of Colonel Blanshard, at the expense of the King of Holland; but the town itself is fast hurrying to decay. Its vicinity to Seraing, the seat of the once powerful Prince Bishops of Liege, rendered Huy a place of evident interest as an ecclesiastical frontier as well as a military one; and the church militant below, emulous of the strongholds of earthly power above, had within the small circuit of its wall no less than a cathedral, fourteen churches, and a still greater number of monasteries, abbeys, and convents, all of which, with the exception of the cathedral and a richly carved gateway that conducts to it, are now in ruins.

Here, for the first time in Belgium, we saw vineyards and their “purple store;” but the wine is execrable, and used only for the most inferior purposes. The position of Huy on the river, and its admirable facilities for traffic, made it a flourishing entrepôt for grain and agricultural produce, in which it carries on a bustling traffic on the river; as well as in the produce of its numerous quarries. A short distance from Huy commence the coal fields, which extend to the district surrounding Liege, the working of which was attempted so far back as the 12th century. In coals, Belgium is, perhaps, the richest country of the west of Europe, with the single exception of Great Britain; the districts in which it abounds being, in England, in the proportion of one-twentieth of her entire surface; in Belgium, a thirtieth; and in France only a two hundredth part. But her success in raising them is not in the same proportion, England having produced, in 1838, twenty-three millions of tons; France, two millions and a half; and Belgium only four.

The principal mining districts are in Hainault, where those of Charleroi and Mons are not only the most productive, but exhibit the best specimens as to quality; those of Liege, which are next; and those of Huy and Namur. Some valuable coal mines at Limbourg have been ceded to Holland by the treaty of 1839, another cause of dissatisfaction to the Belgians. The prosperity of the mining trade has been affected by all the changing fortunes of the country; but its general march, though liable to great vicissitudes, has been in the ultimate result successful and improving. A few years since such was the rage for joint stock speculations, and the mania for erecting machinery in Belgium, that a panic was excited lest the veins of coal and iron should be exhausted prematurely, so rapid was the consumption of both which the force of speculation had produced. The price, in consequence, rose from 50 to 100 per cent, and an application was made and acceded to by the British Government, to permit the free exportation of coal from Newcastle to Flanders; but in the year following the alarm subsided, from very natural causes, and the price returned to its former level.

The quantity produced in Belgium for some years past has not exceeded, on an average, three millions of tons; and the ordinary price has been about 10 francs at the pit’s mouth. The cost of carriage, however, and the variety of modes and distances of conveyance, render its prices at the various places of consumption extremely unequal. According to M. Briavionne,[10] the following was the scale in 1837:—

AT BRUSSELS:

For large coals (droits d’octroi included), 42 francs for the ton of 1000 kilogrammes[11].

For manufacture (gailletes), 32 francs.

AT GHENT:

For domestic use29f. 17c.
For manufactures22f. 6c.
For slack18f. 16c.

AT ANTWERP:

For large coals36f. 55c.
For manufacture26f. 30c.
For slack22f. 30c.

The price of coals in England, at the same period, was twenty-two to twenty-three shillings for what cost thirty-five at Brussels; and from sixteen to twenty for the others, for which the Belgians paid from twenty-five to twenty-seven. The cost at the pit’s mouth, at the same time, was but a shade higher at Newcastle than at Hainault or Liege,[12] so relatively imperfect are the means of communication in Belgium as contrasted with those of Great Britain; and, besides, the coal floors are much more accessible and thicker in the latter country than in the other, where the upper strata has been already pretty well exhausted by upwards of six hundred years of continued workings.

We left Huy by the bridge, which here carries the road from the right to the left bank of the river; and continued its descent towards Liege.

The view, on looking back at this hardy old town, is remarkably striking—its citadel almost by nature a fortress, independently of engineering; and, at its foot, the antique cathedral, founded by Peter the Hermit. The banks of the Meuse, and the Vesdre, have been prolific in great names; Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the first crusade, was born at Poisy, on the borders of Namur; Tilly, one of the great military adventurers of the Thirty Years, came from a village still nearer the Meuse; Hersthal, the birth-place of Pepin, “the Mayor of the Palace,” and the founder of the kings of the second race in France, lies a mile below Liege; and at Herve, between it and Verviers, Lebrun, the minister of France, who died on the scaffold, in 1794, was employed as the editor of a provincial newspaper.

The scenery, on either side of the river, improves in richness, but loses in grandeur, as we approach Liege. The ravine through which it rolls, between Huy and Namur, widens out into a fertile valley towards Seraing, still enclosed, however, by precipitous cliffs, on which castles, châteaux, and monasteries are perched, in positions that seem, from below, at least, to be all but inaccessible. Two, in particular, are most strikingly picturesque—the châteaux of Aigremont, between Flaune and Engis, and another above the village of Chokier, at present occupied by a Russian nobleman, whose visitors would certainly require a balloon and a parachute “to drop in upon him.”

On driving round a projecting angle of the cliff, at a turn in the course of the river, we came in view of the vast buildings and innumerable chimneys of the great iron works at Seraing. These enormous works are certainly one of the wonders of Belgium; and Europe, in point of extent, possesses nothing to compare with them. Nor can one regard this vast temple to the genius of Fulton and Watt, without emotions of amazement, at the lightning speed with which their discoveries have revolutionized the whole aspect of European industry, and created wants and expedients which, half a century ago, were unfelt and unknown; but the pressure of which, at the present day, has forced into existence such a gigantic establishment as Seraing. Compared with the largest manufactories in England, Seraing is as a mammoth to an ant-hill. 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 circuit of its own walls encompasses everything essential to the completion of the most ponderous engine;—two coal mines are worked within them—the iron ore is raised, washed, and smelted on the spot; canals and railroads, all within its gase, convey those cumbrous materials from process to process, from furnace to forge, till the crude mineral which, issued from the earth in its ore, is carried from the ware-room in the form of all but intelligent machines.

Seraing was many years in attaining its present singular development. It was commenced in 1817, by the sons of the ingenious individual, whom I have already mentioned as entering Verviers an impoverished mechanic, and finally contributing, by the impulse of his single mind, to advance the march of manufacturing improvement in Belgium by, at least, half a century. The buildings in which, or rather, around which its multifarious works are now congregated, was formerly the magnificent palace of the Prince Bishops of Liege, on whose abolition it became the property the crown. The brothers, Charles James, and John Cockerill, whose father had already established extensive manufactories of machinery at Liege and transmitted them to his children, conceived the idea of transfering their industry to Seraing, struck with its commanding advantages, the presence of coal and iron, and its facilities of water communication in every direction, by means of the river which flowed below its walls. To occupy all its space, one wing was fitted up for the spinning of linen yarn, and was so employed till 1822, when the extension of their business in the other branches, required the rooms which it engrossed. In 1819, they commenced raising their own coal; and in 1824, they were enabled to work iron, the produce of their own mines and furnaces. The extraordinary encouragement given to every species of manufacture requiring machinery, under the régime of Holland, was a source of continued prosperity; and even the unhealthy plethora of speculation, which has existed in Belgium since the revolution, however disastrous to others, afforded constant employment to the workmen of Seraing, and contributed to expand it to its present unexampled extent.

At the little village of Jemeppe, which is on the same side of the river with the high road, we left the carriage, and crossed over in a ferry boat to the works, over which we were obligingly conducted by one of the superintendants. The outward edifices are all in the same condition as when occupied by the Prince Bishop, and one wing is still the residence of Mr. Cockerill’s family. It consists of three squares, or courtyards, opening one into the other by noble archways, the first of which is still surmounted by the arms of the prelate, with his motto—“je maintiendrai.” The grand front contained the apartments of the Prince himself, the second court that of his officers and suite, and the third was appropriated for the household and stables, and now forms, with the floors on the second story, four apartments, each two hundred feet in length! The whole building, with its noble façade, and the remains of fine timber which surround it, still retains an air of magnificence suitable to its former fortune. The gardens in the rear are now all covered over with workshops, forges, furnaces, and store-houses; and behind these, still further retiring to the river, are the coal fields and iron mines; the whole forming literally a town within itself, daily animated by upwards of 2,000 workmen, in all the various branches of its comprehensive system.

Externally, except from the smoke of its chimneys at a distance, one would scarcely discern the nature of the vast operations going on within; but before the grand entrance on the bank of the river there lay a huge specimen of its productions,—a gigantic cylinder, for a steam-engine to be sent to Prussia, of two hundred and fifty horse power, and of such dimensions, that this one limb of it alone was seven feet in diameter, and weighed upwards of twelve tons. Besides two huge furnaces for smelting the raw ore, there are upwards of thirty others for the washing, puddling, and treatment of the iron in its various stages; eighty forges, two iron founderies, and one of copper; one vast hall for the construction of boilers, another for fly-wheels, and all the portions of steam-engines, and a third for locomotives; besides innumerable apartments for every other species of heavy machinery, rooms for designers and magazines of models. (The spinning, and other light machinery, is manufactured at another establishment at Liege.) The whole is set in motion by seventeen steam-engines, whose united power exceeds nine hundred horses, and the consumption of coals for these and the furnaces is four hundred tons a day, the cost of raising which, we were told, was fifteen francs a ton. Its productions comprehend the whole range of English machinery for every department of industry, and its produce is exported to every manufacturing country to which it has a commodious communication—to Russia, to Prussia, to Germany, Spain, Italy and France and even to South America. Every new invention which succeeds in Great Britain has been re-produced at Seraing, within a short time of its appearance with us.

The rooms and vast halls, from the ample construction of the building, present an appearance quite startling to a stranger, who may not be prepared for the unusual spectacle of a single chamber fitted up with five hundred vices along the sides, and all alive with the rush of wheels and the din of machines of every description, in action in the centre. The workmen are all Belgians, not a single English mechanic being now employed. Their tools, however, were chiefly from Manchester, and in reply to a remark, that at Ghent the Phœnix made its own; the superintendant observed, that they had tried the experiment and found that they could be had both cheaper and better from England. So many as 2,800 workmen have been at one time employed at Seraing, at wages varying from three francs a day to five or six, but would average about four francs round, exclusive of designers, whose gains are more considerable. The establishment has been latterly less regularly employed, owing to a damp upon speculation in general, and the completion of the contracts for the various railroads, and not above 2000 hands are now engaged. The whole concern is, likewise, at present in confusion, owing to the recent death of the proprietor, which will occasion the entire to be disposed of for the settlement of his affairs. The extent of his speculations in every branch of industry, and almost in every country of Europe, is almost incredible. He was concerned in no less than fifty different mines, and factories for spinning and weaving cotton, woollens, and linen, for the manufacture of paper and printed calicoes, for grinding flour, making carding machines, and in short, every promising branch of industry in Belgium, France, and Germany. His property at Seraing has been estimated (I cannot answer for how correctly) at 10,000,000[13] of francs, and his factory for spinning machinery at Liege 3,000,000, his paper mills and buildings at Andennes 2,900,000, his flour mills at Cottbus, in Silesia, 500,000, his woollen factory at St. Denis 500,000, his card machinery at Spa 400,000, and his shares in various other manufactories in Belgium and elsewhere 25,000,000. 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. In the event of their success, the speculation might have been a wise one, but followed as they have been in most instances by disappointment, the result to the proprietor of Seraing, at least, can have been little more than keeping his forges employed out of his own capital.

Still whoever may have been the individual sufferer, Seraing is a stupendous example of enterprize and skill, and if placed upon a suitable financial basis, with its singular facilities of fuel and iron, cannot fail, under almost any circumstances, to be a vigorous concern. The quality of its iron is excellent: this ore yields from twenty-five to seventy-five, and some veins so much as eighty-five per cent.; though that of Belgium in general does not exceed thirty per cent.; and except for some very fine purposes. Seraing is perfectly independent of any importation beyond its own walls. For copper and brass it is, however, dependent upon England and Sweden, none whatever being produced in Belgium, so far as I could learn. One invaluable benefit it has already rendered to Belgium, it has served as a vast college for the education of mechanics; and in the course of twenty years, it has produced thousands of artizans who have branched off into the other provinces, and formed the rival establishments of Ghent, Brussels, Charleroi, Mons, Namur and Tournai. “The Belgians,” says M. Briavionne, “have a natural taste for mechanics, and combine the two essentials to success—perseverance and enterprize. But these qualities would never have been called into action, nor their own resources developed had England, from the first, permitted the free export of her machinery, or Belgium imposed any restrictions upon its import.”[14] The importations of machinery from England, notwithstanding native enterprize have been very considerable more especially of those half-animated engines know by the inappropriate, and ill-understood term of “tools,” which seem to be the very life and sustenance of the rival manufacture of Belgium. In 1830, the Belgian official returns exhibit an import to the value of only 46,372fr., in 1835 it had risen to 464,377fr., in 1836 to 3,291,275fr., in 1837 it was 2,851,451fr., and in 1838, 4,708,237fr.

From Seraing to Liege, a distance of three or four miles, the drive is exceedingly beautiful, the valley of the Meuse here expands into broad and luxuriant meadows, and the steep cliffs which accompanied us from Namur, lean back into rich and verdant hills whose summits are covered with timber, and their base studded with white and cheerful villas. In the midst of this picturesque scenery, the old town of Liege bursts upon us at a sudden turn of the road, built at the foot of the steep hill of St. Walberg which is covered with its churches and palaces, and spreading down to the Meuse which sweeps round its base to meet the waters of the Ourthe and the Vesdre which unite within it.

Liege is certainly the least interesting of all the great towns of the Netherlands, not that the events of its ancient times are less stirring, but the character of their prominent actions is less engaging and their quarrels less chivalrous; in its modern state, it possesses scarcely a single attractive remnant of antiquity—no paintings, no statues, no architectural beauties or remains. Its streets are narrow, irregular and dirty, and the houses devoid of any thing venerable or characteristic. Still the old chronicles of Monstrelet and Philip de Comines, and the quaint tradition of the “wild boar of Ardennes” and the feuds of the Dukes of Brabant and Burgundy, with the insolent burghers, and the alternate ascendancies and indignities of the Prince Bishops, and the rude and savage deeds of the inhuman Louis XI, are all full of historic interest, though of a repulsive and painful kind.

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 morals and manners of the citizens became corrupted, at once, by the acquisition of extraordinary wealth, and the extortion of inordinate privileges from the Prince Bishops who were their ecclesiastical sovereigns. The artisans accustomed to extravagant gains, gave but a portion of their time to industry, and devoted the rest to the discussion of affairs of state, in the places of public resort. The Prelate Albert de Cuyck, unable to subdue their murmuring and disquieted spirit, retreated behind concession after concession, till in 1198, he confirmed to them a Charter, which invested the men of Liege with privileges such as were unheard of in the age in which they lived. But these concessions so far from tranquillizing, seemed but to excite them to fresh demands—the more ample the favours yielded, the more exorbitant became their further requirements—till in the end, their restless ambition embroiled the city in contests of blood such as have tinged the page of their history from century to century. The clergy, at first, made common cause with the people against the power of the haute noblesse, who enjoyed at once all military and magisterial authority in the state; till the multitude disturbed from the pursuits of peaceful industry, became, at length, the sport of ungovernable impulses, sometimes generous in their origin, but which were too often degraded into brutalized ferocity for the mere gratification of revenge. The nobles were the first sacrifice to the popular demands, and the clergy who succeeded to their power, became in turn their fellow victims.” The whole story of their contests is, in fact, one succession of revolts, not for the redress of wrongs or the assertion of liberty, but for the lust of licentious and uncontrolled democracy. Occasionally, too, in the long succession of its Prince Bishops, there occurred some whose authority, instead of being exerted to control, was but employed to exasperate the fury of the populace, and to such an air of arrogance did some of these kingly prelates assume, that one of them, John Louis d’Elderen, presumed, single-handed, to declare war against Louis XIV in 1686! who rewarded his temerity by directing Marshal Boufflers to beat down the fortification of Liege about his ears, an instruction which he duly attended to.

In later times, Liege was a fief of the empire, and the Prince Bishop, the elector, had a vote as representing a portion of the circle of Westphalia. In 1830, its inhabitants, with a true hereditary taste for turmoil, were the first to take up arms on the intelligence of the revolution, and a band of patriots, mustered and marshalled by M. Rogier, marched from Liege to Brussels to aid in expelling the house of Nassau, but with the intention of merely transfering the kingdom from that dynasty to France, a project which was overruled by the clergy and the northern insurgents. With that frightful impulse which in popular, not less than individual frenzy, drives its victims into the violence of hatred of all that they ought to cherish, and has sometimes forced maniacs to eat their own flesh;—the first fury of the patriots was directed against the manufacturing establishments, whence they drew their bread; and nothing but the firm affection of the workmen at Seraing to their master, and the resolution to protect his property, saved that magnificent temple of industry from being itself committed to the flames, by the worshippers of the rival goddess of liberty.

With less of elegance and attraction, there is an equal air of business-like energy and bustling activity in the streets of Liege, as at Ghent. The Meuse is navigable from the city to the sea, and its quays are frequented by the craft, which convey its produce to the various cities along its course, Ruremonde and Venloo to Gorcum, Dordrecht and the Rhine. Its streets are crowded with an incessant stream of waggons, carriages and carts, and in the better streets and squares, the shops are as gay and attractive as those of the Rue Montagne de la Cour at Brussels.

Coupled with its ancient fiery and quarrelsome disposition, its chief manufacture is a characteristic one, being that of cannon and fire-arms, which it at one time, exported to Spain, Portugal, Holland and America. Under France, the imperial factory of arms furnished annually, twenty-seven thousand muskets for the imperial army. A story is told that the rest of the trade, anxious to share in the profits of the monopoly, besought Napoleon to admit them to a share of the supply, and presented him with a finely-finished piece as a specimen of their talents. But as, either by accident or malice, the bore of the barrell was too narrow to admit the ramrod, the Emperor gave no other answer than a frown to their ill-supported petition. Under Holland in 1829, the production of Liege amounted to no less than 190,660 stand of arms; in 1836, it rose to nearly double that quantity, but it is at present, fallen much below one half, and the trade is still in a state of decline. The manufacture is carried on at the homes of the workmen, who, nevertheless, established a perfect division of labour in producing the various parts, and can furnish the entire at a lower rate than either Birmingham or France, a double-barrelled gun can be had for thirty or even twenty francs. The percussion lock has not yet been substituted in the Belgian army for the flint. The cannon foundery is calculated to produce 300 pieces a year; and in 1837, the most flourishing period of the trade, it even exceeded that number.

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.

As might be anticipated from its having so long been the residence of the most eminent prelate in the Low Countries, Liege abounds in churches, there being some eighteen or twenty for a population of 50,000 inhabitants. They are, however, destitute of all attractions, except that of St. Jacques, which is a very excellent example of florid got his architecture. The others are common-place structures, devoid of all valuable decorations of any kind, except a few indifferent statues by Delcour the sculptor, who was himself a native of the city. The Palais de Justice was formerly the residence of the Prince Bishops, and in its ample arcades, supported by truncated columns, exhibits traces of its former magnificence. The University, which has some eminent professors, especially of natural philosophy, was another foundation of the King of Holland, and besides a library of some seventy or eighty thousand volumes, contains Museums of Natural History, and Minerals of unusual value. But every thing connected with modern Liege is common-place and uninteresting; its only charm is its exquisite situation at the juncture of the three beautiful valleys of the Meuse, the Ourthe and the Vesdre, and a very brief sojourn is sufficient to satisfy the stranger in pursuit of “fresh fields and pastures new.”

We left Liege before breakfast for Verviers through the exquisite valley of the Vesdre, which, as it is narrower and more tortuous than the descent of the Meuse, excels it in picturesque beauty, though inferior in the grandeur of its general effect. The entire line of the road was through richly wooded glens and ravines, where the river had forced a passage between the fantastic cliffs which time had wrought into shapes like fortresses or the battlements of ruined strongholds. Below, the Vesdre itself, too shallow to be navigated, twists round each sweep of the winding cliffs, now shining in the sunlight, and again scarcely visible under the dark shadows of the trees and rocks. 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 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.

About four miles from Liege, in one of the glens of this beautiful river, is Chaudefontaine, a spring which has long been the holiday resort of the Liegois, and has now grown into a miniature watering place, with its hotels and other agrémens. And half way to Verviers, a road striking in between the hills on the right leads to Spa, one of the superannuated favourites of fashion, which has long since yielded the throne to younger and gayer rivals. The crowd now rolls past the turn in the road which leads to it, eager to reach Carlsbad or Wisbaden, and no longer contented, as in the Sir Charles Grandison age, to pace the “Promenades de quatre heures,” walk minuets in the “Vauxhall,” or make stately excursions to the cottages of Marmontel’s Annette and Lubin. Still the country and scenery around it, and the magnificent mountains and woods of the Ardennes yield, in nothing, to the attractions of the later protegées of ton, but along with the rest of the ungrateful crowd, we too declined the open door of the antiquated and neglected beauty, and kept on the road to Verviers.

Verviers is a long straggling, but by no means ordinary town, stretching along the banks of the Vesdre, whenever the command of the stream presented a desirable site for a factory. In this, nearly 20,000 inhabitants and their machinery are located along the stream, and the uplands forming, certainly, one of the most cheerful and healthy manufacturing communities in Europe. The grand staples, are wool in all its varieties of worsted and cloth, in the production of which the valley has long enjoyed a high reputation in Holland and France, and its goods are still exported to Italy and the Levant. Like the people of Liege, the workmen of Verviers caught the infection of the revolutionary mania in 1830, but their madness exhibited itself in a still more savage form. On the first intelligence of the revolt, they sprung, eager for the fray, and at once manifested their wishes, by hoisting the tri-colour of France, with whom they demanded an instant incorporation. The town has neither fortress nor garrison, and for two days it was the scene of the most disgusting and uncontrolled excesses. The people assembled in tumultuous masses, and with shouts of “liberty,” tore down the royal insignia of the Netherlands, and razed to the ground the houses of the government officers; factories were destroyed, machinery demolished, and the whole property of the flourishing valley seemed destined to destruction from the freaks of this drunken revolution. At length the soberer citizens, forming an urban guard and a council of safety, succeeded in restoring order, and securing their property from the fingers of the children of “Freedom.”

The woollen trade of the Andennes, is one of the oldest national occupations of the Netherlands, and for the share of it which we enjoy in England, we are indebted to the fanatical fury of Philip II., whose persecutions drove the weavers of Brabant and Flanders to seek an asylum with Elizabeth in England. Unlike its other great staple of linen, however, Belgium, in her woollen manufacture, is dependant upon others for the raw material which she employs; the entire of her possessions do not feed beyond a single million of sheep, and her annual imports of wool from Germany, Holland, England and Spain, exceed 15,000,000 francs. The two grand seats of the trade, though distributed over a considerable district of the south, are at Verviers and Dison, which each produce annually from 30 to 35,000 pieces of thirty ells of Brabant in length. The manufacture is chiefly carried on in the houses of the workmen, and in some places, especially at Dison, the employers are so deficient in capital, that the truck system is universal, and the weaver paid by a portion of his own produce, which he must afterwards sell under the pressure for bread, at such a price as he can get for it; an act of injustice to the operative, which must always tend to the manifest injury of prices, and undermining of the trade.

Down to 1814, the trade was in every way prosperous, but the successive curtailments of consumption, first by the exclusion from France, and, finally, by separation from Holland, have shaken its stability, and brought it into a state of considerable peril at the present moment. Still the number of factories have not diminished, although the rate of profits has been cut down to the lowest possible figure, especially at Verviers. It gives employment, at present, to between 15,000 and 20,000 individuals of all ages, whose wages vary from half a franc per day for children, to two francs, and two francs and a half for their fathers. The countries to which Belgium still exports are Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Levant, and Holland; but a commercial treaty between the latter country and France, is said to have been framed with a view to transfer to French cloth, the preference now given to that of Verviers in the Dutch market. Her exportations, however, exhibit an incredible decline since the revolution. In 1831, its value amounted to twenty-seven millions of francs; in 1832 to twenty-three; in 1833, it fell to one half, and in 1836, declined to six millions and a half, a diminution which is ascribable to numerous causes, but chiefly to its exclusion from Germany, by the operation of the Prussian commercial league; the states of which were once, previously, its most valuable consumers. Germany, in 1831 and 1832, took no less than 1,000,000 kilogrammes of Belgian cloth, which fell, in 1833, to 344,000, and on an average of the four succeeding years, has scarcely exceeded 250,000.

It is not difficult to imagine the vicissitudes of the woollen trade of Belgium, thus driven, within five-and-twenty years, from the markets of France and her colonies, Holland, Java, and Germany, and, shut up within the narrow circle of her new independence, to maintain a competition with her two powerful rivals—the English and the French. Its present condition and prospects are thus noticed in the intelligent volume of M. Briavionne. “After having participated, for so many years, in the splendour of the Empire, the woollen manufactures of Belgium underwent a decline in the early stage of her connexion with Holland, which she ultimately recovered, and with such a firm success, that the events of 1830 inflicted on it but a momentary injury. The close of 1831, and the years 1832, 1833 and 1834, were, on the whole, a period of satisfactory trade. But now commenced a struggle of every description, and the clothing for the army being speedily accomplished, it became essential to look for new outlets abroad. But just at this crisis came the consolidation of the Zoll-Verein in Germany—the plague, which ravaged the Levant—the cholera, which terrified Italy—and, above all, the commercial calamities of the United States in 1836 and 1837, each and all of which interfered directly with her demand; and, to crown all, a period of depression in the home market in 1838, and last year arrived, simultaneously with a change in public taste, as to the fashion of dress, which altered the whole character of their productions, and imposed the expense of new machinery, and differently constructed apparatus of all kinds. The general result is, at present, a weighty depression, especially in the poorer districts of Dison; and one may sum up the recent history of the trade by saying, that the two first years after the separation from Holland were good—1834, disastrous—1835 and 1836, passable—1837 and 1838, bad—and 1839, equally so.”[15]

Verviers is an open, gay looking country town, not like the manufacturing places of England, which are dense, red-bricked rows of smoky houses, thickly huddled together—but with broad, sunny streets, and handsome white houses; the dwellings of the proprietors and their factories, being equally ornamented on the front next the street. The country around it, though beautiful, is barren, and provisions of all kinds are as expensive in Verviers as in Brussels.

M. Gaudry, an intelligent proprietor of several manufactories, to whom we brought letters, gave a deplorable account of the recent joint stock speculations in Belgium, which seem to have been carried on to an extent of capital, and with a recklessness in management that is quite inconceivable. Verviers was a favourite field for their operations, owing to the variety of its resources, which presented something to suit every appetite of enterprise; and as works in actual operation were much more seductive baits for shareholders, concerns were bought up wholesale from their proprietors at the most extravagant rates, to be sold out again in retail shares to the joint stock amateurs. One coal mine, in the vicinity of the town, which had nearly ruined its proprietor, was greedily purchased by the projectors of one of these schemes, making its owner’s fortune just in time to conceal his actual ruin, and after being worked for a short time, ended in the bankruptcy of the new company—but, of course, not till it had amply rewarded the secretaries, solicitors, and directory. A worsted manufacturer, in like manner, who was on the verge of insolvency, offered his mills to a joint stock proprietary, who eagerly accepted them on his terms—paid a sum for the concern, which he forthwith invested in land, and gave him a salary, for managing his own works, more than equal to all the profits they ever realized.

It will scarcely be believed, though it is a fact, that between 1833 and 1838, one hundred and fifty or sixty companies of this kind, actually invested three hundred and fifty millions of francs, or about £15,000,000, in speculations of this kind—for insurances, mines, machine making, public works, export associations, glass manufactories, sugar refineries, cotton and flax mills, printing, brewing, in short, every imaginable undertaking that could be described in scrip.

The mania originated with some similar undertakings projected by the King of Holland, but which being prudently conducted 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; but the shareholders of a company contribute only the latter, leaving the supply of the former to a directory: the partners are only called upon to pay and not to think, so that the mass of their capital is unrepresented by an equivalent proportion of intellect and forethought. The general result of this, is the failure that invariably accompanies neglect, and even the works which are undertaken are never pushed with vigour, or expanded by new discoveries and inventions. These are the offspring of that anxious exertion of all the faculties of the brain which accompanies the watchful prudence of a man, who has his whole fortune at stake, and is dependent upon his individual genius. But the holder of a joint-stock share, who throws his contribution into the general fund, and sends twice a year for his dividend, (perhaps, without receiving it,) has neither the information nor the interest that are indispensable to stimulate improvements.

Mistakes and errors are thus constantly occurring, and losses supervene; these, on their first appearance, would alarm and deter a private individual from incurring further risk, and he would prepare, at once, to retrieve his capital; but to the officers of a company these occurrences are matters of comparative indifference, so long as the last shilling of the paid up funds remains to meet their salaries as they fall due. And even the proprietary themselves, though conscious of the diminution of their profits, do not feel it so acutely, coming as it does off so large a fund, and are, besides, spurred on by the spirit of rivalry to incur the temporary loss, in order to drive some competing company from the field, which is only to be done by the largeness of their transactions; on the principle of the match-seller, who lost a trifle upon every bundle, and would be ruined were it not for the vast extent of the business which he did.

The results of this system were not slow in developing themselves in Belgium; one by one they began to strain, break, and give way; distrust was every hour growing blacker, when the bank of Belgium, which had been similarly formed in 1835, with a capital of twenty millions of francs, and had encouraged the establishment of some twenty or thirty other joint-stock speculations, with a capital of fifty millions more, suddenly suspended payment in 1838, and universal dismay and confusion followed; bubbles burst in all directions, those concerns which were unsound exploded at once, and others more substantial suspended their operations, and resorted to fresh calls and loans to enable them to proceed. In the mean time, prices and the wages of labour had been fluctuating like the waves of the sea under this financial tempest, at one time raised to the highest pitch by the demand for machinery created by such vast simultaneous exertions, and anon reduced below a remunerative level by the ardour of their competition with each other. Several of these companies still survive, but almost universally struggling with the difficulties in which they have involved not only themselves, but those private individuals whose steady and lucrative trade they had invaded in the rage of their speculations.

From Verviers to Eupen, the Prussian frontier, the road is high and uninteresting; it speedily leaves the charming valleys of the Vesdre behind, and comes within sight of the ruins of Limbourg, one of the most melancholy scenes of desolation I have seen—it stands lonely and apart upon the summit of a rocky eminence, the remains of what had once been a city, now a wilderness. Its rugged walls covered with green moss, scarcely a roof visible, and the remnants of its shattered fortifications flung, like a torn banner, across the sky. It has still, however, a few wretched inhabitants, who are engaged in the zinc mines in its vicinity. It seems incredible that this stranded wreck, was once the capital of a duchy and the residence of a sovereign.

It is impossible to turn one’s back upon this most interesting and enterprising country without emotions of deep anxiety as to its future destiny. 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. Merchants, indeed, she has but few, for nature and providence seem to have combined to render Belgium a workshop rather than a warehouse. Austria, by the base desertion of her shipping interest, in becoming a party to the closing of the Scheldt at the treaty of Munster, compelled her to turn her attention inwardly upon herself, and to seek to replace by the loom and the hammer, that which she had lost by the annihilation of the sail and the helm. Under France, and with the all-powerful protection of Napoleon, her capabilities were developed to the fullest extent of her capital and her means, all Europe affording a market for her commodities, and creating a demand almost beyond her power to supply.

With the events of 1815, and her annexation to Holland, that vast outlet was contracted to a narrower space, and the King, on assuming the direction of his affairs, found a nation of mechanics, whom it became his province to provide with profitable employment. In the attempt to do this, it is questionable whether he did not overstep the bounds of prudence, and lead, by the system he adopted, to the further development of powers which were already simply sufficient for their functions;

As worldlings do, giving the sum of more

To that which had too much—

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. What then must have been her condition, when in 1830, those 15,000,000 were reduced to something more than three, whilst her machinery and powers of production remained the same as before?

The new government, it must be admitted upon all hands, in spite of the murmurs of those, the evils of whose condition lay too deep for superficial remedies, such as the ministry had it in their power to apply, have left no practical expedient untried to afford them relief, but as yet in vain; and the history of one year seems but to afford a painful contrast with the greater prosperity of that which preceded it. Money, so far as it was available, has in no case been spared. 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; but so soon as they are either obliged to bring their raw material from abroad, or to come into competition with the machinery of more populous countries, their advantages suddenly disappear. Thus in iron work in general, cutlery, ordinary machinery, and hardware, they excel; as well as in the production of lace and of linen yarn, in distillation or brewing, in the manufacture of furniture and paper, and, in short, in all the indispensable requisites of a home consumption. On the other hand, their coal and their iron, though abundant, lie deeper and dearer than those of their most formidable rivals in Great Britain; and copper, which is equally essential to extensive operations in machinery, they have none. 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.

One expedient, may, perhaps, suggest itself, that if her manufacturing force is too great, it should be directed into other channels, and her powers of production reduced into an accordance with her demand and consumption. But, independently of the fact, that her agriculture, which lost, equally with her artizans, an outlet in the colonies of Holland, is already overstocked, and would afford no reception to her surplus mechanics, the production of her machinery, even if reduced within the wants of a population of three or four millions, would still be undersold by those of her rivals, whose consumption extends over a vastly more extended field. England with two hundred millions of subjects in India and the West; Russia with 66,000,000; Austria with half that number; the German League with twenty-four, and France with thirty-five millions, would render it utterly beyond the power of Belgium to enter any neutral market in the world in competition with them, or even to supply her own, unless at a sacrifice.

The character of the Belgians for industry, frugality, and skill, is not surpassed by that of any artisan in the world, but these, unfortunately, are not the only requisites to success. “The sufferings of the Belgian mechanics,” says M. Briavionne, “are all referable to their unfortunate political position; but, formed in a school of long adversity, they have learned to discover, even in their misfortunes, a fountain of higher qualities, which has sustained them in their painful struggle. Prodigal in prosperity, adversity has served to teach them economy—to render them systematic, patient, and persevering. Nurtured in luxury, they have become reconciled to privations; and the Belgian manufacturer has long since learned to place his sole reliance upon untiring labour, and unyielding industry. Less adventurous than the American, or the Englishman, he has more fore-sight, moderation and patience, than them both.”

“The condition of the population,” adds M. Briavionne, “may be thus summarily described;—of four millions of inhabitants, one is in independence, (l’aisance), another in want, (besoin), and the remainder floating between these two points.”

But another reflection naturally forces itself upon the mind of any one who sympathises with the artisans of Belgium, generous, industrious, and deserving, as they have here been described—who and what is it that have reduced them to this condition of suffering and privation? The answer is but too obvious; and those who were the base instruments of their ruin, if they have not discovered the effects of their own crime, in the stagnation of all national prosperity, must, long ere this, have learned it in the “curses, not loud but deep,” with which their actions are assailed, by their dupes and victims. Belgium has, years ere this, discovered the truth of the maxim, that it is—

“—better to bear the ills we have,

Than fly to others we know not of.”

If, under the successive sovereignties of Austria and France, and as an integral portion of that of Holland, she had not the poetical satisfaction of being “a nation instead of a province,” she had, at least, the substantial enjoyments of liberty, wealth and remunerative industry, blessings which even “hereditary bondsmen” might hesitate to exchange for bigotry, poverty and decay.