Belgium, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Sir James Emerson Tennent

The court-yard of the station was filled with a crowd of omnibuses, fiacres and vigilantes, an improvement upon the cabs of London, and a drive of a few minutes brought us to the Cauter, or Place d’Armes, where, following the direction of the Hand-book, we stopped at the Hôtel de la Poste, a spacious house, kept by a M. Oldi, who, we were told, was son to a Baroness of the same name, who figured on the occasion of the trial of Queen Caroline.

GHENT.

My anxiety was to learn something of the actual state of manufacturing industry in Belgium, and Ghent, its principal seat and centre, presented the most favourable opportunities. Our introductions were numerous, but my chief obligations are to M. Grenier, one of the most intelligent and accomplished men of business whom it has been my good fortune to meet. He had been formerly an officer in the Imperial Guard of Napoleon, whilst Belgium was a province of the empire, but on the return of peace, in 1815, betook himself to pursuits of commerce, and is now connected with some of the most important manufacturing and trading establishments of Belgium. I owe a similar acknowledgment for the polite attentions of M. de Smet de Naeyer,[6] an eminent manufacturer, and one of the officers of the Chamber of Commerce and of the Conseil de Prud’hommes at Ghent.

The latter body which is an institution, originally French, was introduced in Belgium by a decree of Napoleon in 1810. It is a board formed jointly of employers and workmen, elected by annual sections, and discharging all its functions, not only gratuitously as regards the public, but without payment to its own members, beyond the mere expenditure of the office, and a moderate salary to a secretary. Its duties have reference to the adjustment of the mutual intercourse between workmen and their masters in every branch of manufacture, the prevention of combinations, the performance of contracts, the regulation of apprenticeship, and the effectual administration of the system of livrets—a species of permanent diploma, which the artisan received on the termination of his pulpilage, signed by the master to whom he had been articled, and sealed by the President of the Conseil de Prud’hommes. Without the production of his livret, no tradesman can be received into employment; and in it are entered all his successive discharges and acquittances with his various masters. The powers of fining and of forfeiture exercised by the conseil, are summary up to a certain amount, and in cases of graver importance, there is a resort to the correctional police.

But the main functions of the Conseil de Prud’hommes are the prevention of any invasion of the peculiar rights of any manufacturer, or the counterfeit imitation of his particular marks; and especially the protection of the copyright of all designs and productions of art for the decoration of manufactures. With this view, every proprietor of an original design, whether for working in metals or on woven fabrics, is empowered to deposit a copy of it in the archives of the council, enveloped in a sealed cover, and signed by himself; and to receive in return a certificate of its enrolment, and the date of reception. At the same time, he is called upon to declare the length of time for which he wishes to secure to himself the exclusive right of its publication, whether for one, two, or three years, or for ever, and in either case, a trifling fee is demanded, in no instance exceeding a franc for each year the protection is claimed, or ten for a perpetuity.[7] In the event of any dispute as to originality or proprietorship, the officer of the council is authorized to break the seal, and his testimony is conclusive as to the date and circumstances of the deposit.

The effect of this simple and inexpensive tribunal has been found so thoroughly effectual, that the most equitable security has been established for designs of every description applicable to works of taste, and the intellectual property of a pattern has been as thoroughly vindicated to its inventor through the instrumentality of the register of the Prud’hommes, as his material property, in the article on which it is to be impressed, is secured to him by the ordinary law. In fact, the whole operation of the institution at Ghent has proved so beneficial to manufactures universally, that by a projet de loi of 1839, similar boards are about to be established in all the leading towns and cities, as Liege, Brussels, Courtrai, Antwerp, Louvain, Mons, Charleroi, Verviers, and the manufacturing districts, generally, throughout Belgium.

One of our first visits was to a mill for spinning linen yarn, recently constructed by a joint stock company, called La Société de la Lys, in honour, I presume, of the Flemish river on which it is situated, and which is celebrated on the continent for the extraordinary suitability of its waters for the preparation of flax. Belgium, from the remotest period, even, it is said, before the Christian era, has been celebrated for its manufacture of clothing of all descriptions. It was from Belgium that England derived her first knowledge of the weaving of wool; damask has been made there since the time of the Crusades, when the soldiers of Godfrey of Bouillon and of Count Baldwin, brought the art from Damascus; and to the present hour, the very name of “Holland” is synonymous with linen, and the cloth so called, has for centuries been woven principally in Flanders.

Under the government of Austria, the manufacture seems to have attained its acmé of prosperity in the Netherlands, her exports of linen, in 1784, amounting to 27,843,397 yards, whilst at the present moment, with all her increase of population and discoveries in machinery, she hardly surpasses thirty millions. Again, under the continental system of Napoleon, from 1805 to 1812, it attained a high degree of prosperity, which sensibly decreased after the events of 1814, when English produce came again into active competition with it.

The cultivation of flax is still, however, her staple employment, one acre in every eighty-six of the whole area of Belgium, being devoted to its growth. In peculiar districts, such as Courtrai and St. Nicolas, so much as one acre in twenty is given to it; and in the Pays de Waes, it amounts so high as one in ten. Every district of Belgium, in fact, yields flax, more or less, except Luxembourg and Limburg, where it has been attempted, but without success; but of the entire quantity produced, Flanders alone furnishes three-fourths, and the remaining provinces, one. The quality of the flax, too, seems, independently of local superiority in its cultivation, to be essentially dependent upon the nature of the soil in which it is sown. From that around Ghent, no process of tillage would be sufficient to raise the description suitable to more costly purposes; that of the Waloons yields the very coarsest qualities; Courtrai those whose strength is adapted for thread; and Tournai alone furnished the fine and delicate kinds, which serve for the manufacture of lace and cambric.

Of the quantity of dressed flax prepared in Belgium, calculated to amount to about eighteen millions of kilogrammes, five millions were annually exported to England and elsewhere, on an average of eight years, from 1830 to 1839. According to the returns of the Belgian custom-houses, the export has been as follows—from 1830 to 1839.