18315,449,388kilogr.
18323,655,226”
18334,392,113”
18342,698,870”
18354,610,649”
18366,891,991”
18377,403,346”
18389,459,056”

It is important to observe the steady increase of the English demand since 1834. The remainder is reserved for home manufacture into thread and cloth, and it is estimated by M. Briavionne, that the cultivation of this one article alone, combining the value of the raw material with the value given to it by preparation, in its various stages from flax to linen cloth, produces annually to Belgium, an income of 63,615,000 francs.[8]

Belgium possesses no source of national wealth at all to be put into comparison with this, involving as it does, the concentrated profits both of the raw material and its manufacture, and, at the present moment, the attention of the government and the energies of the nation are directed to its encouragement in every department, with an earnestness that well bespeaks their intimate sense of its importance.

Nor are the prudent anxieties of the Belgium ministry on this point without serious and just grounds. Their ability to enter into competition with England in the production of either yarn or linen cloth, arises solely from the fortunate circumstance to which I have just alluded, that not only do they themselves produce the raw material for their own manufactures, but it is they, who, likewise, supply it to their competitors, almost at their own price. Such is the superiority of Belgian flax, that whilst, in some instances, it has brought so high a price as £220 per ton, and generally ranges from £80 to £90; not more than £90 has in any instance that I ever heard of, been obtained for British, and its ordinary average does not exceed £50.

The elements of their trade are, therefore, two-fold, the growth of flax, and secondly, its conversion by machinery into yarn and cloth. In the latter alone, from the relative local circumstances of the two countries, it is utterly impossible that Belgium could successfully maintain the contest with England, with her inferior machinery, her more costly fuel, and her circumscribed sale; but aided by the other happy advantage of being enabled to supply herself with the raw material at the lowest possible rate, and her rivals at the highest, she is in possession of a position of the very last importance.

But, should any circumstance arise to alter this relative position, should England wisely apply herself to the promotion of such an improvement in the cultivation and dressing of her flax at home as would render it in quality equal to that for which she is now dependent for her supply from abroad—should India or her own colonies betake themselves to its production, or should some other country, adopting the processes of Belgium, supplant her in the market, and thus reduce her competition with England to a mere contest with machinery, the linen trade of Belgium could not by any possibility sustain the struggle, and her staple manufacture for centuries would pass, at once, into the hands of her rivals.

Conscious of their critical situation in this respect, the King of Holland, during his fifteen years’ administration of the Netherlands, bestowed a care upon the encouragement and improvement of their mechanical skill, which may have, perhaps, been carried to an unwise extreme; and with a similar anxiety for the maintenance of their ascendancy in the other department, the ministers of King Leopold have devoted a sedulous attention to the cultivation of flax; and the very week of my arrival at Ostend, a commission had just returned from England, whose inquiries had been specially directed to the question of imposing restrictions upon its exportation.

Much of the uneasiness of the government upon this head, arises, at the present moment, from the necessity of promoting vigorously the spinning by machinery, and, at the same time, the difficulty of finding employment for the thousands who now maintain themselves by the old system of spinning by hand, and whom the successful introduction of the new process will deprive of their ordinary means of subsistence. Although this is one of those complaints to which we have long been familiarized in England, and which the people of this country have, at length, come to perceive is not amongst—

“Those ills that kings or laws can cause or cure,”

the alarm and perplexity of the Belgians, and their earnest expostulation on finding their employment suddenly withdrawn, have caused no little embarrassment to their own government; and a formidable party, both in the country and in the House of Representatives, have been gravely consulting as to the best means of securing a continuance of their “ancient industry” to the hand-spinners at home, by restricting the export of flax to be spun by machinery abroad!