Belgium, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Sir James Emerson Tennent

In 1837.	8,484,097 kilogrammes.
In 1838.	8,113,897 kilogrammes.

An amount, which whilst it shows the general importance of the trade, seems to indicate that it is not increasing. The home consumption of Belgium as compared to England, is as 2 kils. per each individual to 8. In France the quantity used per head, is 3 kils. and in the rest of Europe about 2½. But to the Belgians, this export trade is the vital object at the present moment, and any alteration of our law which would permit the import of foreign sugar into England, at a diminished duty, or encourage the growth of beet-root for the manufacture of sugar, would be fatal to the trade of the Netherlands, and to Holland, not less than to Belgium.

In the latter country, the production of sugar from beet-root, notwithstanding the encouragement given to it by Napoleon, was never very extended nor successful. It disappeared almost entirely in 1814, and was not revived for twenty years, till in 1834, a fresh impulse was given to the Belgians to renew the experiment from witnessing the example of its success in France and some establishments were erected in Brabant and Hainault. But the vast advantages derived by the refiners of foreign sugar from the facility for fraud afforded by the defective state of the law, completely extinguished the attempt. Even now the expense of the process, which renders the cost of the beet-root sugar nearly equal to that extracted from the cane, together with the inferiority for every purpose of the beet-root molasses, holds out but little prospect of its ever becoming a productive department of national manufacture.

On the evening of our arrival, a considerable tumult was excited around the front of the Hotel de la Poste where we staid, which we found arose from the eagerness to obtain admission to the new Theatre, which stands next door to the Hotel, and which was that evening to be opened for the first time. Some soldiers were stationed to keep off the crowd, but as their impatience increased, the orders of the military were but little regarded, till, at length, the struggle came to an open rupture with them, and the officer on guard after going through all the preliminaries of intimidation, expostulation and scolding, at length, fairly lost all temper, and commenced boxing “the leader of the movement!” A ring being made for the combatants, the officer was beaten, and walked off to his quarters, and the pressure of the crowd, being by this time relieved, the spectators hurried into the theatre.

The new building is very magnificent; a new street having been formed to open at a suitable site for it, one side of which it occupies exclusively. The centre of the front, projects in the form of a wide semi-circle, so that carriages drive right under the building to set down their company at the foot of the grand staircase. Besides the theatre itself, there is a suite of halls for concerts, capable of containing two thousand persons, and the entire is finished internally in the style of Louis XIV, with a prodigality of colours, gilding, and ornamental carving that is quite surprising. It is certainly the most beautiful theatre I have seen, as well as one of the most spacious.

The “spectacle” and the opera are still amongst those necessaries in the economy of life in Belgium, which late dinner hours and fastidious taste have not as yet interfered with. Ghent has long been eminent for its successful cultivation of music. A few years since, the chefs d’orchestre in the four principal theatres in the kingdom were all natives of Ghent, and the names of Verheyen, Ermel and Angelet, all born in the same place, are familiar to every amateur of the science. The Société de St. Cecile, a musical association, is the most eminent in the Netherlands, and at a concert at Brussels in 1837, where all the musicians of the chief cities of the kingdom competed for a prize; the first honours, two golden medals were given by acclamation to those of Ghent.

The print works of M. De Smet de Naeyer are situated in the Faubourg de Bruges, and, like almost all in the Netherlands, exhibit no division of labour; the cotton being spun, woven, and printed upon the same premises. In the latter department, their productions are of a very ordinary description, and their designs in a very inferior class of art. The machinery was partly French and partly Belgian, of a cumbrous and antiquated construction, compared with that in use in England; but, as the recent improvements in Great Britain have all been conceived with a view to the speediest and cheapest production to meet a most extensive demand, their introduction into Belgium, where the market is so extremely circumscribed, would only be an augmentation of expense, without any correspondent advantage. The works were idle at the moment of our visit.

This important department of manufacture is reduced to the lowest ebb in Belgium by the effects of the revolution of 1830. Previous to this event, the Belgian calico printer being admitted to the markets of Holland and her colonies, had an outlet for his produce, quite sufficient to afford remunerative employment for all his machinery; but when, by her separation from Holland, Belgium was excluded from the Dutch possessions, both in the East and West Indies, and restricted to the supply of her own population, she suddenly found the number of her consumers reduced from between fifteen and sixteen millions to something less than four. In articles which are universally produced by the unaided labour of the hand, a limitation on the gross consumption cannot, as a general rule, effect any very material alteration in the individual price, where fair competition shall have already reduced and adjusted it by a remunerative standard. But when it comes to an active competition with machinery, the case is widely different; the outlay for apparatus and the cost of labour being almost the same for the production of one hundred pieces as for ten, it is manifest that the man who has a market for one hundred, can afford to sell each one for a much less sum than he who can only dispose of ten—even without including in the calculation the interest of the capital embarked, which must, of course, be ten times the amount upon the small production that it is upon the large. It is her almost unlimited command of markets, and the vast millions of consumers who must have her produce, in her various colonies and dependencies, that, combined with her matchless machinery, places the manufactures of England almost beyond the reach of rivalry as regards the moderation of their price; and thus gives them, in spite of duties, that, in any other case, would amount to a prohibition, a lucrative introduction into those countries themselves, which are fast acquiring her machinery, but look in vain for her limitless markets.

The merchants of Antwerp and the manufacturers of Ghent, had the good sense, probably purchased by experience, to recognize this incontrovertible principle, and foreseeing, clearly, the ruin of their pursuits in the results of the Repeal of the Union with Holland, they loudly protested against the proceedings of the revolutionists of 1830.[26] But, as “madness ruled the hour,” their protestations were all unheeded—they were overborne by numbers; and, as the patriots of Ireland, in rejecting the advantages held out to them by Great Britain in the celebrated “commercial propositions” of 1785, adopted as their watchword “perish commerce, but live the constitution;” so the patriots of Belgium, in their paroxysm of repeal, reproached their less frenzied fellow-countrymen with “allowing the profits on their cottons, or the prices of their iron, to outweigh the independence of their country!” The revolution was accomplished in their defiance, and the ruin of their trade was consummated by the same blow.

With respect to the very branch of manufacture which has led to these observations, the printing of calicoes and woollens, M. Briavionne, an impartial historian, and so far as political inclination is concerned, strongly biassed in favour of the revolution, thus details its immediate effects upon it. After describing the rapid decline of the cotton trade in general, since 1830, he goes on to say, “In the department of printing, the results have not been more satisfactory; many of the leading establishments of Ghent, and of Brussels have been altogether abandoned, or their buildings dismantled and converted to other purposes, and their utensils and machinery sold off by public auction. Ghent, in 1829, possessed fifteen print-works—in 1839 she had but nine; in Brussels, at the same time, and in Ardennes and Lierre, there were eleven houses of the first rank, of these six have since closed their accounts. Other establishments there are, it is true, that have sprung up in the interim, but, in the aggregate, the number is diminished. In prosperous years, the production of Belgium might have amounted, before the revolution, to about 400,000 pieces. Ghent, alone, produced 300,000 in 1829, but its entire production, at present, does not amount to 20,000, nor does that of the largest house in Belgium exceed 45,000 pieces.