Belgium, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Sir James Emerson Tennent

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1841.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY SCHULZE & CO., 13, POLAND STREET.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
LORD STANLEY, M.P.

&c. &c.

MY DEAR LORD,

My desire to inscribe this page with your name, is associated with the recollection of the period when you filled one of the highest administrative offices in Ireland; and when your firm and vigorous discharge of it, effectually stifled the designs of those, whose measures, if tolerated, would have drawn down upon that country, consequences similar to those which similar proceedings have, unhappily, entailed upon Belgium. The value and effect of that nervous policy, by which you “boldly muzzled treason” then, is attested by the contrast, which the social condition of Ireland exhibits now, under the nominal government of those who have submitted to abandon it; and whose sacrifices to purchase the loyalty, and secure the permanent attachment of the Irish Repealers, have been rewarded by an intimation of a prospective fraternization with the “hereditary enemies of England,” so soon as their “compact alliance,” with the English administration shall have expired.

“History is philosophy teaching by example;” and it is not to be supposed that there are not, even amongst the zealots for the Repeal of the Union in Ireland, some few who will be attentive to its lessons: it is chiefly in this anxious hope, that I have transcribed the present volumes. The more so too, because Belgium is the one bright example, which those who have addressed themselves to unsettle the allegiance of the Irish people, have always ostentatiously paraded for their imitation and encouragement. From this selection they cannot now retreat; and I confidently believe, that the exposition contained in the following pages of the condition of that country, after ten years of separation and independence, will exhibit Belgium to Ireland, if as an example at all, only as—

Exemplar vitiis imitabile.

Neither the social nor the material prosperity of Belgium, affords anything encouraging to the hopes of those who can profit by the experience of others; and as, in Ireland, the materials in which the vital experiment must be made are similar, the results to be anticipated must be the same. With Popery, merely as a complexion of Christianity—as a distinctly marked form of religion—a legislator has no further concern, than as regards the question of enlightened toleration. But political Popery, that character in which the followers of the Church of Rome, are exhibiting themselves in Belgium and in Ireland—“resting their lever on one world,” as Dryden says, “to move another at their will”—enters essentially, and of necessity, into the investigation and study of the statesman. And, in no instance, in modern times, has it so unreservedly exhibited itself, as in the conception, the achievement, and the results, of the Belgian revolution. It remains to be seen, whether the Liberal party in Ireland, whose co-operation encourages and sustains the advocates of the Repeal of the Union, will relish the prospect of such an absolute religious ascendancy of the majority in that country, as that which has succeeded to the most absolute freedom of worship, and the most unlimited liberty of conscience in the Low Countries.

On the score of substantial and material prosperity, a similar question must arise. The application of machinery to every branch of production, has effected a revolution in the economy of European manufactures, which is only paralleled by the effects, upon learning, of the discovery of printing. The poorest, and, occasionally, the smallest communities, have been, at various times, the most successful producers of certain commodities, which were the offspring of hand labour, and the fruits of individual dexterity; and the price of which, therefore, was not sensibly affected by the greater or less amount of their consumption. But when human ingenuity became infused into iron—when the industry and adroitness of a million of hands had been concentrated in the single arm of the Briareus of steam—the movements of the mighty prodigy became necessarily expanded in proportion to its power, and required a correspondingly enlarged field for their display. To produce successfully by machinery, it is indispensible to produce extensively; but Belgium, apparently unconscious of this important truth, proceeded to contract, instead of enlarging, her limits; and her powers of production, thus cribbed and restrained, without the opportunity of exercise, have pined and wasted away and are now on the brink of decay.