St. Nicholas, where we arrived for breakfast, is a long straggling town, with an immense market place, in which Napoleon once reviewed a division of his army. The prosperity of this little place is very remarkable and arises altogether from the flourishing condition of the flax trade. In 1788, the population was but eight thousand, and it is now upwards of eighteen. The country around is one of the most populous in the world, the inhabitants amounting, according to the statistical account of M. Van den Bogaerde, to no less than 5210 individuals to a square league, of whom sixty in every hundred are agriculturists, twenty-five tradesmen, and fourteen live by other means.
It was market day and the town crowded by the peasantry, who were bringing in the flax to the “deliveries” of the several merchants, who attended from Ghent and Antwerp. M. Cools, who is member of the Chamber of Representatives for the district, did us the favour to accompany us over the town. The market place was filled with stalls and booths of dress, hardware and furniture, great piles of wooden shoes, were spread over the pavement, and amongst the agricultural produce, was a profusion of buck wheat (sarassin) which is made into a sort of soft, sodden cake, by no means unpalatable.
I was amused by a chorus of ballad singers, who occupied a moveable stage in the market, furnished with a large painted scene, divided into compartments, each representing some incident in the songs, with which they favoured a very numerous audience, who were grouped in great delight around them. I bought the ballad which was in Flemish, and contained three pieces, two of them drinking songs, which were illustrated in the scene above, by a party seated in an estaminet. The song was an eclogue in which two farmers, like Tytyrus and Melibœus, complained of the pressure of the times, Tytyrus professed to be so poor, that he could no longer afford to pay his barber, Melibœus assures him that bad as their position is, it is no worse than it was under Napoleon, and both join in the refrain, that geneva is the only remedy against all evils, political as well as personal. The third was a metrical account of a girl, called Joanna Scholtz, who had recently been executed for murder, and the different compartments of the scene, exhibited each stage of the story from the innocence of the heroine, to her exit at the guillotine. The impression which this latter ditty made on the nerves of the audience was prodigious, as the female singer who took the chief voice in it, with the energy, at least, if not with the elegance of Malibran, proceeded from verse to verse, pointing with a wand, which she bore in her hand, to the pictorial illustration of the story behind her. This travelling orchestra with its waggon and scenery, is surely very like Horace’s account of the chorus, whence sprung the drama in ancient Greece? By the way, I was told by Count d’Haneal Ghent, that there exists a copy of an original comedy in Flemish, of a date much anterior to any written drama, in any of the modern languages of Europe.
After breakfast we continued our drive to Tamise or Thames, a manufacturing village on the Scheldt, which with another near it, called Waesminster, are said to have been so named in honor of King Edward III. At Thames we went over the cotton factory of M. Talboom. It is on a moderate scale, having about 6 to 7000 spindles, the machinery partly French, but chiefly from the Phœnix works at Ghent. The men and girls employed, work fourteen hours a day, exclusive of two hours for stoppages. We expressed our impression of the severity of this, but were told, that it was indispensable, in order to maintain their position in the market. The proprietor, who expressed the utmost alarm and dissatisfaction at the state of the trade observed, that if circumstances should enable the English producers of cotton yarn, to reduce their prices by a single figure, then those of Belgium must abandon the manufacture, which even, at present, was not paying its own support. Like almost every other branch of national industry, the cotton manufacture which had attained a high degree of prosperity during the union with Holland, experienced an instantaneous reverse from the events of the revolution. Factory after factory closed its doors, some in ruin, others to transfer their capital and industry to Holland, whose extensive colonies afforded that outlet for their produce, which they could no longer find at home. The ministry to check the downward career, resorted to the absurd and childish expedient of purchasing up the surplus production of the manufacturers, in order to export it at a loss, and thus get it out of the country and out of the way, only to make room for fresh accumulation of stock, and renewed adventures by the government. In this way the trade dragged on a fictitious existence, exposed to peril by every fluctuation of the markets of England, and from time to time deluged by importations made at a moment when it was necessary to get rid of a glut in the market of that country or in France. For the last two years, however, its condition has been most precarious and threatening, its consumers still further diminished by the partition of the provinces of Luxembourg and Limbourg with Holland, and by an alteration in the cost of raw cotton, and the unusual preference given to woollen fabrics above those of cotton in almost every country of Europe. In 1835, those interested in the trade made an importunate and alarming application to the government, exposing the danger in which they found themselves and imploring assistance; the ministers were compelled to admit the urgency of the case, to confess that their protection was utterly inadequate, and to propose early measures for their relief,—but the trade bitterly complain, that up to the present hour, nothing whatever has been attempted in their behalf. But in fact what has the government in its power? It cannot give them that which is their only remedy, it cannot conquer or force for them a market and consumption proportionate to their means of production. Year after year their exports have been growing less and less since 1830. In 1833, according to a return in the volume of M. Briavionne,[5] they exported a million of kilogrammes of cotton goods; in 1834, nine hundred thousand; in 1835, seven; in 1836, six; in 1837 upwards of five; in 1838 and 1839, upwards of four; a reduction of sixty per cent. upon the trade in the short period of six years! In the meantime, as the Belgian spinners are inferior to the English and French in the production of the finer description of goods, the importations of these direct, during the same period, have suffered no material diminution, whilst their introduction by smuggling and contraband, is still carried on to an extent which M. Briavionne states to be beyond calculation.
It is a matter to me utterly inexplicable, that under such an aspect of affairs, the number of power looms has been, nevertheless increasing from year to year, and Ghent has, at this moment, 2000 more than it had in 1830. The fact is admitted, and imperfectly accounted for in a memorial presented this year to the legislature from the cotton manufacturers of Belgium, who ascribe the increase to the expectation that the government would speedily redeem its pledge of 1835, and place the trade on such a footing of protection and encouragement as would restore to it that prosperity in which it basked before the revolution of 1830, and in the interim that it was indispensible to make extraordinary efforts in order to keep the trade alive at all.
The document in which this passage occurs is in every respect a very remarkable one;[6] it emanates from the entire body of the trade in Belgium, not from those of Ghent alone, where the revolution is known to be unpopular, but those also of Brussels where it originated, of Courtrai, Renaix and St. Nicholas. It makes a disclosure of the difficulties under which the national commerce is suffering and their causes; and suggests expedients for the remedy in terms as frank as they are forcible. After stating that in England, France, Germany and America, the manufacture of cotton has increased since 1829 from 50 to 75 per cent., they proceed to show that in the same space of time, it has declined in Belgium not only in profits but in actual amount. “In Brussels,” they say, “at the time of the revolution there were four factories of the first class in full action: at present there is but one, and even it has ceased to work, and four minor establishments have utterly disappeared within the same space of time; the proprietors of such as have not broken down by bankruptcy, taking advantage of such accidents as the burning of their mills to escape from the trade, or withdrawing with their capital to Holland. In the face of our country, with our hands upon our hearts, we declare solemnly that the cotton trade of Belgium has been sinking continually since the events of 1830; that it is verging to ruin, and that its destruction is to be traced to the neglect of the legislature to adopt an effectual line of commercial policy for its protection.”
After disclaiming all implication of the cotton trade in the over speculation and imprudences which had ruined other branches in the years preceding, they go on to say, that “notwithstanding every circumspection and expedient that, as prudent men, they could adopt to make head against the storm, they find themselves silently and fatally undermined by an evil which they have long foreseen, and against which they have been guarding since the revolution with less success than earnestness. They find themselves overwhelmed and crushed “(dominés et écrasés)” by foreign competition. Their home market every day wrested from them, and the little space over which they can distribute the produce of their industry, becoming every hour more circumscribed and contracted. Only look to the situation of the trade in Belgium, and it will present to you something remarkable, and at first inexplicable. The Belgian possesses all the skill and ability of his competitors; his position for commerce is advantageous, and in some departments the wages of labour, if not more favourable, are at least equally so with those of other countries; and notwithstanding all, we are utterly unequal to contend with them, and the struggle must inevitably be mortal in the long run: “la lutte nous deviendra mortelle à la longue.”
“But how can it be otherwise? We share our own home markets with our rivals, whilst they effectually exclude us from any participation in theirs. Here is a constant source of our weakness, our competitors reaping advantages from our errors that strengthen them to contend with ourselves. The true economy of machinery and the only means of selling cheaply is to sell largely. But in Belgium the consumption is the least conceivable, divided and attenuated as it is by importations from abroad. For printing calicoes, for example, the cost of engraving a roller, is the same in France, in England, and in Belgium, but from the same roller, the English manufacturer has a demand for five thousand pieces, the French one for five hundred, and the Belgian but fifty. It is with impressions upon cloth as with impressions upon paper—the book, of which a prodigious number of copies will be sold, can be offered at a price little more than the cost of the paper, and in like manner, the printed goods of England and France can be sold for the bare cost of the grey calico in Belgium.
But that which of all else inflicts the most serious injury on the cotton trade of Belgium, is her periodical inundation with the surplus stock of her rivals, which is poured from time to time into her markets with instructions to force a sale at any price, no matter how trifling. Cottons, for which in the season of the spring they asked three francs, are all a few months later exported to Belgium, and sold gladly for one franc and a half or a franc and a quarter, thus bringing the finest and most valuable muslins of France into direct competition with the coarse fabrics of Belgium. These injurious importations take place at the commencement of almost every season, the printers of France, before they bring out their new designs, making a clear sweep of the old, and carefully avoiding to reduce their prices at home, they force them into consumption in Belgium, which affords the nearest and most convenient market for the purpose. The crises and commercial fluctuations of other countries, thus become equally ruinous with our own, but with this aggravation, that prudence may guard against the one, but no foresight or precautions can suffice to ward off the other.”
Such is the situation of the home market—the case of the export trade is equally painfully depicted, and referred without reserve or false delicacy to its genuine cause. “The success of the foreign trade in cotton,” continues the memorial, “must have a certain support from the market at home in order to enable the producer to export with advantage, but this unfortunately is the point in which of all others Belgium is specially deficient. Her trade had formerly an outlet in the Indian possessions of the Netherlands, whose advantages were exclusively secured to her by the privileges accorded to her flag.[7] All her surplus productions found here a vent which was every day becoming more and more important. Was there a superabundance of produce at home, either from over production amongst her own tradesmen, or excessive imports from abroad, the merchant could empty his warehouses into Java, without the necessity of stopping his machinery for a single hour. At the same time, the market of Holland herself, with two millions and a half of consumers, was thrown open to her. Such were her peculiar privileges then, but now the opening in India is closed against her goods—Holland takes continually less and less of her produce, being supplied, like herself, with the overstock of England and France—and we have just suffered in the loss of Limbourg and Luxembourg, a subtraction of 350,000 of our fellow subjects and customers. These are the facts in all their truth, and one path of safety alone lies open to us now, the securing to us inviolate the possession of our home consumption. This you can effect for us only by compelling our foreign competitors to retire from that position which they have hitherto been permitted to take up in our market by negligence, and by putting an end to their frauds upon the revenue. You must either be prepared to do this, or to annex us to some more extended territory, ‘ou vous nous adjoindrez à un plus grand territoire.’