HUY, SERAING, LIEGE, AND VERVIERS.
Huy--The citadel--Churches--_The mineral and coal districts
of Belgium_--Prosperity of coal mines--Quantity produced in
Belgium compared with other countries--Its price at Ghent,
Brussels, and Antwerp--Panic in 1836 for the exhaustion
of coal in Belgium--Scenery of the Meuse--Remarkable
individuals born in its vicinity--Chateaux of Aigremont and
Chokier--_Seraing_--Immense extent of the works--Its produce
within its own walls--History of the establishment--Palace
of the Prince Bishops of Liege--Encouraged by the King of
Holland--The building--Huge steam engine--Surprising extent of
the operations carried on--Iron works--Halls for construction of
machines--Vast numbers of workmen employed--Its exports--_Mr.
John Cockerill_--Extent of his speculations--Development of
Seraing attributable to them--Its future prospects--Policy of
England in regard to the export of machinery--_Importation of
machinery into Belgium_--Road to Liege--LIEGE--No sympathy
with its history--Turbulent and unamiable character of
its ancient populace--Prince Bishop declares war upon
France--Share of the Liegois in the revolution of 1830--Her
threatened attack upon Seraing--The town--_Manufacture of
fire-arms and cannon_--A flax mill--Its churches poor--The
Palais de Justice--University--_Scenery of the Vesdre_--The
railroad--_Chaud-fontaine_--SPA--Deserted--VERVIERS--The
town--Conduct during the revolution--_The woollen trade
of Belgium_--Want of native wool--Extent and decline of
the trade--Its causes--Statement of M. Briavionne--_Joint
Stock Companies_ in Belgium--Account of two at
Verviers--The mania for speculation--Its failure--The
Prussian frontier--Limbourg--Prospects of Belgium--Her bad
condition--Policy of the King of Holland--That of the present
government--Present aspect of their trade--Impossibility
of competing with England--Character of the Belgian
mechanics--_Ruinous effects of the_ “REPEAL OF THE UNION.”
HUY is beautifully situated at the angle, where a mountain torrent
pours past it to the Meuse. Its fortress stands on a bold detached
rock, of great height and breadth, around the base of which the town
is built almost upon the sands of the river; and beneath its shelter
are collected the churches, monasteries, and houses of the ancient
city. The fortifications are now in excellent repair, having been
restored after the war by English engineers under the direction of
Colonel Blanshard, at the expense of the King of Holland; but the town
itself is fast hurrying to decay. Its vicinity to Seraing, the seat
of the once powerful Prince Bishops of Liege, rendered Huy a place of
evident interest as an ecclesiastical frontier as well as a military
one; and the church militant below, emulous of the strongholds of
earthly power above, had within the small circuit of its wall no less
than a cathedral, fourteen churches, and a still greater number of
monasteries, abbeys, and convents, all of which, with the exception of
the cathedral and a richly carved gateway that conducts to it, are now
in ruins.
Here, for the first time in Belgium, we saw vineyards and their
“purple store;” but the wine is execrable, and used only for the most
inferior purposes. The position of Huy on the river, and its admirable
facilities for traffic, made it a flourishing entrepôt for grain
and agricultural produce, in which it carries on a bustling traffic
on the river; as well as in the produce of its numerous quarries. A
short distance from Huy commence the coal fields, which extend to
the district surrounding Liege, the working of which was attempted
so far back as the 12th century. In coals, Belgium is, perhaps, the
richest country of the west of Europe, with the single exception of
Great Britain; the districts in which it abounds being, in England, in
the proportion of one-twentieth of her entire surface; in Belgium, a
thirtieth; and in France only a two hundredth part. But her success in
raising them is not in the same proportion, England having produced,
in 1838, _twenty-three millions_ of tons; France, _two millions and a
half_; and Belgium only _four_.
The principal mining districts are in Hainault, where those of
Charleroi and Mons are not only the most productive, but exhibit the
best specimens as to quality; those of Liege, which are next; and those
of Huy and Namur. Some valuable coal mines at Limbourg have been ceded
to Holland by the treaty of 1839, another cause of dissatisfaction to
the Belgians. The prosperity of the mining trade has been affected
by all the changing fortunes of the country; but its general march,
though liable to great vicissitudes, has been in the ultimate result
successful and improving. A few years since such was the rage for joint
stock speculations, and the mania for erecting machinery in Belgium,
that a panic was excited lest the veins of coal and iron should be
exhausted prematurely, so rapid was the consumption of both which the
force of speculation had produced. The price, in consequence, rose
from 50 to 100 per cent, and an application was made and acceded to by
the British Government, to permit the free exportation of coal from
Newcastle to Flanders; but in the year following the alarm subsided,
from very natural causes, and the price returned to its former level.
The quantity produced in Belgium for some years past has not exceeded,
on an average, three millions of tons; and the ordinary price has been
about 10 francs at the pit’s mouth. The cost of carriage, however, and
the variety of modes and distances of conveyance, render its prices at
the various places of consumption extremely unequal. According to M.
Briavionne,[10] the following was the scale in 1837:--
AT BRUSSELS:
For large coals (droits d’octroi included), 42 francs for the ton of
1000 kilogrammes[11].
For manufacture (_gailletes_), 32 francs.
AT GHENT:
For domestic use 29f. 17c.
For manufactures 22f. 6c.
For slack 18f. 16c.
AT ANTWERP:
For large coals 36f. 55c.
For manufacture 26f. 30c.
For slack 22f. 30c.
The price of coals in England, at the same period, was _twenty-two_
to _twenty-three_ shillings for what cost _thirty-five_ at Brussels;
and from sixteen to twenty for the others, for which the Belgians paid
from _twenty-five_ to _twenty-seven_. The cost at the pit’s mouth, at
the same time, was but a shade higher at Newcastle than at Hainault or
Liege,[12] so relatively imperfect are the means of communication in
Belgium as contrasted with those of Great Britain; and, besides, the
coal floors are much more accessible and thicker in the latter country
than in the other, where the upper strata has been already pretty well
exhausted by upwards of six hundred years of continued workings.
We left Huy by the bridge, which here carries the road from the right
to the left bank of the river; and continued its descent towards Liege.
The view, on looking back at this hardy old town, is remarkably
striking--its citadel almost by nature a fortress, independently of
engineering; and, at its foot, the antique cathedral, founded by Peter
the Hermit. The banks of the Meuse, and the Vesdre, have been prolific
in great names; Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the first crusade,
was born at Poisy, on the borders of Namur; Tilly, one of the great
military adventurers of the Thirty Years, came from a village still
nearer the Meuse; Hersthal, the birth-place of Pepin, “the Mayor of the
Palace,” and the founder of the kings of the second race in France,
lies a mile below Liege; and at Herve, between it and Verviers, Lebrun,
the minister of France, who died on the scaffold, in 1794, was employed
as the editor of a provincial newspaper.
The scenery, on either side of the river, improves in richness, but
loses in grandeur, as we approach Liege. The ravine through which it
rolls, between Huy and Namur, widens out into a fertile valley towards
Seraing, still enclosed, however, by precipitous cliffs, on which
castles, châteaux, and monasteries are perched, in positions that seem,
from below, at least, to be all but inaccessible. Two, in particular,
are most strikingly picturesque--the châteaux of Aigremont, between
Flaune and Engis, and another above the village of Chokier, at present
occupied by a Russian nobleman, whose visitors would certainly require
a balloon and a parachute “to drop in upon him.”
On driving round a projecting angle of the cliff, at a turn in the
course of the river, we came in view of the vast buildings and
innumerable chimneys of the great iron works at Seraing. These enormous
works are certainly one of the wonders of Belgium; and Europe, in point
of extent, possesses nothing to compare with them. Nor can one regard
this vast temple to the genius of Fulton and Watt, without emotions of
amazement, at the lightning speed with which their discoveries have
revolutionized the whole aspect of European industry, and created
wants and expedients which, half a century ago, were unfelt and
unknown; but the pressure of which, at the present day, has forced
into existence such a gigantic establishment as Seraing. Compared with
the largest manufactories in England, Seraing is as a mammoth to an
ant-hill. The quantity of actual creative power which it engenders
and pours forth, year by year, is, perhaps, equal to that of a whole
generation of artizans, in the best days of Flemish prosperity; and a
river, of ordinary current, flowing through a country of manufactures
scarcely communicates a greater impetus to the production of the
necessaries, or the comforts of life, than the steam engines which
Seraing is capable of sending forth in the compass of a single year.
The circuit of its own walls encompasses everything essential to the
completion of the most ponderous engine;--two coal mines are worked
within them--the iron ore is raised, washed, and smelted on the spot;
canals and railroads, all within its gase, convey those cumbrous
materials from process to process, from furnace to forge, till the
crude mineral which, issued from the earth in its ore, is carried from
the ware-room in the form of all but intelligent machines.
Seraing was many years in attaining its present singular development.
It was commenced in 1817, by the sons of the ingenious individual,
whom I have already mentioned as entering Verviers an impoverished
mechanic, and finally contributing, by the impulse of his single
mind, to advance the march of manufacturing improvement in Belgium
by, at least, half a century. The buildings in which, or rather,
around which its multifarious works are now congregated, was formerly
the magnificent palace of the Prince Bishops of Liege, on whose
abolition it became the property the crown. The brothers, Charles
James, and John Cockerill, whose father had already established
extensive manufactories of machinery at Liege and transmitted them to
his children, conceived the idea of transfering their industry to
Seraing, struck with its commanding advantages, the presence of coal
and iron, and its facilities of water communication in every direction,
by means of the river which flowed below its walls. To occupy all
its space, one wing was fitted up for the spinning of linen yarn,
and was so employed till 1822, when the extension of their business
in the other branches, required the rooms which it engrossed. In
1819, they commenced raising their own coal; and in 1824, they were
enabled to work iron, the produce of their own mines and furnaces.
The extraordinary encouragement given to every species of manufacture
requiring machinery, under the régime of Holland, was a source of
continued prosperity; and even the unhealthy plethora of speculation,
which has existed in Belgium since the revolution, however disastrous
to others, afforded constant employment to the workmen of Seraing, and
contributed to expand it to its present unexampled extent.
At the little village of Jemeppe, which is on the same side of the
river with the high road, we left the carriage, and crossed over in a
ferry boat to the works, over which we were obligingly conducted by
one of the superintendants. The outward edifices are all in the same
condition as when occupied by the Prince Bishop, and one wing is still
the residence of Mr. Cockerill’s family. It consists of three squares,
or courtyards, opening one into the other by noble archways, the first
of which is still surmounted by the arms of the prelate, with his
motto--“_je maintiendrai_.” The grand front contained the apartments of
the Prince himself, the second court that of his officers and suite,
and the third was appropriated for the household and stables, and now
forms, with the floors on the second story, four apartments, each two
hundred feet in length! The whole building, with its noble façade, and
the remains of fine timber which surround it, still retains an air
of magnificence suitable to its former fortune. The gardens in the
rear are now all covered over with workshops, forges, furnaces, and
store-houses; and behind these, still further retiring to the river,
are the coal fields and iron mines; the whole forming literally a
_town_ within itself, daily animated by upwards of 2,000 workmen, in
all the various branches of its comprehensive system.
Externally, except from the smoke of its chimneys at a distance, one
would scarcely discern the nature of the vast operations going on
within; but before the grand entrance on the bank of the river there
lay a huge specimen of its productions,--a gigantic cylinder, for a
steam-engine to be sent to Prussia, of two hundred and fifty horse
power, and of such dimensions, that this one limb of it alone was seven
feet in diameter, and weighed upwards of twelve tons. Besides two huge
furnaces for smelting the raw ore, there are upwards of thirty others
for the washing, puddling, and treatment of the iron in its various
stages; eighty forges, two iron founderies, and one of copper; one vast
hall for the construction of boilers, another for fly-wheels, and all
the portions of steam-engines, and a third for locomotives; besides
innumerable apartments for every other species of heavy machinery,
rooms for designers and magazines of models. (The spinning, and other
light machinery, is manufactured at another establishment at Liege.)
The whole is set in motion by seventeen steam-engines, whose united
power exceeds nine hundred horses, and the consumption of coals
for these and the furnaces is four hundred tons a day, the cost of
raising which, we were told, was fifteen francs a ton. Its productions
comprehend the whole range of English machinery for every department of
industry, and its produce is exported to every manufacturing country
to which it has a commodious communication--to Russia, to Prussia,
to Germany, Spain, Italy and France and even to South America. Every
new invention which succeeds in Great Britain has been re-produced at
Seraing, within a short time of its appearance with us.
The rooms and vast halls, from the ample construction of the building,
present an appearance quite startling to a stranger, who may not be
prepared for the unusual spectacle of a single chamber fitted up with
five hundred vices along the sides, and all alive with the rush of
wheels and the din of machines of every description, in action in the
centre. The workmen are all Belgians, not a single English mechanic
being now employed. Their tools, however, were chiefly from Manchester,
and in reply to a remark, that at Ghent the Phœnix made its own; the
superintendant observed, that they had tried the experiment and found
that they could be had both cheaper and better from England. So many
as 2,800 workmen have been at one time employed at Seraing, at wages
varying from three francs a day to five or six, but would average
about four francs round, exclusive of designers, whose gains are more
considerable. The establishment has been latterly less regularly
employed, owing to a damp upon speculation in general, and the
completion of the contracts for the various railroads, and not above
2000 hands are now engaged. The whole concern is, likewise, at present
in confusion, owing to the recent death of the proprietor, which
will occasion the entire to be disposed of for the settlement of his
affairs. The extent of his speculations in every branch of industry,
and almost in every country of Europe, is almost incredible. He was
concerned in no less than fifty different mines, and factories for
spinning and weaving cotton, woollens, and linen, for the manufacture
of paper and printed calicoes, for grinding flour, making carding
machines, and in short, every promising branch of industry in Belgium,
France, and Germany. His property at Seraing has been estimated (I
cannot answer for how correctly) at 10,000,000[13] of francs, and his
factory for spinning machinery at Liege 3,000,000, his paper mills
and buildings at Andennes 2,900,000, his flour mills at Cottbus, in
Silesia, 500,000, his woollen factory at St. Denis 500,000, his card
machinery at Spa 400,000, and his shares in various other manufactories
in Belgium and elsewhere 25,000,000. In Belgium, in fact, there has
been a mania for joint-stock speculation, scarcely equalled by the
bubbles of 1825 in Great Britain, and attended with equally ruinous
results. Mr. Cockerill’s encouragement and participation in these
adventures to such an extent, is one source of the activity and
astonishing development of Seraing; the funds of these adventurers and
his own, along with the rest, being vested in the purchase of machinery
manufactured by himself. In the event of their success, the speculation
might have been a wise one, but followed as they have been in most
instances by disappointment, the result to the proprietor of Seraing,
at least, can have been little more than keeping his forges employed
out of his own capital.
Still whoever may have been the individual sufferer, Seraing is a
stupendous example of enterprize and skill, and if placed upon a
suitable financial basis, with its singular facilities of fuel and
iron, cannot fail, under almost any circumstances, to be a vigorous
concern. The quality of its iron is excellent: this ore yields from
twenty-five to seventy-five, and some veins so much as eighty-five per
cent.; though that of Belgium in general does not exceed thirty per
cent.; and except for some very fine purposes. Seraing is perfectly
independent of any importation beyond its own walls. For copper and
brass it is, however, dependent upon England and Sweden, none whatever
being produced in Belgium, so far as I could learn. One invaluable
benefit it has already rendered to Belgium, it has served as a vast
college for the education of mechanics; and in the course of twenty
years, it has produced thousands of artizans who have branched off
into the other provinces, and formed the rival establishments of
Ghent, Brussels, Charleroi, Mons, Namur and Tournai. “The Belgians,”
says M. Briavionne, “have a natural taste for mechanics, and combine
the two essentials to success--perseverance and enterprize. But
these qualities would never have been called into action, nor their
own resources developed had England, from the first, permitted the
free export of her machinery, or Belgium imposed any restrictions
upon its import.”[14] The importations of machinery from England,
notwithstanding native enterprize have been very considerable more
especially of those half-animated engines know by the inappropriate,
and ill-understood term of “tools,” which seem to be the very life and
sustenance of the rival manufacture of Belgium. In 1830, the Belgian
official returns exhibit an import to the value of only 46,372fr., in
1835 it had risen to 464,377fr., in 1836 to 3,291,275fr., in 1837 it
was 2,851,451fr., and in 1838, 4,708,237fr.
From Seraing to Liege, a distance of three or four miles, the drive is
exceedingly beautiful, the valley of the Meuse here expands into broad
and luxuriant meadows, and the steep cliffs which accompanied us from
Namur, lean back into rich and verdant hills whose summits are covered
with timber, and their base studded with white and cheerful villas. In
the midst of this picturesque scenery, the old town of Liege bursts
upon us at a sudden turn of the road, built at the foot of the steep
hill of St. Walberg which is covered with its churches and palaces, and
spreading down to the Meuse which sweeps round its base to meet the
waters of the Ourthe and the Vesdre which unite within it.
Liege is certainly the least interesting of all the great towns of
the Netherlands, not that the events of its ancient times are less
stirring, but the character of their prominent actions is less engaging
and their quarrels less chivalrous; in its modern state, it possesses
scarcely a single attractive remnant of antiquity--no paintings, no
statues, no architectural beauties or remains. Its streets are narrow,
irregular and dirty, and the houses devoid of any thing venerable or
characteristic. Still the old chronicles of Monstrelet and Philip de
Comines, and the quaint tradition of the “wild boar of Ardennes” and
the feuds of the Dukes of Brabant and Burgundy, with the insolent
burghers, and the alternate ascendancies and indignities of the Prince
Bishops, and the rude and savage deeds of the inhuman Louis XI, are all
full of historic interest, though of a repulsive and painful kind.
Liege had been the See of a Bishop for fourteen hundred years, when
the annexation of Belgium to France put a close to the dynasty of
its sovereign prelates. Its rank was such amongst ecclesiastical
cities, that it was visited by the Popes and the Emperors; and its
citizens intoxicated, at once, with affluence and arrogance became
the most turbulent and insubordinate faction that ever “strangled
the prosperity” of a community. M. Ferrier in an historical résumé,
prefixed to his “Description de Liège,” thus sums up the condition
of the burghers in the 12th century. “The morals and manners of the
citizens became corrupted, at once, by the acquisition of extraordinary
wealth, and the extortion of inordinate privileges from the Prince
Bishops who were their ecclesiastical sovereigns. The artisans
accustomed to extravagant gains, gave but a portion of their time to
industry, and devoted the rest to the discussion of affairs of state,
in the places of public resort. The Prelate Albert de Cuyck, unable
to subdue their murmuring and disquieted spirit, retreated behind
concession after concession, till in 1198, he confirmed to them a
Charter, which invested the men of Liege with privileges such as were
unheard of in the age in which they lived. But these concessions so far
from tranquillizing, seemed but to excite them to fresh demands--the
more ample the favours yielded, the more exorbitant became their
further requirements--till in the end, their restless ambition
embroiled the city in contests of blood such as have tinged the page
of their history from century to century. The clergy, at first, made
common cause with the people against the power of the _haute noblesse_,
who enjoyed at once all military and magisterial authority in the
state; till the multitude disturbed from the pursuits of peaceful
industry, became, at length, the sport of ungovernable impulses,
sometimes generous in their origin, but which were too often degraded
into brutalized ferocity for the mere gratification of revenge. The
nobles were the first sacrifice to the popular demands, and the clergy
who succeeded to their power, became in turn their fellow victims.” The
whole story of their contests is, in fact, one succession of revolts,
not for the redress of wrongs or the assertion of liberty, but for the
lust of licentious and uncontrolled democracy. Occasionally, too, in
the long succession of its Prince Bishops, there occurred some whose
authority, instead of being exerted to control, was but employed to
exasperate the fury of the populace, and to such an air of arrogance
did some of these kingly prelates assume, that one of them, John Louis
d’Elderen, presumed, single-handed, to declare war against Louis XIV in
1686! who rewarded his temerity by directing Marshal Boufflers to beat
down the fortification of Liege about his ears, an instruction which he
duly attended to.
In later times, Liege was a fief of the empire, and the Prince Bishop,
the elector, had a vote as representing a portion of the circle of
Westphalia. In 1830, its inhabitants, with a true hereditary taste
for turmoil, were the first to take up arms on the intelligence of
the revolution, and a band of patriots, mustered and marshalled by M.
Rogier, marched from Liege to Brussels to aid in expelling the house of
Nassau, but with the intention of merely transfering the kingdom from
that dynasty to France, a project which was overruled by the clergy and
the northern insurgents. With that frightful impulse which in popular,
not less than individual frenzy, drives its victims into the violence
of hatred of all that they ought to cherish, and has sometimes forced
maniacs to eat their own flesh;--the first fury of the patriots was
directed against the manufacturing establishments, whence they drew
their bread; and nothing but the firm affection of the workmen at
Seraing to their master, and the resolution to protect his property,
saved that magnificent temple of industry from being itself committed
to the flames, by the worshippers of the rival goddess of liberty.
With less of elegance and attraction, there is an equal air of
business-like energy and bustling activity in the streets of Liege,
as at Ghent. The Meuse is navigable from the city to the sea, and
its quays are frequented by the craft, which convey its produce to
the various cities along its course, Ruremonde and Venloo to Gorcum,
Dordrecht and the Rhine. Its streets are crowded with an incessant
stream of waggons, carriages and carts, and in the better streets
and squares, the shops are as gay and attractive as those of the Rue
Montagne de la Cour at Brussels.
Coupled with its ancient fiery and quarrelsome disposition, its
chief manufacture is a characteristic one, being that of cannon and
fire-arms, which it at one time, exported to Spain, Portugal, Holland
and America. Under France, the imperial factory of arms furnished
annually, twenty-seven thousand muskets for the imperial army. A story
is told that the rest of the trade, anxious to share in the profits
of the monopoly, besought Napoleon to admit them to a share of the
supply, and presented him with a finely-finished piece as a specimen of
their talents. But as, either by accident or malice, the bore of the
barrell was too narrow to admit the ramrod, the Emperor gave no other
answer than a frown to their ill-supported petition. Under Holland in
1829, the production of Liege amounted to no less than 190,660 stand
of arms; in 1836, it rose to nearly double that quantity, but it is
at present, fallen much _below one half_, and the trade is still in a
state of decline. The manufacture is carried on at the homes of the
workmen, who, nevertheless, established a perfect division of labour in
producing the various parts, and can furnish the entire at a lower rate
than either Birmingham or France, a double-barrelled gun can be had
for thirty or even twenty francs. The percussion lock has not yet been
substituted in the Belgian army for the flint. The cannon foundery
is calculated to produce 300 pieces a year; and in 1837, the most
flourishing period of the trade, it even exceeded that number.
There is a flax-spinning mill at Liege with 10,000 spindles, the
property of a joint-stock company, of whom Mr. Cockerill was the chief
proprietor. Its works are now languid, owing to a want of consumption,
and a gentleman acquainted with its affairs, spoke very despondingly of
its prospects. Coals, though found in the immediate neighbourhood, are
dear, as they lie deep, and we saw them generally mixed into balls with
clay for the use of the stoves in the hotels and private houses, an
indication that their price is a stimulant to economy.
As might be anticipated from its having so long been the residence
of the most eminent prelate in the Low Countries, Liege abounds in
churches, there being some eighteen or twenty for a population of
50,000 inhabitants. They are, however, destitute of all attractions,
except that of St. Jacques, which is a very excellent example of
florid got his architecture. The others are common-place structures,
devoid of all valuable decorations of any kind, except a few
indifferent statues by Delcour the sculptor, who was himself a native
of the city. The Palais de Justice was formerly the residence of the
Prince Bishops, and in its ample arcades, supported by truncated
columns, exhibits traces of its former magnificence. The University,
which has some eminent professors, especially of natural philosophy,
was another foundation of the King of Holland, and besides a library of
some seventy or eighty thousand volumes, contains Museums of Natural
History, and Minerals of unusual value. But every thing connected with
modern Liege is common-place and uninteresting; its only charm is its
exquisite situation at the juncture of the three beautiful valleys
of the Meuse, the Ourthe and the Vesdre, and a very brief sojourn is
sufficient to satisfy the stranger in pursuit of “fresh fields and
pastures new.”
* * * * *
We left Liege before breakfast for Verviers through the exquisite
valley of the Vesdre, which, as it is narrower and more tortuous than
the descent of the Meuse, excels it in picturesque beauty, though
inferior in the grandeur of its general effect. The entire line of the
road was through richly wooded glens and ravines, where the river had
forced a passage between the fantastic cliffs which time had wrought
into shapes like fortresses or the battlements of ruined strongholds.
Below, the Vesdre itself, too shallow to be navigated, twists round
each sweep of the winding cliffs, now shining in the sunlight, and
again scarcely visible under the dark shadows of the trees and rocks.
The lover of the picturesque will shudder to be told, that it is
through this charming valley that the railroad is to be carried to
connect Liege with Verviers on its way to Cologne, and even now the
engineers are at work levelling, blasting, and uprooting to make way
for it, cutting off a projecting cliff here, and filling up a useless
ravine there, and flinging lofty embankments across the entrance of
the sweetest recesses of the valley, into which you are only admitted
to have a peep through the archway on which the train is to traverse
the highway.
About four miles from Liege, in one of the glens of this beautiful
river, is Chaudefontaine, a spring which has long been the holiday
resort of the Liegois, and has now grown into a miniature watering
place, with its hotels and other agrémens. And half way to Verviers,
a road striking in between the hills on the right leads to Spa, one
of the superannuated favourites of fashion, which has long since
yielded the throne to younger and gayer rivals. The crowd now rolls
past the turn in the road which leads to it, eager to reach Carlsbad
or Wisbaden, and no longer contented, as in the Sir Charles Grandison
age, to pace the “_Promenades de quatre heures_,” walk minuets in the
“_Vauxhall_,” or make stately excursions to the cottages of Marmontel’s
Annette and Lubin. Still the country and scenery around it, and the
magnificent mountains and woods of the Ardennes yield, in nothing, to
the attractions of the later protegées of _ton_, but along with the
rest of the ungrateful crowd, we too declined the open door of the
antiquated and neglected beauty, and kept on the road to Verviers.
Verviers is a long straggling, but by no means ordinary town,
stretching along the banks of the Vesdre, whenever the command of the
stream presented a desirable site for a factory. In this, nearly 20,000
inhabitants and their machinery are located along the stream, and
the uplands forming, certainly, one of the most cheerful and healthy
manufacturing communities in Europe. The grand staples, are wool in
all its varieties of worsted and cloth, in the production of which
the valley has long enjoyed a high reputation in Holland and France,
and its goods are still exported to Italy and the Levant. Like the
people of Liege, the workmen of Verviers caught the infection of the
revolutionary mania in 1830, but their madness exhibited itself in a
still more savage form. On the first intelligence of the revolt, they
sprung, eager for the fray, and at once manifested their wishes, by
hoisting the tri-colour of France, with whom they demanded an instant
incorporation. The town has neither fortress nor garrison, and for
two days it was the scene of the most disgusting and uncontrolled
excesses. The people assembled in tumultuous masses, and with shouts
of “liberty,” tore down the royal insignia of the Netherlands, and
razed to the ground the houses of the government officers; factories
were destroyed, machinery demolished, and the whole property of the
flourishing valley seemed destined to destruction from the freaks of
this drunken revolution. At length the soberer citizens, forming an
urban guard and a council of safety, succeeded in restoring order, and
securing their property from the fingers of the children of “Freedom.”
The woollen trade of the Andennes, is one of the oldest national
occupations of the Netherlands, and for the share of it which we
enjoy in England, we are indebted to the fanatical fury of Philip II.,
whose persecutions drove the weavers of Brabant and Flanders to seek
an asylum with Elizabeth in England. Unlike its other great staple
of linen, however, Belgium, in her woollen manufacture, is dependant
upon others for the raw material which she employs; the entire of her
possessions do not feed beyond a single million of sheep, and her
annual imports of wool from Germany, Holland, England and Spain, exceed
15,000,000 francs. The two grand seats of the trade, though distributed
over a considerable district of the south, are at Verviers and Dison,
which each produce annually from 30 to 35,000 pieces of thirty ells of
Brabant in length. The manufacture is chiefly carried on in the houses
of the workmen, and in some places, especially at Dison, the employers
are so deficient in capital, that the truck system is universal,
and the weaver paid by a portion of his own produce, which he must
afterwards sell under the pressure for bread, at such a price as he
can get for it; an act of injustice to the operative, which must always
tend to the manifest injury of prices, and undermining of the trade.
Down to 1814, the trade was in every way prosperous, but the successive
curtailments of consumption, first by the exclusion from France, and,
finally, by separation from Holland, have shaken its stability, and
brought it into a state of considerable peril at the present moment.
Still the number of factories have not diminished, although the rate
of profits has been cut down to the lowest possible figure, especially
at Verviers. It gives employment, at present, to between 15,000 and
20,000 individuals of all ages, whose wages vary from half a franc per
day for children, to two francs, and two francs and a half for their
fathers. The countries to which Belgium still exports are Switzerland,
Germany, Italy, the Levant, and Holland; but a commercial treaty
between the latter country and France, is said to have been framed with
a view to transfer to French cloth, the preference now given to that
of Verviers in the Dutch market. Her exportations, however, exhibit an
incredible decline since the revolution. In 1831, its value amounted
to _twenty-seven_ millions of francs; in 1832 to _twenty-three_; in
1833, it fell to one half, and in 1836, declined to _six millions
and a half_, a diminution which is ascribable to numerous causes,
but chiefly to its exclusion from Germany, by the operation of the
Prussian commercial league; the states of which were once, previously,
its most valuable consumers. Germany, in 1831 and 1832, took no less
than 1,000,000 kilogrammes of Belgian cloth, which fell, in 1833, to
344,000, and on an average of the four succeeding years, has scarcely
exceeded 250,000.
It is not difficult to imagine the vicissitudes of the woollen trade of
Belgium, thus driven, within five-and-twenty years, from the markets
of France and her colonies, Holland, Java, and Germany, and, shut
up within the narrow circle of her new independence, to maintain a
competition with her two powerful rivals--the English and the French.
Its present condition and prospects are thus noticed in the intelligent
volume of M. Briavionne. “After having participated, for so many years,
in the splendour of the Empire, the woollen manufactures of Belgium
underwent a decline in the early stage of her connexion with Holland,
which she ultimately recovered, and with such a firm success, that
the events of 1830 inflicted on it but a momentary injury. The close
of 1831, and the years 1832, 1833 and 1834, were, on the whole, a
period of satisfactory trade. But now commenced a struggle of every
description, and the clothing for the army being speedily accomplished,
it became essential to look for new outlets abroad. But just at this
crisis came the consolidation of the Zoll-Verein in Germany--the
plague, which ravaged the Levant--the cholera, which terrified
Italy--and, above all, the commercial calamities of the United States
in 1836 and 1837, each and all of which interfered directly with her
demand; and, to crown all, a period of depression in the home market
in 1838, and last year arrived, simultaneously with a change in public
taste, as to the fashion of dress, which altered the whole character
of their productions, and imposed the expense of new machinery, and
differently constructed apparatus of all kinds. The general result is,
at present, a weighty depression, especially in the poorer districts of
Dison; and one may sum up the recent history of the trade by saying,
that the two first years after the separation from Holland were
_good_--1834, _disastrous_--1835 and 1836, _passable_--1837 and 1838,
_bad_--and 1839, equally so.”[15]
Verviers is an open, gay looking country town, not like the
manufacturing places of England, which are dense, red-bricked rows of
smoky houses, thickly huddled together--but with broad, sunny streets,
and handsome white houses; the dwellings of the proprietors and their
factories, being equally ornamented on the front next the street. The
country around it, though beautiful, is barren, and provisions of all
kinds are as expensive in Verviers as in Brussels.
M. Gaudry, an intelligent proprietor of several manufactories, to whom
we brought letters, gave a deplorable account of the recent joint stock
speculations in Belgium, which seem to have been carried on to an
extent of capital, and with a recklessness in management that is quite
inconceivable. Verviers was a favourite field for their operations,
owing to the variety of its resources, which presented something to
suit every appetite of enterprise; and as works in actual operation
were much more seductive baits for shareholders, concerns were bought
up wholesale from their proprietors at the most extravagant rates, to
be sold out again in retail shares to the joint stock amateurs. One
coal mine, in the vicinity of the town, which had nearly ruined its
proprietor, was greedily purchased by the projectors of one of these
schemes, making its owner’s fortune just in time to conceal his actual
ruin, and after being worked for a short time, ended in the bankruptcy
of the new company--but, of course, not till it had amply rewarded
the secretaries, solicitors, and directory. A worsted manufacturer, in
like manner, who was on the verge of insolvency, offered his mills to a
joint stock proprietary, who eagerly accepted them on his terms--paid
a sum for the concern, which he forthwith invested in land, and gave
him a salary, for managing his own works, more than equal to all the
profits they ever realized.
It will scarcely be believed, though it is a fact, that between 1833
and 1838, one hundred and fifty or sixty companies of this kind,
actually invested three hundred and fifty millions of francs, or about
£15,000,000, in speculations of this kind--for insurances, mines,
machine making, public works, export associations, glass manufactories,
sugar refineries, cotton and flax mills, printing, brewing, in short,
every imaginable undertaking that could be described in scrip.
The mania originated with some similar undertakings projected by
the King of Holland, but which being prudently conducted were
moderately successful. But never was theory more vividly exemplified,
in practice, than were the warnings of Adam Smith realized in the
case of the Belgium companies; without either of his two essentials
to success--“monopoly or defined and limited action;” they burst at
once into all the pathless wilds of speculation and extravagance. To
success in any industrial undertaking, two things are essential, _mind
and money_; but the shareholders of a company contribute only the
latter, leaving the supply of the former to a directory: the partners
are only called upon to _pay_ and not to _think_, so that the mass of
their capital is unrepresented by an equivalent proportion of intellect
and forethought. The _general_ result of this, is the failure that
invariably accompanies neglect, and even the works which are undertaken
are never pushed with vigour, or expanded by new discoveries and
inventions. These are the offspring of that anxious exertion of all
the faculties of the brain which accompanies the watchful prudence of
a man, who has his whole fortune at stake, and is dependent upon his
individual genius. But the holder of a joint-stock share, who throws
his contribution into the general fund, and sends twice a year for his
dividend, (perhaps, without receiving it,) has neither the information
nor the interest that are indispensable to stimulate improvements.
Mistakes and errors are thus constantly occurring, and losses
supervene; these, on their first appearance, would alarm and deter a
private individual from incurring further risk, and he would prepare,
at once, to retrieve his capital; but to the officers of a company
these occurrences are matters of comparative indifference, so long as
the last shilling of the paid up funds remains to meet their salaries
as they fall due. And even the proprietary themselves, though conscious
of the diminution of their profits, do not feel it so acutely, coming
as it does off so large a fund, and are, besides, spurred on by the
spirit of rivalry to incur the temporary loss, in order to drive some
competing company from the field, which is only to be done by the
largeness of their transactions; on the principle of the match-seller,
who lost a trifle upon every bundle, and would be ruined were it not
for the vast extent of the business which he did.
The results of this system were not slow in developing themselves in
Belgium; one by one they began to strain, break, and give way; distrust
was every hour growing blacker, when the bank of Belgium, which had
been similarly formed in 1835, with a capital of twenty millions of
francs, and had encouraged the establishment of some twenty or thirty
other joint-stock speculations, with a capital of fifty millions more,
suddenly suspended payment in 1838, and universal dismay and confusion
followed; bubbles burst in all directions, those concerns which were
unsound exploded at once, and others more substantial suspended their
operations, and resorted to fresh calls and loans to enable them to
proceed. In the mean time, prices and the wages of labour had been
fluctuating like the waves of the sea under this financial tempest,
at one time raised to the highest pitch by the demand for machinery
created by such vast simultaneous exertions, and anon reduced below
a remunerative level by the ardour of their competition with each
other. Several of these companies still survive, but almost universally
struggling with the difficulties in which they have involved not only
themselves, but those private individuals whose steady and lucrative
trade they had invaded in the rage of their speculations.
From Verviers to Eupen, the Prussian frontier, the road is high and
uninteresting; it speedily leaves the charming valleys of the Vesdre
behind, and comes within sight of the ruins of Limbourg, one of the
most melancholy scenes of desolation I have seen--it stands lonely
and apart upon the summit of a rocky eminence, the remains of what
had once been a city, now a wilderness. Its rugged walls covered with
green moss, scarcely a roof visible, and the remnants of its shattered
fortifications flung, like a torn banner, across the sky. It has still,
however, a few wretched inhabitants, who are engaged in the zinc mines
in its vicinity. It seems incredible that this stranded wreck, was
once the capital of a duchy and the residence of a sovereign.
* * * * *
It is impossible to turn one’s back upon this most interesting and
enterprising country without emotions of deep anxiety as to its
future destiny. Its political fortunes would require something more
than ordinary foresight to predict, and the recent possibility of an
European war, elicited the avowal of how slightly France would regard
the treaties of 1831 or 1839, did Belgium stand for one moment in the
way to obstruct her designs, either of aggression or defence. But those
for whose future lot the strongest sympathy is excited, are her skilful
artisans and her energetic and adventurous manufacturers and merchants.
Merchants, indeed, she has but few, for nature and providence seem to
have combined to render Belgium a workshop rather than a warehouse.
Austria, by the base desertion of her shipping interest, in becoming
a party to the closing of the Scheldt at the treaty of Munster,
compelled her to turn her attention inwardly upon herself, and to seek
to replace by the loom and the hammer, that which she had lost by the
annihilation of the sail and the helm. Under France, and with the
all-powerful protection of Napoleon, her capabilities were developed to
the fullest extent of her capital and her means, all Europe affording
a market for her commodities, and creating a demand almost beyond her
power to supply.
With the events of 1815, and her annexation to Holland, that vast
outlet was contracted to a narrower space, and the King, on assuming
the direction of his affairs, found a nation of mechanics, whom it
became his province to provide with profitable employment. In the
attempt to do this, it is questionable whether he did not overstep the
bounds of prudence, and lead, by the system he adopted, to the further
development of powers which were already simply sufficient for their
functions;
As worldlings do, giving the sum of more
To that which had too much--
Individual enterprise was superseded rather than assisted; and the
expedients of the government tended to injure it in one respect by
relieving it from the effects of its own errors, feeding it with
capital, and carrying off its surplus production through societies
which purchased at a handsome price to export at a loss. Even with
all these appliances, her resources and powers were developed beyond
the legitimate means of their employment, and the 15,000,000 of her
population and colonies, whom Holland, compelled to give a preference
to her productions, were inadequate to their consumption. What then
must have been her condition, when in 1830, those 15,000,000 were
reduced to something more than three, whilst her machinery and powers
of production remained the same as before?
The new government, it must be admitted upon all hands, in spite of
the murmurs of those, the evils of whose condition lay too deep for
superficial remedies, such as the ministry had it in their power to
apply, have left no practical expedient untried to afford them relief,
but as yet in vain; and the history of one year seems but to afford a
painful contrast with the greater prosperity of that which preceded
it. Money, so far as it was available, has in no case been spared.
Mechanical and commercial education, both theoretical and practical,
has been duly attended to; prizes and honours have been awarded to
successful industry; and communications, both by highways, railroads,
and canals, have been lavishly provided to invite consumption and
demand; but no government can possibly afford the Belgians or procure
for them, that which alone can be a fundamental remedy--_a market
proportionate to their machinery_.
In every thing that is the offspring of manual labour brought to bear
upon native produce, their manufactures are successful; but so soon as
they are either obliged to bring their raw material from abroad, or to
come into competition with the machinery of more populous countries,
their advantages suddenly disappear. Thus in iron work in general,
cutlery, ordinary machinery, and hardware, they excel; as well as in
the production of lace and of linen yarn, in distillation or brewing,
in the manufacture of furniture and paper, and, in short, in all the
indispensable requisites of a home consumption. On the other hand,
their coal and their iron, though abundant, lie deeper and dearer than
those of their most formidable rivals in Great Britain; and copper,
which is equally essential to extensive operations in machinery, they
have none. Their trade would lose its pre-eminence could the Irish be
once induced to adopt their processes for the preparation of flax;
their cotton manufacture is in the agonies of dissolution, and their
silk has already departed. Their woollens, their sugar refiners, and
other once fruitful fields of enterprise and wealth, are no longer to
be relied on; and, in a word, the whole frame-work of their system is
labouring under a plethora, for which no ingenuity has yet sufficed to
invent an effectual relief.
One expedient, may, perhaps, suggest itself, that if her manufacturing
force is too great, it should be directed into other channels, and
her powers of production reduced into an accordance with her demand
and consumption. But, independently of the fact, that her agriculture,
which lost, equally with her artizans, an outlet in the colonies of
Holland, is already overstocked, and would afford no reception to her
surplus mechanics, the production of her machinery, even if reduced
within the wants of a population of three or four millions, would
still be undersold by those of her rivals, whose consumption extends
over a vastly more extended field. England with two hundred millions
of subjects in India and the West; Russia with 66,000,000; Austria
with half that number; the German League with twenty-four, and France
with thirty-five millions, would render it utterly beyond the power of
Belgium to enter any neutral market in the world in competition with
them, or even to supply her own, unless at a sacrifice.
The character of the Belgians for industry, frugality, and skill,
is not surpassed by that of any artisan in the world, but these,
unfortunately, are not the only requisites to success. “The sufferings
of the Belgian mechanics,” says M. Briavionne, “are all referable to
their unfortunate political position; but, formed in a school of long
adversity, they have learned to discover, even in their misfortunes, a
fountain of higher qualities, which has sustained them in their painful
struggle. Prodigal in prosperity, adversity has served to teach them
economy--to render them systematic, patient, and persevering. Nurtured
in luxury, they have become reconciled to privations; and the Belgian
manufacturer has long since learned to place his sole reliance upon
untiring labour, and unyielding industry. Less adventurous than the
American, or the Englishman, he has more fore-sight, moderation and
patience, than them both.”
* * * * *
_“The condition of the population,” adds M. Briavionne, “may be thus
summarily described;--of four millions of inhabitants, one is in
independence, (l’aisance), another in want, (besoin), and the remainder
floating between these two points.”_
But another reflection naturally forces itself upon the mind of any one
who sympathises with the artisans of Belgium, generous, industrious,
and deserving, as they have here been described--_who and what is it
that have reduced them to this condition of suffering and privation?_
The answer is but too obvious; and those who were the base instruments
of their ruin, if they have not discovered the effects of their own
crime, in the stagnation of all national prosperity, must, long ere
this, have learned it in the “curses, not loud but deep,” with which
their actions are assailed, by their dupes and victims. Belgium has,
years ere this, discovered the truth of the maxim, that it is--
“--better to bear the ills we have,
Than fly to others we know not of.”
If, under the successive sovereignties of Austria and France, and as
an integral portion of that of Holland, she had not the poetical
satisfaction of being “a nation instead of a province,” she had, at
least, the substantial enjoyments of liberty, wealth and remunerative
industry, blessings which even “hereditary bondsmen” might hesitate to
exchange for bigotry, poverty and decay.