[Footnote 44: The question of tariffs was one bond of union. At a political dinner on July 9, 1829, when the toast of the union of Catholics and Liberals was given, one of several maxims on the walls was: 'Notre industrie, agricole et manufacturière, a besoin d'un système de protection sagement pondéré; sans cette protection, le travail étranger viendrait prendre bientôt sur notre marchéla place du travail national' (C. Rodenbach: _Épisodes de la Révolution dans les Flandres_, p. 82).] CHAPTER XVIII THE VICISSITUDES OF ANTWERP When Napoleon was at Antwerp in 1803, he spoke to the Communal Council about the miserable condition of the place. 'It is little better,' he said, 'than a heap of ruins. It is scarcely like a European city. I could almost have believed myself this morning in some African township. Everything needs to be made--harbours, quays, docks; and everything shall be made, for Antwerp must avail itself of the immense advantages of its central position between the North and the South, and of its magnificent and deep river.' Antwerp was indeed a pitiable sight. Its trade had sunk to nothing. Rows of squalid houses, with wooden gables 300 years old, looked down upon canals choked up with slime and filth. The wharves on the banks of the noble River Scheldt were mere heaps of rotten timber. Half the churches, from which the stained glass and rich ornaments of former days had long since departed, were closed. Grass was growing in the deserted streets; and the walls of this desolate city contained a population which numbered only some 40,000 souls. Such in the beginning of the nineteenth century was the state of Antwerp, which had once been the centre of European commerce and the greatest seaport in the world. [Illustration: ANTWERP THE Cathedral--Chapel of St. Joseph.]