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. The two banks, east and west of the Rhine, present at this moment a singular and striking illustration of the opposite effects of the cultivation or neglect of this principle in modern manufacture. _To the right_, we have the numerous little industrious states and principalities of Western Germany, each ambitious of acquiring manufacturing power, and each possessing it to a certain extent; but each unable, till lately, to succeed or prosper, owing to the narrowness of its individual bounds; till, at last, awakened to a consciousness of their real and actual wants, they, by one simultaneous movement, levelled every intervening barrier, and threw their united territories into the one grand area of the Prussian Commercial League; the success of which has hitherto realized their utmost expectations. _On the left_ of the Rhine we had, ten years ago, Belgium and Holland enjoying that _union_ which Germany has but lately attained, and reaping all the advantages which it was possible to derive from it--till, in the “madness of the hour,” the latter undid the very bonds of her prosperity, reversed the process by which Germany is rising to prosperity, and, resorting to repeal and separation, she has lost, as a matter of course, every advantage which she had drawn from union and co-operation. A similar proceeding cannot fail to inflict similar calamities upon Ireland; and the same destruction of her manufactures which has followed the exclusion of Belgium from the markets and the colonies of Holland, would inevitably overtake the manufacturers of Ireland, if placed upon the footing of a stranger and a rival in the ports and colonies of Great Britain.