Under the government of Austria, the manufacture seems to have attained its acmé of prosperity in the Netherlands, her exports of linen, in 1784, amounting to 27,843,397 yards, whilst at the present moment, with all her increase of population and discoveries in machinery, she hardly surpasses thirty millions. Again, under the continental system of Napoleon, from 1805 to 1812, it attained a high degree of prosperity, which sensibly decreased after the events of 1814, when English produce came again into active competition with it. The cultivation of flax is still, however, her staple employment, one acre in every eighty-six of the whole area of Belgium, being devoted to its growth. In peculiar districts, such as Courtrai and St. Nicolas, so much as one acre in twenty is given to it; and in the Pays de Waes, it amounts so high as one in ten. Every district of Belgium, in fact, yields flax, more or less, except Luxembourg and Limburg, where it has been attempted, but without success; but of the entire quantity produced, Flanders alone furnishes three-fourths, and the remaining provinces, one. The quality of the flax, too, seems, independently of local superiority in its cultivation, to be essentially dependent upon the nature of the soil in which it is sown. From that around Ghent, no process of tillage would be sufficient to raise the description suitable to more costly purposes; that of the Waloons yields the very coarsest qualities; Courtrai those whose strength is adapted for thread; and Tournai alone furnished the fine and delicate kinds, which serve for the manufacture of lace and cambric. Of the quantity of dressed flax prepared in Belgium, calculated to amount to about eighteen millions of kilogrammes, five millions were annually exported to England and elsewhere, on an average of eight years, from 1830 to 1839. According to the returns of the Belgian custom-houses, the export has been as follows--from 1830 to 1839. 1831 5,449,388 kilogr. 1832 3,655,226 ” 1833 4,392,113 ” 1834 2,698,870 ” 1835 4,610,649 ” 1836 6,891,991 ” 1837 7,403,346 ” 1838 9,459,056 ” It is important to observe the steady increase of the English demand since 1834. The remainder is reserved for home manufacture into thread and cloth, and it is estimated by M. Briavionne, that the cultivation of this one article alone, combining the value of the raw material with the value given to it by preparation, in its various stages from flax to linen cloth, produces annually to Belgium, an income of 63,615,000 francs.[8] Belgium possesses no source of national wealth at all to be put into comparison with this, involving as it does, the concentrated profits both of the raw material and its manufacture, and, at the present moment, the attention of the government and the energies of the nation are directed to its encouragement in every department, with an earnestness that well bespeaks their intimate sense of its importance.