On the opposite side of the canal, we visited the sugar refinery of M. Neyt. This is a trade of much importance to Belgium, and, like almost every other department of her manufactures, at present in a very critical condition. The establishment of M. Neyt, though of great extent, being calculated to work twenty-five tons of sugar in the week, is not greater than some others in Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. The machinery is all of the newest construction for boiling _in vacuo_, upon Howard’s principle, with some recent improvements by, I think, M. Devos-Maes; which, though expensive in the first instance, tends materially to diminish the cost by accelerating the completion of the process. All the sugar we saw in process was from Java and Manilla, and vessels were loading in the canal in front of the works with purified lump for Hamburgh. This branch of Belgian commerce has been retarded by a series of vicissitudes, and seems still destined to perilous competition, not only from Holland, which already disputes the possession of the trade with her, but from the states of the Prussian League in which there are eighty-four refineries of sugar already. Holland and Belgium have, for many years, enjoyed a large revenue from this most lucrative process for the supply of Germany and for export to the Mediterranean; a manufacture in which they have been enabled to compete successfully with England, owing to their being at liberty to bring the raw material from any country where it is to be found cheapest, whilst Great Britain has necessarily been restricted to consume only the produce of her own colonies by the protective duty imposed upon all others. Holland has, however, by her recent treaty with Prussia, taken steps to preserve her present advantageous position as regards the supply of Germany, whilst her bounties to her own refiners afford an equal encouragement with that held out by their government to those of Belgium.