* * * * * We went to-day to see another of the great machine manufactories of Belgium, the works of _La Société du Renard_, which are the property of a joint stock company, who purchased them from their original proprietor. Though on a vast scale, they are by no means so extensive as the Phœnix at Ghent; they are calculated for the production of every description of machinery, but chiefly of locomotive engines, and the heavier articles. The establishment is fitted up for five hundred workmen, but at the time of our visit, it had not employment for more than fifty. The chief apartment is one spacious workshop nearly square, covered in, and so extensive, as to be traversed by a railway for the convenience of moving the heavier pieces. The directors had no orders in hand at the moment, but were preparing some locomotives upon speculation. The cost of one of these of thirty horse power, is about 40,000 francs.[2] I cannot but fear, that these large establishments have been inconsiderately run up in Belgium, and that the recent demand for machinery, both for railroads and factories, has given a hectic air of prosperity to Belgian manufactures, that has led to investments of this kind, far beyond her real wants. Even at present we find an universal protestation, that the quantity of machinery already in action, is more than sufficient to supply all the demands of her trade. At Ghent, we found the Phœnix works fully employed, a circumstance obviously accounted for, by the simultaneous erection of three joint stock spinning mills, but we were told, on the spot, that when the orders for these were completed, it was not clearly discernible whence others of similar importance were to come. In other parts of Belgium, the same diminution of employment is seriously felt, and the Renard is, as I have stated, almost at a stand still. The railroads of Belgium, when once supplied with engines, cannot possibly be expected to keep so many and so extensive works in regular employment, and even now I observed under a shed at the station of Ghent, two English locomotive engines from Newcastle, neither of which had yet been used, but which were laid aside as a reserve. The capital sunk in the Renard, is said to be 700,000 francs, and besides it, there are three minor houses of the same kind in Brussels.