After breakfast we continued our drive to Tamise or Thames, a manufacturing village on the Scheldt, which with another near it, called Waesminster, are said to have been so named in honor of King Edward III. At Thames we went over the cotton factory of M. Talboom. It is on a moderate scale, having about 6 to 7000 spindles, the machinery partly French, but chiefly from the Phœnix works at Ghent. The men and girls employed, work fourteen hours a day, exclusive of two hours for stoppages. We expressed our impression of the severity of this, but were told, that it was indispensable, in order to maintain their position in the market. The proprietor, who expressed the utmost alarm and dissatisfaction at the state of the trade observed, that if circumstances should enable the English producers of cotton yarn, to reduce their prices by a single figure, then those of Belgium must abandon the manufacture, which even, at present, was not paying its own support. Like almost every other branch of national industry, the cotton manufacture which had attained a high degree of prosperity during the union with Holland, experienced an instantaneous reverse from the events of the revolution. Factory after factory closed its doors, some in ruin, others to transfer their capital and industry to Holland, whose extensive colonies afforded that outlet for their produce, which they could no longer find at home. The ministry to check the downward career, resorted to the absurd and childish expedient of purchasing up the surplus production of the manufacturers, in order to export it at a loss, and thus get it out of the country and out of the way, only to make room for fresh accumulation of stock, and renewed adventures by the government. In this way the trade dragged on a fictitious existence, exposed to peril by every fluctuation of the markets of England, and from time to time deluged by importations made at a moment when it was necessary to get rid of a glut in the market of that country or in France. For the last two years, however, its condition has been most precarious and threatening, its consumers still further diminished by the partition of the provinces of Luxembourg and Limbourg with Holland, and by an alteration in the cost of raw cotton, and the unusual preference given to woollen fabrics above those of cotton in almost every country of Europe. In 1835, those interested in the trade made an importunate and alarming application to the government, exposing the danger in which they found themselves and imploring assistance; the ministers were compelled to admit the urgency of the case, to confess that their protection was utterly inadequate, and to propose early measures for their relief,--but the trade bitterly complain, that up to the present hour, nothing whatever has been attempted in their behalf. _But in fact what has the government in its power?_ It cannot give them that which is their only remedy, it cannot