We call upon you then as our representatives to take effectual steps for securing to us our legitimate rights, that is to say, the undisturbed enjoyment of the only market that has been left to us, _or to supply its place either by a commercial union with France, or by an accession to the commercial league of Germany_. We call upon you to adopt these measures without farther delay--our sufferings are keen and they have been of long endurance--and, if in spite of every effort to save us, you at last discover its impossibility, we entreat of you, as a last favour, at least to say so openly. We shall then avail ourselves of such an announcement to shorten our struggles, and to bring to a close sacrifices and exertions that have swallowed up our capital and our time. You, at least, may obtain for us this, that our government will tell us _what it means to do_. _Ten thousand families_ are hanging upon us for bread--fifty thousand individuals, men, women and children, spread over town and country, and dispersed through every province, depend upon our establishments for employment, and when this fails, they have no other resource to fly to. It remains with you to preserve to Belgium a branch of her industry which firm determination may yet retrieve, and which only requires vigorous resolution to free it from the tribute which it now pays to the stranger.” This importunate document produced, as might have been anticipated no beneficial result--the government have not the power to aid them--their three propositions are all alike beyond their reach;--to effectually suppress smuggling from abroad would require a custom house police, which along so vast a frontier and so extensive a coast, would cost more than all the trade it would protect could afford to pay;--and to gain commercial advantages by a treaty with France is as hopeless a suggestion, as the proposal of a junction with the Prussian league has proved impracticable and abortive. The ultimate preservation of the cotton trade of Belgium, in all its branches of spinning, weaving and printing, seems to me utterly hopeless by any ordinary policy, and only to be achieved by a resort to some expedient as yet untried. From Tamise, we drove through a richly planted country along the left bank of the Scheldt to Dendermonde, or as it is called, Termonde. This is a gloomy old town, very silent and unattractive, with nothing remarkable except its huge fortifications, and these I am as unable to describe as my Uncle Toby was, before he got his map, to make his audience comprehend “the differences and distinctions between the scarp and counter-scarp--the glacis and the covered way--the half-moon and the ravelin.” Our associations with the name of Dendermonde are all “Of vallies and retires, and trenches, tents, Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, Of prisoners ransomed, and of soldiers slain, And all the currents of a heady fight.”