The woollen trade of the Andennes, is one of the oldest national occupations of the Netherlands, and for the share of it which we enjoy in England, we are indebted to the fanatical fury of Philip II., whose persecutions drove the weavers of Brabant and Flanders to seek an asylum with Elizabeth in England. Unlike its other great staple of linen, however, Belgium, in her woollen manufacture, is dependant upon others for the raw material which she employs; the entire of her possessions do not feed beyond a single million of sheep, and her annual imports of wool from Germany, Holland, England and Spain, exceed 15,000,000 francs. The two grand seats of the trade, though distributed over a considerable district of the south, are at Verviers and Dison, which each produce annually from 30 to 35,000 pieces of thirty ells of Brabant in length. The manufacture is chiefly carried on in the houses of the workmen, and in some places, especially at Dison, the employers are so deficient in capital, that the truck system is universal, and the weaver paid by a portion of his own produce, which he must afterwards sell under the pressure for bread, at such a price as he can get for it; an act of injustice to the operative, which must always tend to the manifest injury of prices, and undermining of the trade. Down to 1814, the trade was in every way prosperous, but the successive curtailments of consumption, first by the exclusion from France, and, finally, by separation from Holland, have shaken its stability, and brought it into a state of considerable peril at the present moment. Still the number of factories have not diminished, although the rate of profits has been cut down to the lowest possible figure, especially at Verviers. It gives employment, at present, to between 15,000 and 20,000 individuals of all ages, whose wages vary from half a franc per day for children, to two francs, and two francs and a half for their fathers. The countries to which Belgium still exports are Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Levant, and Holland; but a commercial treaty between the latter country and France, is said to have been framed with a view to transfer to French cloth, the preference now given to that of Verviers in the Dutch market. Her exportations, however, exhibit an incredible decline since the revolution. In 1831, its value amounted to _twenty-seven_ millions of francs; in 1832 to _twenty-three_; in 1833, it fell to one half, and in 1836, declined to _six millions and a half_, a diminution which is ascribable to numerous causes, but chiefly to its exclusion from Germany, by the operation of the Prussian commercial league; the states of which were once, previously, its most valuable consumers. Germany, in 1831 and 1832, took no less than 1,000,000 kilogrammes of Belgian cloth, which fell, in 1833, to 344,000, and on an average of the four succeeding years, has scarcely exceeded 250,000.