M. Gaudry, an intelligent proprietor of several manufactories, to whom we brought letters, gave a deplorable account of the recent joint stock speculations in Belgium, which seem to have been carried on to an extent of capital, and with a recklessness in management that is quite inconceivable. Verviers was a favourite field for their operations, owing to the variety of its resources, which presented something to suit every appetite of enterprise; and as works in actual operation were much more seductive baits for shareholders, concerns were bought up wholesale from their proprietors at the most extravagant rates, to be sold out again in retail shares to the joint stock amateurs. One coal mine, in the vicinity of the town, which had nearly ruined its proprietor, was greedily purchased by the projectors of one of these schemes, making its owner’s fortune just in time to conceal his actual ruin, and after being worked for a short time, ended in the bankruptcy of the new company--but, of course, not till it had amply rewarded the secretaries, solicitors, and directory. A worsted manufacturer, in like manner, who was on the verge of insolvency, offered his mills to a joint stock proprietary, who eagerly accepted them on his terms--paid a sum for the concern, which he forthwith invested in land, and gave him a salary, for managing his own works, more than equal to all the profits they ever realized. It will scarcely be believed, though it is a fact, that between 1833 and 1838, one hundred and fifty or sixty companies of this kind, actually invested three hundred and fifty millions of francs, or about £15,000,000, in speculations of this kind--for insurances, mines, machine making, public works, export associations, glass manufactories, sugar refineries, cotton and flax mills, printing, brewing, in short, every imaginable undertaking that could be described in scrip.