One expedient, may, perhaps, suggest itself, that if her manufacturing force is too great, it should be directed into other channels, and her powers of production reduced into an accordance with her demand and consumption. But, independently of the fact, that her agriculture, which lost, equally with her artizans, an outlet in the colonies of Holland, is already overstocked, and would afford no reception to her surplus mechanics, the production of her machinery, even if reduced within the wants of a population of three or four millions, would still be undersold by those of her rivals, whose consumption extends over a vastly more extended field. England with two hundred millions of subjects in India and the West; Russia with 66,000,000; Austria with half that number; the German League with twenty-four, and France with thirty-five millions, would render it utterly beyond the power of Belgium to enter any neutral market in the world in competition with them, or even to supply her own, unless at a sacrifice. The character of the Belgians for industry, frugality, and skill, is not surpassed by that of any artisan in the world, but these, unfortunately, are not the only requisites to success. “The sufferings of the Belgian mechanics,” says M. Briavionne, “are all referable to their unfortunate political position; but, formed in a school of long adversity, they have learned to discover, even in their misfortunes, a fountain of higher qualities, which has sustained them in their painful struggle. Prodigal in prosperity, adversity has served to teach them economy--to render them systematic, patient, and persevering. Nurtured in luxury, they have become reconciled to privations; and the Belgian manufacturer has long since learned to place his sole reliance upon untiring labour, and unyielding industry. Less adventurous than the American, or the Englishman, he has more fore-sight, moderation and patience, than them both.” * * * * * _“The condition of the population,” adds M. Briavionne, “may be thus summarily described;--of four millions of inhabitants, one is in independence, (l’aisance), another in want, (besoin), and the remainder floating between these two points.”_ But another reflection naturally forces itself upon the mind of any one who sympathises with the artisans of Belgium, generous, industrious, and deserving, as they have here been described--_who and what is it that have reduced them to this condition of suffering and privation?_ The answer is but too obvious; and those who were the base instruments of their ruin, if they have not discovered the effects of their own crime, in the stagnation of all national prosperity, must, long ere this, have learned it in the “curses, not loud but deep,” with which their actions are assailed, by their dupes and victims. Belgium has, years ere this, discovered the truth of the maxim, that it is--