newest; this portion is, therefore, sent to poorer customers, and actually sold for less than the cost of its production; the large profit on the superior article making up for the loss on this. In this way, a large portion of English goods come into the Irish market, which it would be difficult to sell in England; but the Irish purchaser cannot afford to be so fastidious, and is glad to get the cheap article, although inferior. It is obviously impossible for the Irish manufacturer to bring similar articles to market, on the same terms, as he has no superior sale to remunerate him for the loss. It is also true, that the fact of there being so few manufactories in Ireland, is the very reason, that these few find a greater difficulty of sales, than is found in England; because a purchaser naturally goes to the place where he will find the greatest variety, and the greatest quantity from which to select that which he considers most pleasing or most profitable. These remarks, however, apply chiefly to the higher branches of manufactures; and there is yet abundant field left in Ireland for capitalists who choose to take advantage of the cheap labour, and the exemption from poorrates, and from all direct government taxes, which is enjoyed in that country.

The province of Ulster, and a part of Leinster bordering on Ulster, are, it is well known, not commonly included in general remarks upon Ireland; the condition of that portion of the island being as different from, and as superior to the rest, as the condition of England is superior to it. "It is remarkable," says Mr Leslie Foster, in his evidence before the Lords, "that in the eleven counties planted by King James the Insurrection Act never was in force."

The population there is divided, as in England, between agriculture, trade, and manufactures; and there are bankers, and rich merchants, and resident gentry, and improved estates. The hum of the spinning wheel, and the clack of the loom, are heard in the

cottages, and the eye rests with delight upon bleachfields, where the bright green is half concealed by the long lines of white linen that glance in the sunbeams; the towns seem full of business, and the people awake to the blessings of industry and improvement.

In this part of the country, thanks to the policy of the unfortunate Earl of Strafford, who governed Ireland with a hand directed at once by severity and wisdom, the linen manufacture was introduced, and has long continued to flourish. It was a manufac ture of the happiest nature for the domestic comfort of the population, carried on within their own houses, and combined with agricultural pursuits. With its co-operation small farms were not found to be a nuisance, because the tenants were enabled to consume the produce of them themselves, while the profits of the manufacture enabled them to pay their rents. It appears, however, that the manufacture of the coarser description of linens has considerably declined of late years,* and the weaving of cotton has been introduced in its place. Mr Leslie Foster stated to the Committee of the Lords in 1825, that after the repeal in 1822, of what he says were erroneously called "protecting duties," the cotton manufacture spread through the northeastern part of Ireland in a very surprising manner, and he inclined to think, would hold its ground there, in connexion with the finer branches of the linen manufacture; while the manufacture of the coarser linens appeared to be migrating to the west and south, and employing the people of Sligo and Mayo. In this introduction of cotton weaving, the vast importance of the increased facilities in the transmission of goods from one country to the other was very strikingly made manifest: The cotton twist was brought over from Manchester, and distributed amongst the weavers, in the counties of Down, Antrim, and Louth, who brought it back in the shape of cloth, which was immediately returned to Manchester to be bleached, dressed,

and finished for the market. Large mills, however, for spinning cotton, are becoming more numerous in the north of Ireland, and it is possible that the great cheapness of handweaving (for the remuneration to the poor weaver is extremely small) may enable the manufacturers there to compete with the power-looms in England and Scotland. None but those who have witnessed it can conceive how wonderfully the repeal of the protect ing duties, which we have just alluded to, and the facility of communication by the aid of steam-packets, have changed the nature of the commercial intercourse between Ireland and England. But a few years ago England was to the mass of the trading people of Ireland, like some rich house, which none but the more privileged classes had any business to enter; but now the gates are widely open to the public, and every one who has any thing to buy or sell, or wants to gratify his curiosity, boldly marches in. A race of merchants who lived in Dublin, by importing once or twice in the year from England, and selling to retailers, and country shopkeepers, have been almost annihilated. There is no longer any use for them. If a man in Dublin want to purchase English goods, instead of going to bed at his own house, he goes to bed in the steam-packet, and awakes in the morning at Liverpool-then he may spend some hours in Manchester, dine in Liverpool again the same day, go to bed in the steampacket as before, and the next morning he is behind his counter in Dublin, just (as an Irishman would say) as if nothing had happened him. He has made his journey and his purchases in far less time, than under the old system would have been occupied in higgling with the Dublin merchant about the price. If a grazier bring his cattle to the Smithfield of Dublin, and finds they do not sell as well as he expected, and as he believes they would sell in England, he drives them down forthwith to the quay, has them put on board a steamer, and the men of Lancashire grow fat on Irish beef and mutton. In Holyhead they do not take the trouble of baking, because Dublin bread is very good, and the steam-packet brings it to them almost

warm from the Irish oven, which has been heated by English coals. The fish which are caught in Dublin bay draw their last gasp upon the English shore; the fisherman's boat coming in is met by the steamer going out, and the fish are purchased by the steward, or the sailors of the packet. The steamer is met in its turn, in eight or nine hours, by boatmen from Liverpool, who purchase the fish, sell a part of it in the town, and send the rest by a four-hours trip to Manchester, where it is eaten with butter made in Munster, from a table covered with the manufacture of Ulster, washed down with porter manufactured in Dublin, which is probably succeeded by a dram of whisky, distilled in Cork or Belfast. The population of Ireland seem strongly inclined to follow the provisions, and they are by no means so welcome. But it is in vain to think of keeping them off, now that steampackets have removed the tediousness and the peril of travelling over the sea which divides them from us. That class of the community who in both countries must live solely by the labour of their hands, will, ere very long, find a common level. We may regret it, but we cannot help it; and we doubt very much if it would be wise to oppose the approximation even if we could. We are united to Ireland for better and worse, and it is a weak and timid policy to attempt to keep her at bay, as if there were something dangerous in her contact, and as if we feared she might cling about our knees, though we know she cannot grapple with our strength. We must support Ireland; let us not then attempt to keep her in poverty, and at a distance, but rather take her into our family, where she may learn our habits, and forget her own wildness and irregularity. Let it rather be our task to cultivate her capabilities, than indolently to push the difficulty from our sight for a little time by sending handfuls of her population to the Colonies, or sending back from England the able bodied men who are wandering abroad in search of food. With "Ireland as it is," we send them back only to perish by want, or in the tumults induced by despair.

To those who may think that having ventured to speak of manufactures and

commerce, we should provide a set of tables of imports and exports in business-like fashion, we beg leave to intimate, that our present purpose is to exhibit pictorial sketches, and general statements, and that we have not room for elaborate details. These details may be found in a thick blue book, full of arithmetical figures, yclept the Annual Financial Statement, which the Treasury publishes every year for the benefit of Parliament and the public. We think it right, however, to inform such of our friends as delight in the contemplation of masses of numerical figures, that they are not to confide in a publication, purporting to be an ac

curate account of the state of Ireland, illustrated by tables, and put forth by a Monsieur Cæsar Moreau, who, we know not how, happens to be an F.R.S. of London. This gentleman seems to have a passion for "tables," and for lithography-for his thirty shilling publication is entirely from the litho graphic press, and fortunately written in so minute a character, that very few, even with the best double spectacles, can read it. In his calculations, he out-Humes even his friend Mr Hume himself, and the publication is more elaborately wrong, than any other we ever happened to meet with.

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