movement had spread to Ulster. At Limerick, in 1752, John Wesley presided over the first conference of the preachers. Before 1760 a foothold had been gained in every county save Kerry, while the membership numbered over 300 in Connacht, 250 in Ulster, 1,000 in Leinster, and 600 in Munster.

Wesley died in 1791 having made more than two score cross-Channel journeys, and having spent six years of his life in Ireland, as well as presiding at all the conferences from 1756 to 1778.

In 1796 the preachers, hitherto largely recruited from England, had become a native staff. The country was now divided into "districts," and these subdivided into "circuits," within which the preachers itinerated mostly on horseback, preaching everywhere, and residing wherever they found a welcome for their work's sake. The answer of the conference to the tragic and terrible events of 1798 was characteristic. With apostolic instinct it appointed two "general missionaries," with a roving commission, to bear the message of peace to every part of the country and preach the word of God to the Irish people in their own tongue. It was through these agents that Methodism attracted the notice and commendation of Daniel O'Connell, then a rising barrister on circuit with the Judges of Assize. After Wesley's death Dr. Coke successfully superintended the work of Methodism for more than thirty years. In the last year

of his presidency (1813) the preachers numbered 120; the membership was almost 30,000, while over 200 Sunday schools had been established with upwards of 15,000 scholars.

Sustained and steady progress has continued down to the present. Notwithstanding the painful stream of emigration, during each of the last two decades the census returns have shown a numerical increase. The ministerial staff now numbers about 250, with at least a score at work on the foreign field. There are 358 Sunday schools with a total of more than 26,000 scholars. The census returns for 1901 show a total of 61,255 returning themselves as Methodists.

The mission of Methodism to-day in Ireland is, in the words of Wesley, "to go not only to those who need you but to those who need you most," and the spirit of her mission was expressed more truly at no former period than at present in the words of another famous motto undishonoured

during two centuries: "The friends of all, the enemies of

none.

The philanthropies of the Church are facilities for their educational equipment in life. The need of the lapsed multitudes in the Irish cities has been answered by the creation of two missions in Belfast, with one in Dublin and Derry, where help of every kind is given to the victims of social and industrial conditions. In the work of the Evangelistic Committee of the church the need of the more neglected community in scattered rural areas receives attention through tent and open-air gospel agencies. Since 1877 the laymen

of the Church have had a place in all its conferences, and the annual business of the Church is now conducted by ministers and laymen in equal numbers. The only excepted matters being ministerial appointments and ministerial discipline. The Methodist layman, wherever he proves efficient, is welcomed to the pulpits of the church throughout the country. This proves an excellent antidote to sacerdotal and professional tendencies.

Equally hopeful is the fact that the laymen who are most acceptable in the pulpits of Methodism are also most prominent in civic activities. Latterly a growing sense of civic obligation has been evident in many parts of the country. The sons of the Church have identified themselves from the beginning with every effort making for industrial revival, with the machinery of which some of them are prominently and honourably identified. Both in spirit and effort the Methodist Church in Ireland in the twentieth century stands for the fulfilment of the oft-repeated prayer-God Save Ireland.

Milling in Ireland.

Flour milling in Ireland, at one time very extensive, is one of our industries which, after considerably dwindling away for some years, is now again established as one of the largest and most important in the country.

During the last half of the 18th century the Irish Government by the giving of bounties and other encouragement to growers of wheat had caused Ireland to become a very considerable wheat growing country, producing indeed more than sufficed for the needs of her own population (for at that period wheaten flour was not as now the staple food of the masses) but also exporting much to England. Much of this exported surplus, and all of what was consumed at home, took the form of flour, made in the mills which the plentiful supply of wheat had caused to be built all over the wheat growing districts.

During the first half of the 19th century not only had the bounties of the Irish Parliament been withdrawn but the gradual modification and subsequent repeal of the Corn Laws by the Union Parliament deprived wheat growers of any advantages the protection had given them, and competition of foreign wheat, from the enormous new wheat lands rapidly being opened up in America and other countries, soon rendered unprofitable the growing of wheat in Ireland except in districts where the circumstances were exceptionally favourable.

The effect of these changes on the Irish milling trade was great. No longer able to obtain a plentiful supply of wheat from around their doors, they were met both here and in England by flour from America and elsewhere. To meet this competition they had to use foreign wheat, but in so doing were handicapped by the high inland freight rates on the raw material to their mills. The only Irish mills, consequently, which could hold their own were those in close proximity to the ports at which the flour and wheat entered the country, except in the case of a few of the inland mills which happened to be very favourably situated as regards transit, or had large and inexpensive water power.

The stress of the situation was aggravated by the decline in the population, which lessened the demand for flour concurrently with the added supply of competing flour from abroad.

The last quarter of the 19th century was notable in the milling trade for the introduction of the modern methods of milling by rollers and gradual reduction which in a few years entirely displaced the sytem of grinding with millstones. The millstone system had gradually been brought to a high degree of perfection, probably as great perfection as it was capable of, and it is an acknowledged fact that in those days the technical knowledge possessed and shown by Irish millers, both masters and operatives, in the working of that old-time servant "the millstone" reached a standard far in advance of hat reached in other countries.

The millstone, however, was in essentials the same in principle since the dawn of history, and the improvements in it had been slowly evolved through centuries, but from the first introduction of the roller mill about 1880, changes in machinery and system followed one another with bewildering frequency. In the stress of the fierce competition from abroad only the most efficient methods available could enable a mill to hold its own. Irish millers, as might have been expected from their reputation of technical knowledge and skill, at once grasped this fact, and entered boldly into the fight, and for the ensuing twenty years poured out money like water in the purchasing of new machinery and remodelling and reconstructing their mills again and again, seizing every improvement as it was discovered.

Many Irish mills went down in the struggle, but those who reached the end of the century had come out on top, and were in their equipment and machinery well ahead of most of their competitors and the equals of any in the world.

In 1902 at the Cork Exhibition a conference on the Irish flour milling trade was held on the initiative of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. The outcome of this was a large and representative meeting of Irish flour millers held immediately afterwards, at which it was decided to form an Association of Irish Flour Millers with a view to concerted action in any direction which might be of help to the trade. The Association numbers as it members practically all the flour millers of Ireland and has done and

continues to do much useful work. From its inception the Association has never proposed to attempt anything in the nature of regulation of prices, but has always carefully abstained from interfering in any way in matters of buying and selling by its members, as it is believed that free and unrestricted competition is the healthiest condition for the trade. But many matters have arisen from time to time in which it has done good work, such, for instance, as obtaining in 1903 for millers relief from unfair incidence in certain directions of the Wheat and Flour Import Duties, and in 1906 in preparing evidence and putting it before the Viceregal Commission on Irish railways.

With the beginning of the 20th century came also a change in the conditions of the trade as regards supply. For long the wheat crop of the United States of America had been the leading factor in the world's supply of breadstuffs, but the steady and rapid increase of her population, together with her annual crop of wheat having almost reached its limit of increase, has resulted in her having less surplus every year for export, and in unfavourable seasons little or none. Owing, too, to the system which prevails in America of cropping with wheat the same land year after year without rotation, the wheat crop is gradually falling away in quantity and quality from what it was when the land was virgin soil. Meanwhile new wheat fields have been opened up all over the world, but in many of these the climatic conditions cause the output to vary largely in quantity and quality from year to year. It follows that the only mills which can now depend upon a constant supply of w.eat of good quality are those at the ports of entry (or on main inland transit routes) of the importing country. Irish mills being so situated and being also well equipped and handled are more than equal to meeting any transoceanic competition, which, moreover, for the reasons given above has now become spasmodic rather than constant. The severest competition now to be met will probably be from the large English port mills, the Irish millers can meet this with confidence, being as well equipped as the best of them and better situated for the Irish trade. The most vulnerable point now is the tendency in many cases of the Irish railways to handicap Irish mills by giving unfairly low through rates to shippers of flour from English ports to inland Irish stations.