was spared. How has it repaid the clemency of the British Parliament? By dowering the crown of England with as fair a cluster of flourishing towns and loyal centres of industry as are to be found in any portion of the Empire. Would you see what Ireland might have been—go to Derry, to Belfast, to Lisburn, and by the exceptional prosperity which has been developed, not only within a hundred towns and villages, but for miles and miles around them, you may measure the extent of the injury we have sustained.[1] Would you ascertain how the numerical strength of a nation may be multiplied, while the status of each individual that comprises it is improved,—go to Belfast, where (within a single generation) the population has quadrupled, and the wages of labour have more than doubled.[2]
- ↑ "The injury we endured by the suppression of our trade may be best measured by the expansion which immediately followed its liberation. In 1780 the duties on the exportation of woollen manufactures from Ireland were removed. In three years the export of our woollen stuffs increased from 8000 yards to 53S,000 yards of old draperies, from 494 yards to 40,000 yards, of new draperies. Again, with regard to the cotton manufacture; in 1783 130,000 yards of cotton goods were imported into Ireland within six months from Chester alone. In 1784, after the removal of the prohibition, only 18,000 yards were exported from that port during the same period."
- ↑ Extract from a letter from a Belfast Merchant.
"I think you may fairly assume that the present rate of wages earned by mill workers is about 50 per cent in excess of that paid to them thirty or forty years since. Mechanics
