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The Cowitry Gentlemaiis Magazine 



FLAX CULTURE IN IRELAND AND ITS LESSONS. 



THE acreage under flax crops in Ire- 

 land this year ('72), is smaller than 

 in any year since 185 1, except 55 to 58 in- 

 clusive. That which operated to produce 

 these exceptions, having passed away, we 

 must look to other causes for the present 

 state of matters ; and we have not far to go 

 for an explanation. " The Exhibition" placed 

 the spinning of fibres, and the manufacture of 

 fabrics, for which the United Kingdom has 

 been so famous, on a common platform, and 

 opened the prizes for doing so well to all 

 the world. But against all likelihood Ireland's 

 textile manufactures became somehow more 

 intensely local, and to this must be traced one 

 of the chief reasons why flax culture and the 

 linen trade have never had their proper place 

 in the United Kingdom. If the principle on 

 which the Exhibition was based had been 

 duly applied, it would for all agricultural 

 purposes have rendered the distinction between 

 England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales ;///; 

 except so far as certain specialities of white 

 flax crops indicate to each the particular 

 line in which alone it can excel. In 

 fixing upon a place for a special crop, all 

 things affecting its probable success must 

 be fairly considered. In Connaught and 

 Munster, for example, the cHmate and soil 

 of which are in favour of flax crops, crude, 

 indolent, and wasteful farming, far more than 

 counterbalance the disadvantages of less 

 favourable soil and climate, where science, 

 industry, and economy are observed. The 

 conditions, therefore, in which flax culture is 

 open to agriculturists, and not confined, as 

 some have supposed, to the Irish, are to be 

 found more in these things over which the 

 farmer has control than in anything special 

 to a class, or peculiar to a district or country. 

 But the fact is flax culture has been left to 

 Ireland too long, and the result is that in 

 1872— 



Ulster produces only 114,659 acres. 

 Munster ,, 2297 ,, 



Leinster ,, 2014 ,, 



Connaught ,, 2894 „ 



On the face of these statistics, one un- 

 initiated in Irish affairs might most 

 erroneously jump at the idea that flax is a 

 condemned crop in that country. Besides^ 

 if special pleading were resorted to, there 

 is on the surface of these figures several 

 things which might be distorted into shapes- 

 apparently favourable to false conclusions 

 that flax does not suit Ireland. The fact 

 is, the people rarely give it a fair trial out- 

 side Ulster, and even then so much is ex- 

 pected from flax, that for the British to be 

 misled by the Irish in this matter, is to fly in 

 the face of sound sense. But the apparent 

 mystery of the Irish farmers' conduct in re- 

 gard to flax crops, will be the less mislead- 

 ing when we remember that for years the 

 people have been influenced by the well 

 meant empiricism of the late amiable Earl 

 Carlisle. The hobby of this well-intentioned, 

 but truly unreasoning leader of thought in 

 Ireland, was that she was only fitted to be- 

 " the fruitful mother of flocks and herds.'" 

 Sir R. Peel, Bart, while in office, and whose 

 policy was sound, except where it was- 

 marred by this long-exploded error, acting, 

 on the fallacy by which it held its flimsy- 

 hold of the popular -mind, sought out 

 and obtained a subsidy in favour of 

 flax-growing. This blunder was based 

 on the supposition that because flax 

 was necessary to the linen trade of 

 Ulster, and as that trade was the only one 

 in a healthy condition in the country, it 

 was requisite to subsidize the growers of a 

 crop which was on its merits less likely to 

 be adopted than green crops or cereals. 

 But how did the case then, and how does. 

 it now stand? Take the County of Down 

 as an illustration. In that county the soil 

 is naturally less fitted for flax crops than that 

 of any other part of Ulster ; and the climate 

 on the whole the worst of any in Ireland, 

 for raising either good seed, or fine fibre- 

 Yet the average acreage under flax had for 

 the past twenty years been at a rate which^. 



