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remote profpea that ! ) or by the invention of fome fubditute for 

 oak bark, the people of Ireland may be enabled to manufafture their 

 own leather. Should that defirable change take plaee, the manufac- 

 tures of leather, flioes, faddles, bridles, harneflcs, and accoutrements 

 for foidiers may become a confiderable article of export from this 

 country. 



The manufactures in leather deferve the encouragement and protec- 

 tion of the legiflature, both, as producing articles of the firft necef- 

 fity, and as operating on a domeftic primiun, and being fuch as do not 

 require, in their commencement, a very great cajMtal. On this account, 

 the prefent tax on leather, independent of its apparent cruelty, in 

 feeming to be a tax on the comforts or ncceffities of the poor, ap- 

 pears to me to be an injudicious one, impofed in oppofition to all tlie 

 principles of political economy. Indeed, confidering the imraenfe diffi- 

 culties under which the manufactures of leather in this counry la- 

 bour, from want of bark, it would have been wifer policy, in the le- 

 giflature, to have come forward, and afforded them fome material at 

 fiftance, than to have loaded them, with a tax, at a junfture when 

 they were merely ftrugghng for exiftence, and this too, a tax, which 

 muft affeft every branch of induftry, in the country ; agriculture, arts, 

 trades, — no remiflion, — no exception ; — inafmuch as it muft be felt 

 chiefly by labouring poor, and falls on an article of fuch necefUty, 

 that it cannot be retrenched. 



The manufafture of paper feems to have been fomehow conneAed, 

 from the very beginning, with that of linen ; for though its materials 

 were not then of linen, Egypt^ formerly the mod famous country in 

 tte world for fine linens, invented the manufafture of paper ; which 

 foon became an objeft of commerce, with all parts of the world, and 

 continued to encreafe, and to flourifli there, to the time of the decline of 

 the Roman Empire. Holland and France, countries equally cele- 

 brated, in modern days, for fine linen fabricks, have alfo attained to 

 great excellence, in the manufafture of paper. There was no ob- 

 vious 



