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with frost, or enveloped in snow. Kind nature had, therefore, 

 done everything to render Ireland a country suited for the 

 abode of a numerous and prosperous agricultural population ; 

 and it ought to be the object of the owners of property to 

 develop its great natural advantages, by introducing the 

 cultivation of flax and the Swedish turnip, and other labour- 

 giving plants, in the place of the potato. 



" The members of this society were no doubt aware that 

 the cultivation of the flax plant has been carried to great 

 perfection in the north of Ireland, where a society existed 

 for the encouragement of its culture. This society had been 

 labouring for some years to extend the cultivation of flax, 

 not only in Ulster, but in the three other provinces of Ireland, 

 and it was deserving of the warm support, not only of the 

 friends of Ireland, but of the Government, in the present 

 great emergency. The Government had already very wisely 

 and benevolently interfered to supply the small farmers with 

 seed rye, in the hope of inducing them to cultivate that 

 useful and early grain ; and it could scarcely render the Irish 

 people a greater service than by assisting the Flax Growing 

 Society to extend its labours throughout Leinster, Munster, 

 and Connaught. Ireland, as he already said, possesses a soil 

 and climate better suited for the growth of flax than any 

 other country in Europe, and it also possessed, not only an 

 abundance, but a great superabundance of cheap labour. 

 The cheapness of unskilled labour in Russia was the chief 

 reason of the extent to which the cultivation of flax has 

 been carried in the Russian Empire, for Russia possessed no 

 other advantage than that of cheap labour, over other coun- 

 tries, in the production of the article. Why then should not 

 Ireland, whose grand malady was a want of profitable em- 

 ployment for its people, not only raise all the flax necessary 

 for its own use, and the use of England and Scotland, but even 

 become an exporting country ? The effect of its becoming 



