164 DICKSON ON THE 



when they compare the cost price of a 16 linen at lid. per 

 yard by the old Irish system, and a 16 linen by my system 

 from bleached Flax at 9d. per yard, let such goods be compared 

 with cotton cloth at the same price, and any person of ordinary 

 intellect will pronounce the linen five-and-twenty per cent more 

 valuable in appearance as well as strength. 



Added to the above advantages, the material will be found 

 fine enough for any gentleman in the land, and the best 

 cloth (or set, as it is called by the trade) for shirts. As 

 the writer concludes by connecting the establishment to which 

 he belongs with his denunciations, when he says, " We would 

 not be understood as discouraging the growth of Flax within 

 such limits as may render the speculation remunerative," I 

 tell him Flax-culture is no speculation, no more than wheat, 

 and I tell him more, the Irish farmers do not require to be 

 told by him what they want, because they all know by his 

 remarks he is, to all intents and purposes, as incompetent 

 to give any advice on the subject, as he has shown himself 

 totally ignorant of the history of the trade, and as I have 

 now before me an article from the Standard in 1850, I 

 intend, with such^ proof in my hands, to let the writer 

 see, and also feel, that if it was fair to call a leading 

 journal by the name of the City Barometer, when the 

 editor tried to turn the country against the great and 

 now successful gathering of the Royal Agricultural Society of 

 England, whose rewards have made farming, through the use 

 of machinery, as much an art as the weaving of a piece of 

 velvet, that the Standard's articles now before me entitles it 

 to be called City Barometer No. 2. 



In the building of any of our great national institutions, 

 such as the Houses of Parliament, the British Museum, and 

 such like undertakings, a prudent builder takes care to have 

 the best stone, timber, and iron at hand, as an argument 

 that from such material his work may stand the test of time 



