370 DICKSON ON 



"Such are (as near as I can recollect) the words expressed by 

 one of England's most successful American merchants, who will, 

 when called off to a better world, leave to the rising generation 

 in Liverpool a monument, second only to that of Sir 

 Christopher Wren, but more praiseworthy, because it was a 

 free gift to his fellow townsmen, where he realised his great 

 fortune, and now lives to a good old age to enjoy the pleasure 

 of having evidence of the good he has bestowed on those ^ho 

 remain behind. 



" Now as rheea runs from 3J to 5 feet in length, being in 

 fact double the length of ordinary Flax ; it must be evident to 

 any spinner of Flax or cotton, that if it can be so worked short, 

 by machinery, as to spin on cotton spinning frames, that Flax 

 which is of a more soft and oil} 7 nature, cannot be less adapted 

 than rheea fibre material that is of a dry and brittle nature, 

 but for the oily solution I use in preparing it ; with such facts 

 as these, as proof, that the Flax-growers of Ulster have a new 

 field before them, in addition to the Belfast factory-owner's 

 attendance, each Tuesday to clean out your markets ; I hope 

 they will not sit down with folded arms and allow their Flax- 

 trade (as my old schoolfellows did from the peace in 1815 to 

 1830, look on with indifference until Belfast took away their 

 linen-trade) to be stolen away to supply the trade of 

 Lancashire, either by English farmers, or their own Southern 

 neighbours ; for although it is an old saying that " opposition 

 is the life of trade," I cannot see that the Ulster farmers have 

 got any rise in their price of Flax during the great and 

 prosperous year of 1863 ; for looking as I do at your market- 

 note, 5s. 9d. to 8s. 9d. per stone, as being below what 1 paid 

 in Armagh some 20 years ago, when my purchases were 

 generally up to -1,000 on each market day, I do think a 

 little opposition to the Belfast gentlemen towards a supply 

 of cottonized Flax for Lancashire, will do no harm to either 

 producer or spinner of the raw material. 



