368 RURAL ECONOMY OP ENGLAND. 



artificial capitals always have namely, the enrichment 

 of the immediate neighbourhood at the expense of the 

 community at large. 



As to Belfast, the linen trade, the only manufacture 

 worthy of the name which existed in Ireland, and which 

 is an agricultural as well as a manufacturing business, 

 flourished there without opposition on the part of the 

 English. The annual export of linens from Belfast was 

 valued at 4,000,000, and of this 1,200,000 was the 

 proportion paid for wages. Nothing of the kind is to be 

 found in other parts of the country. The most fertile 

 districts, such as Tipperary, were just those where con- 

 fiscations and devastations had been most rigorously put 

 in force, without succeeding, however, in driving out the 

 native race. The Protestants there are still called Crom- 

 wellians, or followers of Cromwell, as if it were only 

 yesterday that the frightful incursion of that bloody 

 tyrant had taken place. 



Everybody has heard of the bands of armed ruffians 

 which have always existed in Ireland. They have been 

 named, from time to time, according to the sign they 

 adopted, Whiteboys, Steelboys, Defenders, Levellers, 

 Thrashers (their weapon being a flail), Carders (as 

 armed with carding-machines), Rockites (from the pre- 

 tended Captain Eock), and Molly Maguires (from the 

 name of a fanciful woman-chief, like the Eebecca of 

 Wales), &c. These bands signalised themselves wherever 

 they went by horrible atrocities, the only possible re- 

 venge for poor Ireland ! Close to the most peaceable 

 country in the world, where a soldier is never seen, and 

 where, without a national guard, without an army or 

 public force of any kind, each individual, under the sole 

 protection of the law, enjoys perfect security, to the 

 lasting credit of the nation, was to be found a country 



