TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 701 



considerations ? All our present methods defective. A suggestion for a new 

 system. 



Tliere should be a standing committee, consisting of members of the two 

 Houses of Parliament, together with an extra-Parliamentary panel of persons 

 nominated by the County Councils Association, the Association of Municipal 

 Councils, and the Local Government Board. To this committee all private Bills 

 containing proposals involving municipalisation should go ; it would (a) decide all 

 questions of new powers, and all points submitted by sub-committees, in full 

 meeting ; (b) deal with the details of each separate application by sub-committees. 

 It should be required to have before it in all cases (1) a report from the authority 

 (Local Government Board or other) which controls iinance on the financial part 

 of the proposal and the financial position of the local authority applying for 

 power, and (2) a report on the g-eneral question of the proposal from any Govern- 

 ment Department concerned (Home Otlice, Board of Trade, Local Government 

 Board). 



As general instructions to the committee the following principles should be 

 laid down : The general character and quality of the local authority which makes 

 the application must be considered iu any grant. Each municipal enterprise must 

 be classed by the committee as remunerative or unremunerative, and in the former 

 case the principle of a fee rather than a price should be enforced whenever possible. 

 The accounts of each separate undertaking must be kept as fully and distinctly as 

 those of a similar enterprise conducted by an ordinary firm ; they should be subject, 

 not merely to a State audit, but to an accountant's audit, paying special regard to 

 depreciation and sinking funds. Finally, the committee should fix a reasonable 

 time within which the local authority shall make use of its powers or (unless it 

 can show reasonable cause for delay) have them revoked. 



SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13. 

 The Section did not meet. 



IdONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15. 

 The following Papers were read : — 



1. A Sketch of the Linen Industry of Ireland. 

 By Sir R. Lloyd Patterson, D.L., F.L.S. 



The capital engaged iu the business is estimated at about twelve millions ster- 

 ling, and the number of operatives directly employed at about seventy thousand, 

 earning some S,000,000^. annually in wages. 



The paper refers to the probable origin of the trade, and the source whence it; 

 may first liave come to Ireland ; and mentions instances of Irish linen being 

 alluded to in history in the ninth, tenth, and twelfth centuries. 



Passing over the intermediate period, the writer arrives at the j'ear 1699, when 

 a French Huguenot refugee named Crommelin settled in Ulster, and introduced 

 many improvements in the methods of fiax preparation and manufacture pre- 

 viously prevailing. 



The Linen Board was established in 1711. 



Flax-spinning was done by hand till 1828, and linen-weaving by hand till 

 1847, in which years the mill-spimiiug of yarn and the power-loom began to 

 supersede the former methods. The rise and progress of these new processes is' 

 described, reference being made to the simultaneous decline of the formerly im- 

 portant industry of cotton-spinning' in Belfast and neighbourhood. 



The rise of and subsequent fluctuations iu flax-growing in the country and the 



