42 



DICKSON ON 



of the .Royal Flax Improvement Society could be found, 

 amongst the Teutonics of the North, capable of preparing a 

 crop of Flax for market." 



How absurd such bombastic braggadocia as this must 

 appear to the Committee of the Royal Flax Society, Belfast ; 

 as that society has been the means of supplying the entire 

 kingdom with instructions, for years before Mr. Warrens was 

 heard of more than others of his equals, the tenant (middle 

 class) farmers in Norfolk, and many years before Mr. Warrens 

 thought of writing his pamphlets from their reports, and the 

 letters and information he ingeniously obtained from me, for 

 that purpose} at the very time he acknowledges that he got 

 his earliest information from Captain Skinner, the former 

 secretary of the Flax Society. The onus probandi he gives 

 for the difficulties he overcame, are in keeping with his asser- 

 tion that " it was doubtful if the Belfast Flax Society taught 

 a youth so that he was capable of preparing a crop of Flax 

 for market." As to " what the secretary of the Flax Society 

 with ample funds failed to accomplish," but which he had 

 achieved without help, and at his own expense, I am at a loss 

 to know; but judging, ipso facto, that when he called on me 

 in February, 1845, and acknowledged before Sir Edward 

 Baker and other gentlemen in my office, at 29, Broad Street 

 Buildings, London, "that he got a great deal of information 

 from me on the subject," — and that he was then offering Flax, 

 some of which he said he had sold to net -makers at 5s., and 

 some 6s. per stone, which I knew was well worth from 8s. to 

 9s. per stone. I should say that his apprenticeship is scarcely 

 finished yet, and therefore, to assume being more capable of 

 instructing parties in managing Flax than the Belfast Flax 

 Society, and to publish such in a newspaper is, in my opinion, 

 more like the act of a man non compos mentis, than a man of 

 sound mind ; however, as it is an old saying that, virtiis nemo 

 sine nascitur, I leave Mr.^Warrens to enjoy the profit and oiium 



