260 



DICKSON ON 



Ulster : but it is to be regretted that the Linen Board, when 

 the large sum of £20,000 per annum was at its disposal, did 

 not direct their attention to the proper method for cultivating 

 the Flax-plant; as the management of the crop at that time 

 in the most favoured districts, when compared with con- 

 tinental Flax, was seen to be of a very inferior quality and 

 wretchedly defective. Indeed the profits were so considerable 

 to those who grew and manufactured Flax into linen that 

 without considering whether it could not be further increased, 

 the farming and manufacturing population in the north of 

 Ireland, when their productions became subject to competi- 

 tion with the linen produce of Belgium and Brelefeld, found 

 that they could not maintain their position, and as a 

 consequence, from the peace in 1815, the growth of Flax and 

 amount of the linen-trade continued to decrease in Ireland ; * 

 and it is a well-known fact that it has been entirely owing 

 in the first place, to the liberal credit of the English Flax- 

 spinners, Messrs. Hives and Atkinson, Messrs. Benyon and 

 Co., and other spinners in Leeds ; with Messrs. Benshaw 

 and Co., and Messrs. J. Kaye and Sons, of Manchester, that 

 an improvement took place in the linen-trade in Ireland. 

 Mr. Thomas Kaye told me he had considerable up-hill work 

 to persuade some Irish weavers to make a trial in the weaving 

 of his first sample of Flax-yarns spun by machinery, solely 

 from the prejudice then against machinery, expecting that it 

 would, as it has done, put an end to hand-spinning. 



English spinners of Flax-yarns were obliged to offer the 

 Irish linen manufacturers, then a very limited body, six 



* The cotton rags of Manchester got then introduced; the raw material 

 c otton was then Is. 6d. per lb. 3 and year after year spinning extended until 

 the price became so low for cotton cloth that Irish linen was cut out of the 

 English market. As Flax-spinning by hand made linen cloth so high in price 

 compared with cotton, the linen trade suffered great reverses for thirteen years. 

 [More on this subject in another place."] 



