OF THE FLAX TRADE. 



299 



Now it is manifest from this outline how little has been 

 accomplished, and how extensive is the field of labour on 

 which the friends of the manufacture movement have entered. 

 The quantity of wool grown in Ireland is very considerable. 

 The number of sheep, as given by the census of 1841, was 

 upwards of two millions ; and if the wool produced were all 

 manufactured at home, instead of being exported to France 

 and England, a vast amount of remunerative labour would 

 thus be provided, and squalid misery, such as exists in the 

 liberties of our cities, be thereby relieved. 



The wool which we export to France forms the substance 

 of the beautiful dresses called mousseline de laines, but which 

 cannot, for our want of manufacturing industry, be manu- 

 factured at home; and our countrywomen would have the 

 gratification of wearing a favourite dress under the pleasing 

 reflection that they were adorned with the products of Irish 

 looms. 



Again, as regards cotton, wool, we are unable to import it 

 direct from the Southern States and Surat, because we have 

 no manufactures to send in its place ; and we are obliged to 

 procure it by trans-shipment from England. Under these 

 disadvantageous circumstances, we never can have a cotton 

 trade until we become, to some extent, a man ufacturing country. 

 "The man," as Sir R. Kane well observes, " who shall first 

 import a bale of cotton direct to Killaloe, and have it manu- 

 factured there, to be in turn exported in Irish fabrics, will have 

 wrought a social revolution." 



The linen trade is the only department in texile manufacture 

 of which Ireland can boast ; and even this is almost entirely 

 confined to Ulster. Why should it not be extended to the 

 other provinces, bearing in its train the same prosperity and 

 independence which it has created in the north? It is a 

 trade which the eminent authority we have quoted above 

 describes as giving employment from a given surface of land 



