ng by weavers from the
north, and carrying on the manufactory. He found about twenty looms
working upon their own account, and made a considerable progress in this
for five years, raising several buildings, cottages for the weavers, and
was going on as well as the variety of his business would admit,
employing sixty looms. He then died, when a stand was made to all the
works for a year, in which everything went much to ruin. Lady Shelburne
then employed a new manager to carry on the manufacture upon his own
account, giving him very profitable grants of lands to encourage him to
do it with spirit. He continued for five years, employing sixty looms
also, but his circumstances failing, a fresh stop was put to the work.

"Then it was that Mr. Fitzmaurice, in the year 1774, determined to exert
himself in pushing on a manufactory which promised to be of such
essential service to the whole country. To do this with effect, he saw
that it was necessary to take it entirely into his own hands. He could
lend money to the manager to enable him to go on, but that would be at
best hazardous, and could never do it in the complete manner in which he
wished to establish it. In this period of consideration, Mr. Fitzmaurice
was advised by his friends never to engage in so complex a business as a
manufacture, in which he must of necessity become a merchant, also engage
in all the hazard, irksomeness, etc., of commerce, so totally different
from his birth, education, ideas, and pursuits; but tired with the
inactivity of common life, he determined not only to turn manufacturer,
but to carry on the business in the most spirited and vigorous manner
that was possible. In the first place he took every means of making
himself a complete master of the business; he went through various
manufactures, inquired into the minutiae, and took every measure to know
it to the bottom. This he did so repeatedly and with such attention in
the whole progress, from spinning to bleaching and selling, that he
became as thorough a master of it as an experienced manager; he has wove
linen, and done every part of the business with his own hands. As he
determined to have the works complete, he took Mr. Stansfield the
engineer, so well known for his improved saw-mills, into his pay. He
sent him over to Ballymoat in the winter of 1774, in order to erect the
machinery of a bleach mill upon the very best construction; he went to
all the great mills in the north o