spread in Ireland the move to America,
which at the first seemed hopeless exile, presented itself as a highly
desirable step towards social betterment. Emigration is now the result
of attraction from America rather than of repulsion from Ireland, a fact
which explains the failure of more than one well-meant attempt to check
the movement by action on this side of the Atlantic.

ULSTER'S DEVELOPMENT.

A word should perhaps be given to the position of the industrial portion
of Ulster, which has flourished so remarkably since the Union. This of
itself affords sufficient proof that that Act, whatever its defects,
cannot be held accountable for any lack of prosperity that may still
exist in other parts of Ireland. It is sometimes stated that Ulster was
favoured at the time when the commercial jealousy of certain English
cities succeeded in securing a prohibition of the Irish woollen
industry. The southern wool, it is alleged, was checked, and the Belfast
linen was favoured--hence the prosperity of the northern capital. This
is a really curious perversion of quite modern history. The linen
industry was at the time in question in no sense confined to the North
and was by no means prominent in Belfast. It was distributed over many
districts of Ireland, for whilst Louis Crommelin was sent to Lisburn to
look after the French colony settled there, and to improve and promote
the industry, his brother William was sent on a similar errand to
Kilkenny, and stations were also started at Rathkeale, Cork and
Waterford. When, later on, the Irish Parliament distributed bounties
through the Linen Board, the seat of that Board was in Dublin, and its
operations included every county in Ireland.

At the time of the Union, indeed, the linen manufacture was almost
unknown in Belfast, the "manufacturers" or handloom weavers in the
North, as elsewhere, living mostly in the smaller country towns and
bringing their webs in for sale on certain market days. From Benn's
"History of the Town of Belfast," published early in the century, we
learn that at that time the principal manufacture of the town was
"cotton in its various branches." This industry had been introduced in
1777, we are told, to give employment in the poorhouse, but it caught on
and spread amazingly. "In many of the streets and populous roads in the
suburbs of the town, particularly at Ballymacarrett, the sound of the
loom issues almost from every house, and all, with very few excepti