ons,
are employed in the different branches of the cotton trade. In the year
1800 this business engaged in Belfast and its neighbourhood 27,000
persons." In 1814 there were eight cotton mills at work with steam power
driving 99,000 spindles. On the other hand, "there is very little linen
cloth woven in this town or parish. In 1807 Belfast contained 723 looms,
only four of which were for weaving linen."

The story of the sudden change from cotton to linen is an instructive
one. Cotton appears to have forced itself to the front because cotton
spinning could be carried on by machinery whilst the linen weavers were
still dependent on the spinning wheel for their yarn. It was Andrew
Mulholland, the owner of the York Street cotton mill, who first took
note of the fact that while the supply of hand-made linen yarn was quite
insufficient to justify the manufacture of linen on a large scale in
Belfast, quantities of flax were shipped from Belfast to Manchester to
be spun there and reimported as yarn. Mulholland determined to try if he
could not spin yarn as well as the Manchester people, and accordingly in
1830, "the first bundle of linen yarn produced by machinery in Belfast
was thrown off from the York Street mill." That, and not legislation nor
any system of State bounties or State favour, was the beginning of the
Belfast linen industry in which the York Street mill still maintains its
deserved pre-eminence. When the critical moment arrived, as it does in
the case of all industries, when manufacturers must adapt themselves to
new methods or succumb, the Belfast leaders of industry rose to the
occasion and secured for themselves the chief share in the linen trade.
In the rest of Ireland, it is true, the manufacture dwindled and
disappeared, but whatever may have been the cause of that disappearance,
it was certainly not the Act of Union.

THE LAND QUESTION.

The agrarian problem has caused more trouble in Ireland than any other,
and statesmen have long recognised that on its definite settlement
depends the hope of permanent peace and progress over the greater part
of the country. It is not, and never has been, the real cause of rural
depopulation, for, as we have seen, the increase of the rural population
was most rapid at the time when agrarian conditions were at their very
worst, whilst on the other hand emigration continues almost unchecked in
counties where the question has been virtually settled. And in 1881 the
late