Aggregate Number

377 13,035 2,416 446

LINEN TRADE.

Third Report from the Select Committee on the Linen Trade of Ireland.

AMONG the many parliamentary inquiries which have lately been made into the internal condition of Ireland, your Committee feel that the subject referred to them for investigation is amongst the most important; inasmuch as the linen manufacture (tracing it through all its various stages, from the culture of the flax to the weaving of the linen) affords employment and support to a far greater portion of the people of that country, than any other branch of public industry,

VOL. XVI. PART III.

and is intimately connected with the peace and prosperity of Ireland.

Your Committee accordingly entered on the subject submitted to their consideration, with an anxiety proportionate to its importance, and called before them several witnesses well informed in the business of the linen trade, as it is carried on in Ireland, and some persons also who are extensively engaged in it in England and Scotland. Your Committee have thereby been enabled to compare the different habits of pursuing the same manufacture in different parts of the same empire.

The evidence of these witnesses is annexed to this Report, together with an Appendix, containing a document

C

illustrative of the origin of the manufacture in Ireland, and its continued claim to parliamentary support; also returns, showing the present extent of the trade, the expense of the establishment under the direction of the Linen Board, and the appropriation of their funds. Your Committee have likewise subjoined several Resolutions, containing their opinions upon some of the principal divisions of their inquiry, which have been already reported to the House; but in presenting them again as a part of their final Report, they deem it necessary to accompany them with a few observations.

In considering the laws relating to the linen trade of Ireland, your Committee found that many of them, which were deemed wise and necessary at the time of their enactment, have become inapplicable to the present usages of the trade, and if now enforced would produce great inconvenience, and ought therefore to be repealed; and as others of them required much revision and amendment, your Committee have therefore thought it expedient to propose the consolidation, into one Act, of all such provisions as are found to be necessary for the future regulation of the trade.

A bill for this purpose has been accordingly prepared, which does not, however, notice the duty on the importation of foreign dressed flax ; a reduction of which duty, already recommended by your Committee in their first Report, has been adopted and provided for in the Customs bill.

The inspection of foreign flax-seed by a public officer on importation, for the purpose of ascertaining its soundness and fitness for sowing, had hitherto been carefully provided for by law. The necessity of such inspection has, however, been lately questioned; and, pursuant to a recommendation of your Committee, the bill provides for the repeal of such inspection from and af

ter the first of July 1826; by which time the policy of continuing that inspection, in respect to which there exists so much diversity of opinion, may be further considered and investigated.

It has appeared to your Committee, that the preparation and management of Irish-grown flax are extremely defective, and very injuriously so to the cultivators and manufacturers, and ought to be brought to public market in a state perfectly free from any fraudulent mode of making it up that could impose upon a purchaser; and it has been made clear to your Committee, from the evidence of intelligent persons, that Irish-grown flax, if properly managed and judiciously made up for sale in a clean and uniform state, would eventually supply the British manufacturer of linen, and thus become a branch of very profitable export.

With respect to foreign and British yarns, your Committee recommend that they should be henceforth exempted from all examination by a public officer; but that the existing regulations, in regard to the sale of Irish yarns and brown linens, should be continued under certain modifications and diminutions of penalties; but with this provision, affecting each of these three different branches of the trade, that none of these regulations shall affect any Irish flax, or Irish yarn, or Irish brown linen, except such as shall be exposed to sale in public and open market; leaving, at the same time, all persons free to sell at other times and places, when and where they may think most convenient.

But while, from an unwillingness to force any hasty changes upon the settled habits of a people long engaged in an established manufacture, your Committee thus recommend to the Legislature the policy of continuing to give a legal sanction to some parts

of the system of regulation by which it has been governed, they still hold it to be their duty to this House, as well as to those who are engaged in the linen trade of Ireland, to state unreservedly their own opinions upon this most important subject.

The system of conducting the linen manufacture in England and Scotland, as described to your Committee by the witnesses from those countries, appears to be in many instances preferable to that which is pursued in Ireland. The different branches of the trade in Great Britain are divided among different persons, each of those branches becoming a separate business in itself; and this division of labour necessarily leads to a better economy of time, and the production of more and even better fabrics, all which advantages might be gradually introduced into Ireland; and it is only by gradual measures these improvements can be obtained.

Your Committee abstain from offering any opinion on the policy of collecting the peasantry into towns or villages, or disturbing their present habits of mixing agricultural with manufacturing occupation.

With a view to the introduction of this improved division of business, your Committee would chiefly direct the attention of the Linen Board to forward, by every means in their power, all possible improvement in the cultivation and the dressing of the flax. The efforts which the Board have already made towards encouraging the erection of flax-mills, should therefore be followed up with increased anxiety, so as to have the flax brought to market in the cleanest condition and at the cheapest rate.

Your Committee are disposed to dwell upon this subject, as it is of considerable importance, not merely to the interests of Ireland, but to those of the empire at large; for so long as

we are obliged to import from foreign countries this elementary part of the linen manufacture, so long must those countries who engage in that manufacture themselves possess an advantage over our own; and there is every reason to believe that Ireland, by an extended cultivation and improved treatment of her flax, might, without at all encroaching upon the quantity necessary for her home consumption, supply the demands of the British market.

Next in importance to the dressing of the flax, is the spinning and sale of the yarn, which, from the evidence before your Committee, are carried on in Ireland in a way very capable of improvement. It has been stated to your Committee, that the Irish spinner too often endeavours to get the greatest possible length of thread out of a given quantity of flax, without any regard to what may be the quality of that thread when produced. Thus, four to five hanks of yarn are often spun out of that quantity of flax, which, to make good cloth, ought not to have been spun into more than two. A poor raw thread, incapable of producing a good stout fabric, is thereby sent among the weavers, to the great injury of the manufacture. But the evils of this branch of the trade do not end here. Almost the whole of the spinning is carried on by poor people, who naturally look with anxiety to the time the market-day comes round, for which they seek to provide themselves with as much yarn as they are able, gathering it up from every member of their own families, sometimes from those of their neighbours, and always more anxious about the bulk of their bunches, than desirous of sorting them according to the different grists of the different yarns that compose them. Thus the two things essentially necessary to enable a weaver to make good linen are too often denied to him;