namely, good and even yarns well assorted. Towards accomplishing these important objects, your Committee look forward to the introduction of the spinning by machinery, and the establishment of yarn greens, to be kept by persons who would buy up the yarn from the hand spinners, and bleach and assort it, and prepare it for the weavers, so that each man who came to buy from them might be able at once to provide himself with as much as he wanted of that particular kind of yarn, unmixed with any other, that was suitable to the particular quality of linen he was preparing to weave. It appears from the evidence before your Committee, that considerable improvements have been made in the last 20 years in Great Britain in the machinery for spinning yarn. Mill-spun yarn, about twenty years ago, could not be made finer than fifteen cuts to the pound; but within that time it has been raised to near fifty, and very considerable advance in the fineness of mill-spun yarn is still further expected.

In recommending the establishing of the spinning mill, your Committee do not apprehend any injury to the hand spinners. Everything that tends to improve and cheapen the manufacture, will increase the demand for it; and therefore, instead of fearing any want of employment for them, an increased consumption of their yarn is rather to be looked for; and the more so, if greens for the bleaching of yarn shall be established.

With respect to the business of weaving, your Committee are of opinion, that it is now carried on more beneficially in England and Scotland for the weaver than in Ireland, who is generally the owner of the cloth he makes, mostly performing all those previous processes in his own imperfect way, each of which would be better executed if made a separate business in itself, and carried on with better means

and more intelligence than the weaver is found to possess. It will, however, be the duty of the Linen Board, so long as the present system lasts, to assist the weaver, by procuring information for him upon every improvement adopted in Great Britain; such as models of the newest fly shuttles and most approved looms, with which he ought to be made familiar.

Your Committee do not, however, recommend the weaving business in Ireland to be assimilated to the better system of Great Britain by any interference of the Legislature, which never should concern itself, except when it is absolutely necessary, with the internal management of any manufacture. This system has already begun in the North, and it is chiefly through that intelligent portion of the country that we can hope to establish any great improvement of this kind. A very well-informed witness, who carried on the linen trade in Scotland, says, "The best sheeting that I have ever seen made in Ireland, is made by a manufacturer who employs a number of weavers, and which cloth never came to the brown market, but was sold directly to the bleachers." This is by no means a single case, as there are extensive manufacturers who buy and give out the yarn to weavers to be woven into cloth, and have become a numerous class of persons in the North; and the more they increase, the more it will be for the benefit of Ireland. The weaver, who works for another, must save all that time which he now consumes in going to and returning from market; and all those fluctuations in the price of linen, which now fall upon himself, would in that case fall upon the person who employed him. Thus the situation of the working weavers would be improved without necessitating any change in their numbers, or in their dispersed residences throughout the country

parts of Ireland, or any alteration in their local comforts in any way what

soever.

Your Committee have endeavoured thus shortly to offer their views of the present state of the linen manufacture, which is of such essential importance to Ireland, together with their suggestions for its improvement; and beg leave to state, that the continuation of a superintending autho

rity to regulate its concerns, so long as they shall be affected by legal provisions, is, in the opinion of your Committee, necessary, as well as to make judicious appropriation of the annual grant of Parliament, still usefully voted for the encouragement and advancement of the state of the manufacture of Ireland.

22d June, 1825.

Ulster ་་་་ 1,998,494 123,093 31,649 32,945 2,481 55,056 953 510,234 566,44341,979 1,118,656 862,433 17,405|11—1 1—131-211 16 Leinster 1,757,492 149,68727,035 Munster1,935,612 179,714 16,057 Connaught 1,110,229 69,484 8,438

154 208

328 719 118,953 2,652 322,252 4,284 8,202 519 162,654 330 176,405 1,732 5,658 75 60,505 186 *126,824 4,699 1,190

334,738 1,395,231 27,523 1-431-941-143|1-113| 183,795 1,748,306 3,511 1-911— 83|1—10}|1—103 132,713 974,239 3,277|•1—73|1—12}|1—234|1—16