sion of it might, perhaps, produce similar effects in some parts of Ireland. "In the Orkneys, formerly, the inhabitants were poor, indolent, dejected creatures, in want often of the necessaries, and almost always of the comforts, of life. At present, the case is otherwise; for they are now much better fed, cleaner in their persons, and far better clothed; their houses are neater, warmer, and more commodious: and in proportion as they find themselves more comfortable, they are rising to know their own worth, to shake off that servility that never fails to debase the character, and to discover more independence of spirit. Neither is this spirit confined to those who are immediately connected with this business; for it is pleasant to observe that it has diffused itself in some degree among the whole body of the people, who know their rights much better than they were accustomed to do, and consider themselves of more importance.'

In the north of Ireland, at Lisburn, Belfast, and Moyallan, there are vitriol manufactories, the proprietors of which make muriatic acid and Glauber's salts.

Glass manufactories are established at Dublin, Waterford, and Belfast; but the use of English glass is very prevalent in Ireland, and the reason assigned for it is the want of fuel. This, however, can certainly be no excuse for the Irish neglecting so useful a branch of industry; since in London there are many large glasshouses which bring abundant profit, though coals are dearer there than in most parts of Ireland.

Lord Sheffield says, that the heavy duty laid upon glass in Great Britain, gave Ireland a great advantage in this manufacture, of which it before possessed very little, and which on that account made an extraordinary progress. He states that nine glass-houses had suddenly arisen in that country, in consequence of this circumstance. He adds, that the table glass made in Ireland is not only very handsome, but apparently as good as the best English, and that the drinking glasses are three or four shillings per dozen cheaper than those made in England. Before 1780, no glass was exported from Ireland.+

Sugar is refined, and houses are established for that purpose both at Belfast and at Dublin.

Ireland possesses clay of various kinds fit for the use of the potter, but it is deficient in fuel; and this, perhaps, will account for the little progress which the Irish have made in this branch of manufacture: coarse earthenware and tiles are made in some places, but on so confined a scale as scarcely to be worth notice.

Stone quarries are so common in this country that bricks are very little used, though they are not subject here to an excise duty, as in England. The Irish bricks, however, are inferior to the English, as has been already remarked in speaking of clay, under the head Minerals; and, besides other defects, they are so badly burnt in

Barry's Hist. of the Orkney Islands, p. 385.

+ Observations on the Manufactures of Ireland, p. 237, 238..

the clamp, that one half of them are scarcely good for any thing. The expense of labour in making them is 12s. per 1,000, which, added to that of culm, raises the whole to 25s.*

Salt is a substance so necessary in the preparation of many important articles of commerce, and so much used for domestic purposes among civilized nations, that it forms an object of no little moment in the political economy of the different countries of Europe. This is particularly the case in Russia, where the utmost attention is paid by government to their salt-works, which are managed according to regulations drawn up for that purpose, under Catherine II. and consisting of no less than 104 articles. Russia obtains its salt from mines; from saline lakes, where it crystallizes of itself; and from salt springs, by the usual process of boiling: but, notwithstanding all these sources of supply, the consumption is so great, that large quantities are imported from abroad, and chiefly in the harbours of Livonia and Finland. According to Guldenstädt, the amount of this importation, in 1768, was equal in value to 49,000 rubles. It is preserved in magazines scattered throughout the provinces, and sold to the people according as their wants may require.+

* APRIL 2d, 1800. LYTTLETON GLEBE.-The ashes of the sulphureous coal called stone, when mixed with clay, make the hardest bricks I ever saw.

JUNE 26th.-Colonel Rochford's bricks, like the greater part of those in Ireland, are made of clay mixed with 'sand instead of ashes, and sell for a guinea and a half per thousand. He pays ten shillings and sixpence per thousand for making them, and burns with culm. The size of the bricks is nine, four, and three inches.

+ Salt is an article so necessary to the comfort and convenience of life, that Providence has scattered it with a liberal hand throughout every part of the world; for besides that held in solution by the ocean, saline springs, and briny lakes, it is found in a fossil state in almost every country with which we are acquainted. To some ancient nations, it seems to have been an article of very great importance; for we are told by Strabo, that the possession of salt-springs, from the water of which salt was formed by deposition, in the course of a few days, gave rise to a war between the Auloriatæ and the Ardiæi, two tribes who inhabited a part of Illyria.* The same author speaks of a briny lake in Phrygia, called Tatta, into which, if a piece of rope was immersed, it became covered with an incrustation of salt; a similar effect was produced on the wings of birds if they happened to touch its surface, which in a little time grew so stiff that the animals were unable to fly.+ la a lake called Spauta, near the Caspian Sea, salt crystallized of itself, and was collected by the inhabitants. ‡ The accounts which we read in all African travels are a proof of the great quantity of salt used by the negroes; and Barrow relates, that he saw at Tien Sing in China, salt tied up in sacks of matting, sufficient, ac cording to estimation for the consumption of thirty millions of people.||

Strabo speaks of fossil salt in the island of Rhodes, ¶ and also near the river Halys.** He mentions a

mountain

* Strab. Geogr. edit. Ameloveen, Amst. 1707,

tom. i. p. 489.

+ Ibid. tom. ii. p. 852.

Ibid. p. 794.

Horneman's Travels p. 15. Park's Travels, p

27, 21. 141, 160, 258.

Travels in China, 4th edit. 1804, p. 78. ¶ Tom. i. edit. Almeloveen, Amst. 1707. p. 542. ** Ibid. tom. ii. p. 840.

In Ireland there are few salt manufactories. Those of Waterford only purify the Cheshire rock salt, and bring it into a state fit for use. From the manner in which

mountain of salt in Caramania,* and a people of Arabia living in a town called Gerrha, whose houses were built of salt.

Salt was dug from a mountain in the country of the Sapithi in India.‡

The beds of fossil rock salt in Cheshire were first discovered in 1670, about a mile north of Northwich, and this discovery led to further researches, which proved successful; but it is only from the pits in the neighbourhood of Northwich, that salt is procured at present. There are ten or twelve pits, the shafts of which are usually square, and constructed of timber; but about a mile from Northwich, there is one circular and of brick. The salt is obtained by blasting, and the use of those mechanical instruments commonly employed in mining. No support is required for the roof of the cavities, the salt being sufficiently solid to remain suspended, without any danger of falling in. The cavities thus formed present a striking appearance, and when illuminated by candles fixed in the rock, the effect is highly brilliant. In some of the pits, the roof is supported by pillars, eight or ten yards square, which, in general, are regularly disposed; others are worked out in aisles; the choice here, however, seems to be wholly arbitrary. Salt is made also in Cheshire, and near Durham, by evaporating the water of briny springs. The pans used are of wrought iron, and contain, in general, from 600 to 800 square feet.p

The salt-mines of Wielitska, in Poland, eight miles from Cracow, have been long celebrated. The known depth of the mine, which has several apertures, is 1,115 feet, its length 6,691, and depth 743. The salt being almost as hard as stone, is hewn out with pick-axes and hatchets, by a tedious operation, into large blocks, many of which weigh six or seven hundred pounds. Before the partition of Poland, they brought to the king an annual revenue of about £97,000. sterling. Among the most remarkable curiosities of this place, may be mentioned several small chapels excavated in the salt, in which mass is performed on certain days of the year. One of these chapels is above 30 feet long, and 25 broad: the altar, the crucifix, the ornaments of the church, and the statues of several saints, are all carved out of the salt. There are salt-mines also in Upper Hungary, an account of which may be seen in the Phil. Trans. vol. xxxvi. p. 260-264. Russia abounds with salt-mines, but those only on the Ilek, sixty wersts from Orenburg are worked. It has likewise saline lakes without number, where the salt crystallizes naturally of itself. That of Yelton, in the, government of Saratof, produces annually on an average, five and a half millions of poods, of about 40 pounds each. Barrow describes some salt-lakes in the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, one of which, situated on a plain at a considerable height above the level of the sea, was covered with one continued crust of salt, like a sheet of ice. He speaks of others which deposit their salt only in very dry summers, and he mentions one, the salt of which is tinged of ruby colour with iron.** To enumerate all the salt-mines and saline lakes from which salt is obtained, would be undertaking a tedious and useless task; but I cannot help here adverting to the superiority of the English to the Polish mines, in a commercial point of view; for it is a fact, that many thousand tons of rock salt are annually sent from Cheshire to those parts of the Prussian coast, which are most adjacent to Poland, independently of the large supplies of the English manufactured white salt, which are exported to the same country.++

* Tom. I. edit. Almevoleen Amst. 1707, p. 1157.

+ Ibid, p. 1110.

+ Ibid, p. 1025.

For a minute account of this manufacture and the salt mines, see Holland's View of the Agriculture of Cheshire, page 19-71.

Coxe's Travels, fourth edit, vol. i. p. 196-201.

Hist. Stat. Gemälde des Russischen Reichs von H. Storch, vol. ii. p. 541, 542.

** Travels in Southern Africa, vol. i. p. 122.

+ See a Comparative View of the Cheshire and Continental Salt Mines in the Transact. of the Geolog. Society, vol. i. p. 55.

it is mentioned by Dr. Smith, in his Survey of that county, one might be induced to expect to find it in its fossil state. He mentions also salt works at Dungarvon, but I did not visit that town; and, therefore, I cannot say how far this information is correct, and whether there be any there at present. There are salt works, however, at Sligo.

When I was in Ireland in the summer of 1808, the French were in possession of Portugal, and great alarm was spread among the provision merchants, about St. Ubes' salt, which they consider as superior in curing beef and pork to every other. In the preparation of bacon and hams, the Cheshire salt is found to answer exceedingly well; but as it readily dissolves, when strewed over meat in barrels, it soon sinks to the bottom, leaving the upper strata bare, which in a little time spoils. The St. Ubes' sale being longer in dissolving, is preferable; and as the provision merchants reckon the Cape de Verd next in quality, they had it in contemplation to employ it, had they been debarred by the events of the war from the use of the former.*

The Journal des Mines gives a process for obtaining salt from sea-sand, and the Edinburgh Reviewers remark, that a similar manufactory is carried on in Dumfriesshire. As the consumption of this article is so general and extensive, and as it is an object of very great importance to the poor, every hint which may lead towards the means of preparing it at a cheap rate, undoubtedly, deserves attention.

Taking a general view of the manufactures of Ireland, it may be estimated that, except in the eastern part of the province of Ulster, the domestic manufacture of woollen goods is every where prevalent, without that due division of labour which can render it of any benefit to the country.

The linen manufacture flourishes most in Ulster, but it is established also in Gal way, Mayo, and Sligo, and towards the south in the whole neighbourhood of Drog. heda; it is found also in the King's County, Kerry, and along the coast of Cork; in a word, it may be said, in some measure, to extend to every part of Ireland, except Wexford and Wicklow, where it is almost unknown. In every other district there is the same domestic manufacture of linen as of woollen, for most families raise flax, and prepare from it all those articles which are necessary for their own comfort

and use.

* It appears, however, that the Irish have no occasion to be under any uneasiness respecting supplies of foreign salt, as some equally good may be procured at home. "This experience," says Mr. Holland, "we have on an extensive scale at the navy-office at Deptford, where the large grained salt manufactured in Britain, from natural brine springs, has, for several years, been the only salt used for packing provisions; after they have been first salted with common salt, or that prepared by a heat of 180 degrees. Though these provisions have been afterwards carried to the hottest climates, the strength and purity of the salt used have never been called in question. The provisions have kept perfectly well; and it has never been doubted that the salt here used was, in every respect, equal to the St. Ubes' salt, or to any other salt prepared from seawater, by the natural heat of the sun." Holland's View of the Agriculture of Cheshire, p. 70.

The cotton manufacture seems to be established chiefly at Belfast; but it has spread to Dublin, Kildare, and even to Wicklow and Wexford manufactories; having been formed at Stratford and Enniscorthy; I know of none, however, to the west, or farther south, than these places.

Broad cloth and blanket manufactories are established no where north of Dublin, flannels are made in Wicklow, blankets in Kilkenny, and broad cloths at Middleton and Cork.

In the neighbourhood of Cork, and along the coast of that county, stuffs are manufactured, and the spinning of wool into yarn is much followed by the women in the north-west parts of the island. In the same districts, illicit distillation gives employment to a great number of people, the legal distilleries being chiefly in the south..

The salting of provisions is confined almost to a line south of Dublin. Mills, for the grinding of wheat, have not yet been erected in Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon, or Galway; but mills for grinding oats

are common.

Mr. Wallace, who wrote in the year 1798, has stated some facts, which, if correct, seem to account for certain manufactures not having flourished in Ireland. He complains, in particular, that the progress of Irish manufactures has been retarded by the Irish workmen claiming higher wages than are given to people of the same description in England. Yet the English workmen earn more at the week's end than the Irish. He states also, that the price of hosiers' work is much higher in Ireland than in England, and that the labour of persons in the cotton manufactures is fifteen per cent. dearer in the former than in the latter; he adds, that the rate of wages in the glass manufactories is considerably higher in Ireland, all which circumstances, if true, must be ascribed to want of skill and industry.

From a general consideration of the manufactures of Ireland, it is evident, that fuel, cotton, fine wool, bark, iron, and salt, after they have undergone a certain degree of preparation, must necessarily be imported, in order to carry them on, and that few or none of these raw materials are ever likely to be supplied by the country. To those who imagine that fuel may be supplied by the growth of timber, I beg leave to observe, that when population has made such progress in a country as it has in Ireland, it is very unlikely that trees will ever be substituted in the place of corn. This, would be a complete inversion of that order of things, which we know to have taken place in every country of the world, and of which sufficient proof is afforded by Russia and other northern states. Without fuel the Irish cannot obtain iron from their own ores; and even if they import it, the want of that necessary article would exclude them from many important branches of industry, which might otherwise be established among them. The case, however, is widely different in regard to cotton and fine wool; these may be imported with great advantage. Salt, also, which, be