It is a singular circumstance that, in the
metropolis of the country, possessing local advantages in respect
to manufactures and facilities for trade with the interior,
superior, probably, to any other city or town in this portion of
the empire, with a population excessive as to the means of
employment, in a degree which probably has not a parallel in
Europe, _there is not a factory for the production of either silk,
linen, cotton, or woollen manufactures which is worked or propelled
by a steam engine_."
The writers go on to ask for the repeal of the local duty on coal in
Dublin, and to suggest that the necessary revenue should be raised by a
duty on spirits. This course Belfast had been permitted to follow--one
of the numberless make-weights thrown into the scale so steadily on the
side of the Protestant North. In my part of the country the people used
to say of any very expert thief: "Why, he'd steal the fire out of your
grate." Under the Union arrangements Great Britain stole the fire out of
the grate of Ireland.
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