INDUSTRY IN IRELAND: THROUGH CONNAUGHT AND ULSTER, TO BELFAST.
"The Irish people have a past to boast of, and a future to create."--J. F. O'Carrol.
"One of the great questions is how to find an outlet for Irish manufactures. We ought to be an exporting nation, or we never will be able to compete successfully with our trade rivals."--E.
D. Gray.
"Ireland may become a Nation again, if we all sacrifice our parricidal passions, prejudices, and resentments on the altar of our country. Then shall your manufactures flourish, and Ireland be free."--Daniel O'Connell.
Further communications passed between my young friend, the Italian count, and his father; and the result was that he accompanied me to Ireland, on the express understanding that he was to send home a letter daily by post assuring his friends of his safety. We went together accordingly to Galway, up Lough Corrib to Cong and Lough Mask; by the romantic lakes and mountains of Connemara to Clifden and Letterfrack, and through the lovely pass of Kylemoor to Leenane; along the fiord of Killury; then on, by Westport and Ballina to Sligo. Letters were posted daily by my young friend; and every day we went forwards in safety.
But how lonely was the country! We did not meet a single American tourist during the whole course of our visit, and the Americans are the most travelling people in the world. Although the railway companies have given every facility for visiting Connemara and the scenery of the West of Ireland, we only met one single English tourist, accompanied by his daughter. The Bianconi long car between Clifden and Westport had been taken off for want of support. The only persons who seemed to have no fear of Irish agrarianism were the English anglers, who are ready to brave all dangers, imaginary or supposed, provided they can only kill a big salmon! And all the rivers flowing westward into the Atlantic are full of fine fish. While at Galway, we looked down into the river Corrib from the Upper Bridge, and beheld it literally black with the backs of salmon! They were waiting for a flood to enable them to ascend the ladder into Lough Corrib.
While there, 1900 salmon were taken in one day by nets in the bay.
Galway is a declining town. It has docks, but no shipping;bonded warehouses, but no commerce. It has a community of fishermen at Claddagh, but the fisheries of the bay are neglected. As one of the poor men of the place exclaimed, "Poverty is the curse of Ireland." On looking at Galway from the Claddagh side, it seems as if to have suffered from a bombardment. Where a roof has fallen in, nothing has been done to repair it. It was of no use. The ruin has been left to go on. The mills, which used to grind home-grown corn, are now unemployed. The corn comes ready ground from America. Nothing is thought of but emigration, and the best people are going, leaving the old, the weak, and the inefficient at home. "The labourer," said the late President Garfield, "has but one commodity to sell--his day's work, it is his sole reliance. He must sell it to-day, or it is lost for-ever." And as the poor Irishman cannot sell his day's labour, he must needs emigrate to some other country, where his only commodity may be in demand.
While at Galway, I read with interest an eloquent speech delivered by Mr. Parnell at the banquet held in the Great Hall of the Exhibition at Cork. Mr. Parnell asked, with much reason, why manufactures should not be established and encouraged in the South of Ireland, as in other parts of the country. Why should not capital be invested, and factories and workshops developed, through the length and breadth of the kingdom? "I confess," he said, "I should like to give Ireland a fair opportunity of working her home manufactures. We can each one of us do much to revive the ancient name of our nation in those industrial pursuits which have done so much to increase and render glorious those greater nations by the side of which we live. I trust that before many years are over we shall have the honour and pleasure of meeting in even a more splendid palace than this, and of seeing in the interval that the quick-witted genius of the Irish race has profited by the lessons which this beautiful Exhibition must undoubtedly teach, and that much will have been done to make our nation happy, prosperous, and free."Mr. Parnell, in the course of his speech, referred to the manufactures which had at one time flourished in Ireland--to the flannels of Rathdrum, the linens of Bandon, the cottons of Cork, and the gloves of Limerick. Why should not these things exist again? "We have a people who are by nature quick and facile to learn, who have shown in many other countries that they are industrious and laborious, and who have not been excelled--whether in the pursuits of agriculture under a midday sun in the field, or amongst the vast looms in the factory districts--by the people of any country on the face of the globe."[1] Most just and eloquent!
The only weak point in Mr. Parnell's speech was where he urged his audience "not to use any article of the manufacture of any other country except Ireland, where you can get up an Irish manufacture." The true remedy is to make Irish articles of the best and cheapest, and they will be bought, not only by the Irish, but by the English and people of all nations.
Manufactures cannot be "boycotted." They will find their way into all lands, in spite even of the most restrictive tariffs.
Take, for instance, the case of Belfast hereafter to be referred to. If the manufacturing population of that town were to rely for their maintenance on the demand for their productions at home, they would simply starve. But they make the best and the cheapest goods of their kind, and hence the demand for them is world-wide.
