Du Bourdieu informs us that Louis Crommelin obtained a patent for carrying on and improving the linen manufacture, with a grant of 800 l. per annum, as interest of 10,000 l., to be advanced by him as a capital for carrying on the same; 200 l. per annum for his trouble; 120 l. per annum for three assistants; and 160 l. for the support of the chaplain.  Mr. M’Call, in his book, copies the following note of payments made by the Government from 1704 to 1708:—­

L s. d.

Louis Crommelin, as overseer of linen manufacture 470 19 0

W. Crommelin, salary and rent of Kilkenny factory 451 6 7

Louis Crommelin, to repay him for sums advanced to flax dressers and reed makers, and for services of French ministers 2,225 0 0

Louis Crommelin, for individual expenses and for sums paid Thomas Turner, of Lurgan, for buying flax-seed and printing reports 993 4 0

Louis Crommelin, three years’ pension 600 0 0

French minister’s two years’ pension                 120    0    0
_______________
Total                                             L4,860    9    7

It should be mentioned, that when the owner of Lisburn, then Earl of Hertfort, held the office of lord lieutenant in 1765, with his son, Viscount Beauchamp, as chief secretary, he rendered very valuable services to the linen trade, and was a liberal patron of the damask manufacture, which arrived at a degree of perfection hitherto unequalled, in the hands of Mr. William Coulson, founder of the great establishment of that name which still flourishes in Lisburn, and from whom not only the court of St. James’s but foreign courts also received their table linen.  Du Bourdieu mentions that Lisburn and Lurgan were the great markets for cambrics—­the name given to cloth of this description, which was then above five shillings a yard; under that price it was called lawn.  In that neighbourhood cambric had been made which sold for 1 l. 2 s. 9 d. a yard unbleached.  The principal manufacturing establishments in addition to Messrs. Coulsons’ are those of the Messrs. Richardson and Co. and the Messrs. Barbour.

Lord Dufferin has written the ablest defence of the Irish landlords that has ever appeared.  In that masterly work he says:  ’But though a dealer in land and a payer of wages, I am above all things an Irishman, and as an Irishman I rejoice in any circumstance which tends to strengthen the independence of the tenant farmer, or to add to the comfort of the labourer’s existence.’  If titles and possessions implied the inheritance of religion and blood, Lord Dufferin ought indeed to be ‘Irish of the Irish’ as the men of Ulster in the olden times proudly called themselves.  On the railroad from Belfast to Bangor there is a station constructed with singular beauty, like the castellated entrance to a baronial hall, and on the elaborately chiselled stone we read ‘Clandeboye.’