When, later on, the Irish Parliament distributed bounties
through the Linen Board, the seat of that Board was in Dublin, and its
operations included every county in Ireland.
At the time of the Union, indeed, the linen manufacture was almost
unknown in Belfast, the "manufacturers" or handloom weavers in the
North, as elsewhere, living mostly in the smaller country towns and
bringing their webs in for sale on certain market days. From Benn's
"History of the Town of Belfast," published early in the century, we
learn that at that time the principal manufacture of the town was
"cotton in its various branches." This industry had been introduced in
1777, we are told, to give employment in the poorhouse, but it caught on
and spread amazingly. "In many of the streets and populous roads in the
suburbs of the town, particularly at Ballymacarrett, the sound of the
loom issues almost from every house, and all, with very few exceptions,
are employed in the different branches of the cotton trade. In the year
1800 this business engaged in Belfast and its neighbourhood 27,000
persons.
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