Average prices of the nineteen years on the custom books. All exports on
those books are rated at the value of the reign of Charles II.; but the
imports have always 10 per cent. on the sworn price added to them.
Seventy to eighty sail of ships belong to Cork. Average of ships that
entered that port in those nineteen years, eight hundred and seventy-two
per annum. The number of people at Cork mustered by the clergy by
hearth-money, and by the number of houses, payments to minister, average
of the three, sixty-seven thousand souls, if taken before the 1st of
September, after that twenty thousand increased. There are seven hundred
coopers in the town. Barrels all of oak or beech, all from America: the
latter for herrings, now from Gottenburg and Norway. The excise of Cork
now no more than in Charles the Second's reign. Ridiculous!
Cork old duties, in 1751, 62,000 pounds
produced
Now the same 140,000
Bullocks, 16,000 head, 32,000 barrels; 41,000 hogs, 20,000 barrels.
Butter, 22,000 firkins of half a hundredweight each, both increase this
year, the whole being
240,000 firkins of butter,
120,000 barrels of beef.
Export of woollen yarn from Cork, 300,000 pounds a year in the Irish
market. No wool smuggled, or at least very little. The wool comes to
Cork, etc., and is delivered out to combers, who make it into balls.
These balls are bought up by the French agents at a vast price, and
exported; but even this does not amount to 40,000 pounds a year.
Prices.
Beef, 21s. per cwt., never so high by 2s. 6d.; pork, 30s., never higher
than 18s. 6d., owing to the army demand. Slaughter dung, 8d. for a horse
load. Country labourer, 6d.; about town, 10d. Milk, seven pints a
penny. Coals, 3s. 8d. to 5s. a barrel, six of which make a ton. Eggs,
four a penny.
Cork labourers. Cellar ones, twenty thousand; have 1s. 1d. a day, and as
much bread, beef, and beer as they can eat and drink, and seven pounds of
offals a week for their families. Rent for their house, 40s. Masons'
and carpenters' labourers, 10d. a day. Sailors now 3 pounds a month and
provisions: before the American war, 28s. Porters and coal-heavers paid
by the great. State of the poor people in general incomparably better
off than they were twenty years ago. There are imported eighteen
thousand barrels annually of Scotch herrings, at 18s. a barrel. The salt
for the beef trade comes from Lisbon, St. Ube's, etc. The salt for the
fish trade from Rochelle. For butter English and Irish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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