After breakfast we took a car and drove rapidly about the city for an hour. With its noble river flowing through the very heart of the place, and broadening soon into an estuary of the Atlantic, Limerick ought long ago to have taken its place in the front rank of British ports dealing with the New World. In the seventeenth century it was the fourth city of Ireland, Boate putting it then next after Dublin, Galway, and Waterford. Belfast at that time, he describes as a place hardly comparable "to a small market-town in England." To-day Limerick has a population of some forty thousand, and Belfast a population of more than two hundred thousand souls. This change cannot be attributed solely, if at all, to the "Protestant ascendency," nor yet to the alleged superiority of the Northern over the Southern Irish in energy and thrift, For in the seventeenth century Limerick was more important than Cork, whereas it had so far fallen behind its Southern competitor in the eighteenth century that it contained in 1781 but 3859 houses, while Cork contained 5295. To-day its population is about half as large as that of Cork. It is a very well built city, its main thoroughfare, George Street, being at least a mile in length, and a picturesque city also, thanks to the island site of its most ancient quarter, the English Town, and to the hills of Clare and Killaloe, which close the prospect of the surrounding country. But the streets, though many of them are handsome, have a neglected look, as have also the quays and bridges. One of my companions, to whom I spoke of this, replied, "if they look neglected, it's because they are neglected. Politics are the death of the place, and the life of its publics."[2]