It does not seem that the Dublin brewers, who were frequently petitioning Parliament for assistance, faced the difficulty by brewing Porter themselves until the year 1778. The third adverse influence was the taste for ardent spirits, especially rum and brandy, which had sprung up; and the Irish records of the day are full of allusions to the injury which this was working, not only to the trade of the Brewers, but to the morals and health of the people. A remarkable letter is still preserved, written by Henry Grattan on this subject at the close of the century. It appears to be addressed to the Brewers of Dublin, probably in answer to one of their numerous petitions for protection. It is as follows:— “Gentlemen, “The Health of Ireland and the prosperity of her breweries I consider as intimately connected. I have looked to your trade as to a source of life and a necessary means of subsistence. I have considered it as the natural nurse of the people and entitled to every encouragement, favour, and exemption. It is at your source the Parliament will find in its own country the means of Health with all her flourishing consequences, and the cure of intoxication with all her misery. “My wishes are with you always. My exertions, such as they are, you may ever command. “I have the honour to be your sincere and your humble servant, “HENRY GRATTAN.” At present (1886) there are only seven firms of any note in Dublin; and of those existing a hundred years ago but two survive—Messrs. Sweetman’s and the well-known house of Messrs. Guinness, which has long been at the head of the trade in Ireland. To some English readers it may come as a revelation that at the present time this Irish firm is the greatest producer of malt liquors in the whole world. Some account of the rise and progress of so vast a business cannot but be of interest to the student of industrial enterprise, but in the compass of the present work it will of course only be possible to give the merest outline of its growth. Arthur Guinness, the great-grandfather of Sir Edward Guinness, the present owner, purchased the original premises from a Mr. Ransford in the year 1759. The business appears to have been of very modest dimensions, for the plant, as acquired by Arthur Guinness, included only one mash tun and one seventy-barrel copper. The brewery had, even at that time, been worked for a considerable period, certainly from the earliest years of the eighteenth century, and probably before that. {349} The property, about one acre in extent, thus acquired in 1759, forms the nucleus of the present gigantic establishment. The principal brewhouse stands to-day precisely on the site once occupied by Ransford’s mash tun and copper; but since the commencement of the nineteenth century many additional properties have from time to time been acquired, until at present the total area occupied by the brewhouses and their belongings amounts to between forty and fifty statute acres.