The art of making linen was known, according to Mr. Dunlop, to the “native Irish, as it is to most primitive races.” But what they made in Ireland was “of a very coarse kind, and its use was practically restricted to the wealthier class--viz., the merchants of the towns.” What is his proof for all this? Was it the town merchants that Campion describes wearing linen shirts for wantonness and bravery, “thirty yards are little enough for one of them”? What about the great linen rolls on the Irishwomen’s heads, and (is the inference too romantic?) perhaps on their bodies also? What about the fine linen in which the Galway women wrapped the Spanish hanged after the Armada? When I read of 6000 bales of linen cloth sent from Galway to Genoa in 1492, or of 4000 linen cloths mentioned in 1499 in another Galway merchant’s will, or of the “sardok” of mixed woollen and linen in the Netherland markets in 1353, or of Henry the Eighth forbidding Galway any more to export linen, the records of the time seem to conflict with the opinions which Mr. Dunlop “begs leave” to hold. Mr. Dunlop now admits for the first time some trade in cloth, but with a stipulation of his own that it was all made by Englishmen. He does not trouble to consider such a clue as we find in the State Papers of Galway merchants carrying their wine into the country to exchange among other things for cloth. He has his own theory; “it is pretty clear from such expressions as Limerick cloak, Galway mantle, Waterford rug, that the centres of the cloth industry lay within the sphere of English influence”; the participation of the Irish was excluded by severe guild regulations, and “it may not be unfair to infer that the reputation acquired abroad by Ireland in regard to its serges was not due to the industry of its native population.” This insinuating hypothesis is a flaming fact on the next page, where it appears the “native Irish” (no inferring here to dull the conclusion) “took no part in the commercial development of their country, leaving it to the stranger within their gate, and thereby earning from the latter the reproach of idleness.” If there were, as Mr. Dunlop “prefers to think,” some loyal Irishmen who preferred English civilisation and the chances it offered them of pushing their way in life to their native customs, he states that the presence even of such loyal Irishmen “was not always welcome to citizens of English blood.” Thus the English of the towns must have toiled day and night to supply the mantles which the English Government forbade to loyal people, and to provide cloaks and cloth for the foreign trade, since in their incessant struggle to preserve themselves intact from Celtic influences they refused the aid of Irish hands to work for them. It is an idyllic picture of high purpose and endeavour, of the way to develop a country, and to make an empire.