been justly designated _the garden of the north._ The multitude of
pretty little villages, scattered over the landscape, each announcing
itself by the tapering tower of a church, would almost beguile the
traveller into believing that he was passing through a rural district
in one of the midland counties of England.'

We have seen that after General Conway got this land, it was described
by an English traveller as still uninhabited--'all woods and moor.'
Who made it the garden of the north? The British settlers and their
descendants. And why did they transform this wilderness into fruitful
fields? Because they had permanent tenures and fair rents. The rental
150 years ago was 3,500 l. per annum. Allow that money was three times
as valuable then as it is now, and the rental would have been about
10,500 l. It is now nearly six times that amount. By what means was
the revenue of the landlord increased? Was it by any expenditure of
his own? Did any portion of the capital annually abstracted from
the estate return to it, to fructify and increase its value? Did the
landlord drain the swamps, reclaim the moors, build the dwellings and
farmhouses, make the fences, and plant the orchards? He did nothing
of the kind. Nor was it agricultural industry alone that increased his
revenue. He owes much of the beauty, fertility, and richness of his
estate to the linen manufacture, to those weavers to the cries of
distress from whose famishing children a few years ago the most noble
marquis resolutely turned a deaf ear.

But, passing from historical matters to the immediate purpose of our
enquiry, let it suffice to remark that from Lisburn as a centre the
linen trade in all its branches--flax growing, scutching, spinning,
weaving and bleaching--spread over the whole of the Hertfort estate,
giving profitable employment to the tenants, circulating money,