higher tonnage) for vessels cleared.* As regards the number of vessels cleared with cargo alone, Belfast comes 11th, Cardiff, Faversham, Liverpool, London, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Newport, Rochester, Sunderland, Glasgow, and Greenock coming before her. Was it not undue leniency on my part to rank Belfast 12th as a trading city? Should not it have been 21st, perhaps?

But trade is not the only measure of wealth or the only sign of comfort. Let us revert to the census, and dip into the pages which are devoted to "houses." This will afford us an opportunity of looking more closely into the real circumstances of Ulster, by comparing the classes of houses in Ulster with those in the other provinces, by examining the character and value of agricultural holdings in the various provinces of Ireland, and by ascertaining the real position of Ulster in Ireland with regard to the rateable valuation of the provinces, and the amount of wealth of the inhabitants in each province.

In 1841, Ulster contained 414,551 inhabited houses and 21,590 uninhabited. In 1891 it contained 326,547 inhabited and 29,479 uninhabited. There is only one city in Ulster which contains more than 50,000 houses; it is, of course, Belfast. But the actual number of inhabited houses in Belfast is only 46,376. Londonderry, with 5292 inhabited houses. There are no cities of 4000 or 3000 houses; three cities have more than 2000 and less than 3000; seven cities have between 1000 and 2000, and all the other cities and townships of Ulster have less than 1000 houses.

From this we fall to

As regards the class of accommodation in rural districts, it is obvious from a glance at Plate III. of the General Report, that Ulster is behind Leinster and Munster in the matter of first-class houseaccommodation. It has a far higher percentage of third-class accommodation, but the lowest class (the fourth) is less numerous than in any other province in Ireland. The following gives per province the percentage of families inhabiting houses of the various classes:

It may perhaps be argued that percentages for a whole province cannot give an accurate idea of the true circumstances of the province in cases when there are peculiarly poor districts, like Donegal in Ulster -the low figures for one such district being sufficient to drag down percentages which otherwise would stand high. But this argument is of no value in the present case, because the other provinces have each their peculiarly poor districts, some of which are more miserable than even Donegal. There are three Irish counties which have fewer families inhabiting first-class houses than Donegal, and which at the * "Annual Statement of Navigation and Shipping, 1892," table 43. + Ibid., table 37.

The percentages. Clare, first class,

same time have a larger number huddled in the wretched hovels of the fourth class; they are Clare, Kerry, and Mayo. are: Donegal, first class, 39; fourth class, 3.1. 3.1; fourth class, 4-0. Kerry, first class, 2.8; fourth class, 10.0; (Kerry has by far the highest percentage of hovels of any county in Ireland) Mayo, first class, 1.9; fourth class, 4·6. Donegal has not even the highest percentage of third-class accommodation; it is overtopped by Mayo by almost 12 per cent. From this it will be perceived that Ulster gets no special wrong from Donegal in the provincial percentages just quoted.

The richest counties in Ulster in superior house accommodation are Down and Antrim, followed at a considerable distance by Derry. It may be that a large number of people believe that the prosperous farmers of Antrim and Down enjoy the best house accommodation in Ireland. It will probably be new to them to learn that the premier county in Ulster occupies only the seventh rank among the counties of Ireland with regard to house accommodation of the first class. Figures and facts have unfortunately no respect for the high-sounding phrases of Unionist oratory.

So that two-thirds of the counties of Ulster occupy almost the very lowest places amongst the counties of Ireland with regard to the first-class house accommodation by families, and the other third manage to reach a by no means high place. Is that what one would have been led to expect from the persistently sounded laudations of the prosperity of Ulster?

But it may be said that in order to appreciate the true degree of middle-class comfort which we are told is characteristic of Ulster, in the midst of the wretchedness of other parts of Ireland, we must include second-class house accommodation. Let us therefore see what is the position of the Ulster counties amongst the counties of Ireland as regards both first- and second-class house accommodation.

It is obvious from the foregoing figures that the comfort of Ulster, as instanced by the housing of its inhabitants, is no greater than in other parts of Ireland. Ulster does not head the list of percentages of first- and second-class house accommodation. Down occupies only the third place, and Antrim, that other fortress of wealthy and industrious Presbyterianism, the eleventh. Protestant Antrim, where Roman Catholics form barely 25 per cent. of the population, is beaten by Fermanagh, where they are 56 per cent., by just one per cent. Yet we seldom hear of the superior condition of Fermanagh while the

* Ulster counties are printed in italics.

superior condition of Antrim threatens to pass into a proverb with many educated people. One would think that people so industrious and so wealthy and so contented as those Ulster farmers might pay a little more attention to their housing, and not huddle together in the miserable dwellings and hovels of what are known in Ireland as the third and fourth class of dwelling-houses. Has not the paternal Ulsterian landlordism, which is now so anxious for the preservation of the present happy state of things, some responsibility for that result? Here is the position of the four provinces of Ireland as regards house accommodation of the first and second class :

Result: Ulster more badly housed than Leinster and Munster. And when we remember that the housing of Ireland has become a byword amongst nations, we may perhaps have an idea what that means.

The Ulster farmer has been so much to the fore that I may be pardoned for looking a little more closely into his circumstances, and for giving a few figures concerning agricultural holdings in Ulster and the rest of Ireland. The total population on agricultural holdings is for each province as follows:

Considering the value of the holdings, the percentages per province are as follows (Table 60, General Report):

Ulster here again comes third, and, for a province whose wealth is so much vaunted, has, it must be admitted, an amazingly low percentage of holdings over £15 rateable value. If we take holdings

exceeding £100 rateable value, we find that Leinster and Munster, with their smaller population living on agricultural holdings, have not only a higher percentage, but actually a far larger population living on holdings exceeding £100 rateable value than Ulster:

Concerning the number of people per county who live on agricultural holdings above £300 rateable value, no Ulster county comes in anything like the first.

Again, here the premier counties of Ulster come sixth and seventh respectively amongst the counties of Ireland.

If we look to the acreage of the holdings, we find that from holdings above 50 acres Ulster, in spite of its far larger population living on agricultural holdings, has actually a smaller number of such holdings than Leinster and Munster-Leinster, however, having 229 less than Ulster of holdings of the sixth class-i.e., above 50, and not exceeding 100 acres :

And here, again, I may point out a striking proof that it is not only the poor, but those who are presumably rich as well, who have been deserting Ulster. Between the years 1889-1890, during which, it must be remembered, a much smaller number of people left Ulster than had been the case since 1868, a rather heavy decrease for a single twelvemonth under such favourable circumstances took place in three of the four above-mentioned classes of agricultural holdings, as follows:

Yet the character of the holdings is such that in a well-regulated community, or in a country which is as prosperous and satisfied as some people claim Ulster to be, they could scarcely ever decrease (admitting, since it seems to be the Unionist contention, that decrease is the necessary mark of the progress of a country) in a whole decade by the amount they decreased in Ulster in a single

year.

But these are not the only means we have of testing Ulster's wealth. Let us take now the rateable valuation of the four provinces of Ireland, and ascertain the amount per inhabitant in each province :