THE ULSTER CONFLICT political parties; and the Catholics had found a new source of bitterness against the Protestant Ascendandcy in its breaking of the promise of emancipation. ULSTER ECONOMIC BOOM During this period of radical ferment Irish manufacture and agriculture had, on the whole, been going through a phase of relative boom. Due to a series of embargos enforced by the British parliament during the 18th century on trading with hostile nations in times of war, the meat trade had swung over to supplying to British mercantile and naval fleets, which proved to be very profitable for the mercantile interests involved; and throughout the period of the Napoleonic wars grain and meat prices were kept at an artificial high by a huge increase in demand from the British market which had virtually no other source of supply. The position in the grain trade was maintained after the Napoleonic period by the British Corn Laws, which placed high tariffs against foreign grain (by this time, of course, Ireland had been integrated into the British empire). Irish industrialists did not lag far behind their English counterparts in introducing power machinery. The most noticeable effect of this was seen in Belfast. Foundries, rope works, sugar refining and vitriol factories had all been established by the 1790s, but the main factor in the conversion of the town from a commercial to an industrial centre was the introduction of the cotton industry. This had started in the 1780s when the American War of Independence was interrupting the importation of cheap cotton goods from the American colonies. Its introduction was due to the visit by the owner of a paper mill to Scotland where he became acquainted with the new cotton-spinning techniques of Hargreaves and Arkwright. The new industry started in a small way because trained labour and risk capital were in short supply, but it developed very rapidly, especially in Antrim and Down where for a century the linen industry had already been established on a cottage basis. The fact that cotton weaving is much easier than linen weaving and that muslin weavers could earn three times as much as linen weavers resulted in the almost complete extinction of linen weaving in Belfast. Cotton mills were established within a ten-mile radius of Belfast, close to streams and rivers, since the machinery was more often operated by water-power than by steam. 71
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