How powerfully the development of manufactures in the North of Ireland has contributed to the relief of the agricultural classes of Ulster, by giving the tenant-farmer an opportunity of apprenticeing some of his sons to business instead of subdividing among them his diminutive holding, by enabling the cottier tenant to supplement his
and artizans are receiving from 50 to 70 per cent. more wages than were paid twenty to thirty years since. I am paying my permanent farm labourers 11s per week when I do not provide them with a home. I should say that day labourers in Belfast, such as porters in warehouses, may be all put down as receiving fully 50 per cent in excess of what they used to get."
"The enclosed statement, which Mr. Henderson has furnished at my request, shews pretty clearly the progressive advance of wages paid to the last-named class."The following is a statement of the rates of wages which appear to have been paid by us to ordinary labourers at the periods undernoted. We give separately the wages paid to men hired by the week, and to men hired by the day. The wages paid to carters and head porters was somewhat higher.| By the Week. | By the Day. | |
| 1828 . . | 8/" . . | 1/6 to 1/8 |
| 1832 . . | 8/" to 9/" . . | 1/6 to 1/8 |
| 1840 . . | 9/" . . | 1/8 |
| 1847 . . | 9/" to 10/" . . . | 1/8 to 2/" |
This was the famine year, and wages fluctuated more than usual.
| 1857 . . | 10/" .... | 2/" |
| 1867 . . | 12/" . | 2/6 |
It will be seen that the rise in 40 years is about 50 per cent."
Belfast, 10th July, 1867
I have given in an Appendix a few facts connected with the improvement which has taken place in Belfast and its neighbourhood during the last 30 or 40 years.—See Appendix, p. 149
