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HISTORY OF

Italian engineer, and very ingenious architect, has had for a few yearsthe fuperintendance of the works; but the temper of the nation hasbeen so soured by disappointments, that he has not the support whichhe thinks necessary to do any thing effectual.

The importance of the object will appear from this circumstance:that upon average of seven years, from 1764 to 1770, the import ofcoals amounted to 180,113 tons per annum, and in the next sevenyears, from 1771 to 1777, to 204,566 tons.

From whence it appears, that not only the quantity itself is great, butthat it is a very rising import, owing to the increase of Dublin, whichhas enlarged with the increasing prosperity of the kingdom.

The little effect of all attempts to supply Dublin with Irish coals, isseen by the bounties paid for that purpose, amounting to no more, forthe last seven years, than from one to two hundred pounds a year. Inthe years 1776 and 1777 they were so little as eighty-six pounds.

Before I entirely dismiss this undertaking, I cannot but remark, thatnothing can more dearly prove the amazing want of capital in Ireland.than the present state of these works. The navigation is completed, ex-cept two or three miles. I will venture to assert that parliament wouldgrant the money for finishing it without hesitation, provided any men ofundoubted substance would engage to work the collieries at their ownexpence; we may therefore assert, there is water-carriage from some ofthe finest seams of coals in the world, and at a very slight depth, directlyinto the heart of the second market in the British dominions, with theadvantage of a parliamentary bounty per chaldron on their import toDublin ; yet, with all these advantages, nobody has capital enough toundertake the work. This fact seems also to call for another observa-tion. I remember in the English House of Commons, in the sessions of1777 and 1778, when the friends of the Irish bills urged, that the want

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