Average prices of the nineteen years on the custom books. All exports on those books are rated at the
value of the reign of Charles II.; but the imports have always 10 per cent. on the sworn price added to them. Seventy to eighty sail of ships belong to Cork. Average of ships that entered that port in those nineteen years, eight hundred and seventy-two per annum. The number of people at Cork mustered by the clergy by hearth-money, and by the number of houses, payments to minister, average of the three, sixty-seven thousand souls, if taken before the 1st of September, after that twenty thousand increased. There are seven hundred coopers in the town. Barrels all of oak or beech, all from America: the latter for herrings, now from Gottenburg and Norway. The excise of Cork now no more than in Charles the Second’s reign. Ridiculous!
| Cork old duties, in 1751, produced | £62,000 |
| Now the same | 140,000 |
Bullocks, 16,000 head, 32,000 barrels; 41,000 hogs, 20,000 barrels. Butter, 22,000 firkins of half a hundredweight each, both increase this year, the whole being
240,000 firkins of butter,
120,000 barrels of beef.
Export of woollen yarn from Cork, £300,000 a year in the Irish market. No wool smuggled, or at least very little. The wool comes to Cork, etc., and is delivered out to combers, who make it into balls. These balls
are bought up by the French agents at a vast price, and exported; but even this does not amount to £40,000 a year.
Prices.
Beef, 21s. per cwt., never so high by 2s. 6d.; pork, 30s., never higher than 18s. 6d., owing to the army demand. Slaughter dung, 8d. for a horse load. Country labourer, 6d.; about town, 10d. Milk, seven pints a penny. Coals, 3s. 8d. to 5s. a barrel, six of which make a ton. Eggs, four a penny.
Cork labourers. Cellar ones, twenty thousand; have 1s. 1d. a day, and as much bread, beef, and beer as they can eat and drink, and seven pounds of offals a week for their families. Rent for their house, 40s. Masons’ and carpenters’ labourers, 10d. a day. Sailors now £3 a month and provisions: before the American war, 28s. Porters and coal-heavers paid by the great. State of the poor people in general incomparably better off than they were twenty years ago. There are imported eighteen thousand barrels annually of Scotch herrings, at 18s. a barrel. The salt for the beef trade comes from Lisbon, St. Ube’s, etc. The salt for the fish trade from Rochelle. For butter English and Irish.