37/58 But it was not until after the Union with Great Britain that the town made so great a stride. At the beginning of the present century it had about 20,000 inhabitants. At every successive census, the progress made was extraordinary, until now the population of Belfast amounts to over 225,000. There is scarcely an instance of so large a rate of increase in the British Islands, save in the exceptional case of Middlesborough, which was the result of the opening out of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and the discovery of ironstone in the hills of Cleveland in Yorkshire. Dundee and Barrow are supposed to present the next most rapid increases of population. |