AN INCOME OF FIVE MILLIONS PER ANNUM.

Dunstan Times, Issue 586, 11 July 1873, Page 3

AN INCOME OF FIVE MILLIONS PER ANNUM.

o^It is a well-known fact that Earl Dudley is possessed of the finest coal \ mines world, and his income, chiefly derived from mineiid properties, is the largest of any British nobleman. The Australasian in making the comparison between his Lordships wealth and the wretchedness that now (exists amongst the “ poor,” from the high price of the coal, from which he derives his immense wealth, says :—What can an ordinary mortal do with an income of five millions a year ? He cannot spend it, and it is aocumulating'a’frightful responsibility if he saves it. Using it is out of the question,* and the alternative advice of the Homan Emperor to the man who found a treasure, “abuse it," is equally difficult to follow when applied to such enormous sums. Those considerations arise from a calculation given by our London correspondent, that Lord Dudley’s forty coal pits yield 10,000 tons of coal daily, and return a “grand total profit of 4,922,000 pier annum," leaving a margin for small coal, &.C., that would divide into a good many respectable incomes. , Without adverting to the particular circumstances that especially point the irony of fortune in pilacing this vast wealth at tiro disposal of the present I.ord Dudley, m can well understand the truth of the remark, that “ facts of th's kind set tho common people thinking.” ( Thcre“ is, 5 indeed,’i material fur thought in a state of affairs that gives one man a profit of live million piounds a year when many millions if his fellow-country-men arc undergoing discomfort, and oven wretchedness, from tlia high parico of coal which, yields him this fabulous wealth. ,We can well appreciate the statement that discontent is simmering, that strange and novel questions are being discussed, going to tho very foundation of the rights of property, and that revolutionary feelings arc growing in the minds of men in a country presenting such exaggerated extremes of wealth and pioverty. As one of our London correspondents says, “It is tho facts, not the theories, which sot people thinking on th so matters." When these questions are being 'canvassed with such freedom of speculation, and such a spirit of indignation to sharp en speculation, and when the Conservative influences are daily losing in piower, patriotic Englishmen may indeed foci uneasiness as to what is to bo the issue.